Twenty years after their formation and with eight full-length albums under their belt, it should come as no surprise at this point that Senses Fail just seem to get better and better with age. As their fans who grew up listening to their foundational albums, Let It Enfold You and Still Searching and found themselves growing throughout Renacer and Pull The Thorns From Your Heart, the band has grown immensely throughout the years as well, and their latest release, Hell Is In Your Head is the cumulation of decades of growth, change, learning and evolution.
Arriving sixteen years after Still Searching, Hell Is In Your Head serves as the long-awaited continuation of the band’s iconic 2006 sophomore album, picking up where the final track left off, after the main character commits suicide. That’s not to say that the band spends the entirety of the album looking to the past, though. Instead, vocalist/lyricist/songwriter Buddy Nielsen simply builds off of the foundation of Still Searching, using iconic poets, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost to lead the way into the future of the band.
Thematically, Hell Is In Your Head is certainly dark, touching on subjects such as death, suicide, grief, generational trauma and growing up, but there are slivers of light and hope throughout each song on the album, delivered in a way that only Senses Fail are capable of. While “Burial Of The Dead” sets the tone for the songs to follow, even heavier tracks like “End Of The World / Game Of Chess” and “Death By Water” find a light in the dark, in lines such as “The darker the night, the brighter the stars / The deeper the grief, the closer you are to God.” Meanwhile “Miles To Go” uses the iconic Robert Frost poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” as the backdrop for very honest and current lyricism, as Nielsen finds himself wondering why we even keep trying when the world is already so fucked up – but even then, he manages to find a sense of hope, insisting, “The world is on fire / It all feels so hopeless / But all I can do is love you with all my soul.”
More personal tracks round out the back half of the album, with “Lush Rimbaugh” letting listeners know that it’s okay to wish ill on those who wish will on others, while “I’m Sorry I’m Leaving” finds Nielsen reflecting on his life as a musician and becoming a father, and how the two things are tied together. One of his strongest vocal performances on the album, “I’m Sorry I’m Leaving” is followed up by the stunning, heartfelt final track, “Grow Away From Me”, which finds Nielsen and his wife singing together for the first time to their daughter.
Death and anxiety looms over the entirety of Hell Is In Your Head, but rather than hanging onto only the ugly parts of grief and pain, Nielsen continuously finds a sense of hope throughout the album’s eleven songs. The best part is that the light and dark parts of Hell Is In Your Head go hand in hand. What starts as a heart wrenching continuation of the already emotionally heavy Still Searching quickly blossoms into one of Senses Fail’s most lyrically vulnerable and sonically exciting albums yet, something that you’re bound to find something new in with each listen.