FISSION Dead Poet Society

• 1 5:29:45 02:06
• 2 Running In Circles 03:53
• 3 HURT 03:33
• 4 How could I love you? 03:28
• 5 I hope you hate me. 03:40
• 6 Uto 04:02
• 7 Tipping Point 02:53
• 8 LA Queen 03:25
• 9 Hard To Be God 03:21
• 10 81 Tonnes 04:00
• 11 My Condition 03:27
• 12 KOET 03:05
• 13 Black And Gold 04:10
• Total Runtime 45:03

Info for FISSION

After a decade defining, redefining, and perfecting their art, Fission finds Dead Poet Society poised to be rock's next breakout act. The album is a 13-track study of personal change and the turbulence of growth that, as frontman Jack Underkofler attests, takes "a microscopic and broad look at the events that changed who we are."

Today, the band has dropped two singles — "I hope you hate me." and "How Could I Love You?"

Both songs address the sometimes bittersweet, more often simply bitter, fallout from a tumultuous relationship. The latter is an excruciating yet intoxicating journey, backed by searing guitars, while the former addresses the aftermath of a relationship.

The video for "I hope you hate me" features dancer and breakout social media star This Robot Cannot Human, whose carefully choreographed moves perfectly reflect the song's tension and slow, calculated build up. The track effortlessly mixes a subtle take on '80s nu wave with alt rock fury, thanks to pulsating riffs and drumbeats that echo your own heartbeat.

Ultimately, Underkofler says the band has one mission for fans and listeners of the new album: "We want to leave them with the truth."

Further elaborating on the concept, he says, "It's not as simple as saying we want our music to leave people with a positive outlook. You want music to speak to wherever you find yourself. We want to leave people feeling that whatever they are experiencing is valid, no matter what place they are at in their lives."

To that end, there are deep rakings over the coals of relationship breakdowns, examinations of addiction in all its guises, ruminations on the responsibilities and challenges of adulthood, and struggles with the evolution, loss and continual search for self. "In a lot of ways this album is about unpacking those emotional pains that come with being an adult," Underkofler says. "The past few years have left me in a constant state of growth through the life events of which I've had little control, or which didn’t pan out the way I wanted them to. There's a 'before' you, and an 'after' you, and there's no going back. Life tends to force your hand, and it's futile to fight it. You have to accept that things that happen to you will change you, and let them build you into the next phase of who you are. There is a constant battle to not mourn who I was, because the things you go through define you as a person and turn you into a person worth being. But that can be difficult to wrestle with. There is a positive to it, but it is birthed through a lot of pain."

While the lyrics are fully relatable, the music is a DNA-distinct blend of anthemic alternative, dark and moody hard rock, and progressive indie. FISSION is truly unlike anything you've heard in recent times.

Dead Poet Society

Dead Poet Society
A perfect symbol for Dead Poet Society is the “shitty old seven-string” that guitarist Jack Collins bought at a mall back in high school.

“Our former bass player actually took a soldering iron and soldered the frets off,” he recalls. “You couldn’t play it normally at all. I thought it was going to be a great idea. Years later it was sitting in my closet, and I decided to pick it up again because I got really bored. It became the new way for us to write music — it opened up a door into this whole new world we discovered.”

“It was like, ‘This is the guitar,’ he adds. “It’s like taking something broken and creating art out of it.”

With its wonky intonation, the instrument can’t produce traditional chords or scales — an unlikely choice for a rock band with such strong commercial potential. Collins and frontman Jack Underkofler are a factory of hooky riffs, even at their most detuned and menacing; and the latter barks and coos with a crystalline purity that recalls Jeff Buckley and Muse’s Matt Bellamy.

That contrast is crucial to the band’s debut LP, -!- out March 12, 2021 via Spinefarm Records. Take the bruising belter “Been Here Before,” which pairs a stadium-sized chorus with angular guitars and Dylan Brenner’s blown-out fuzz bass; “I Never Loved Myself Like I Loved You” opens with the fidelity of an iPhone demo before blooming into a cinematic dream-pop singalong anchored by Will Goodroad’s rim-click drum groove. Brenner is a new addition to the lineup, but his experience as the band’s touring stand-in for the duration of their career has made him a natural fit.

It’s no surprise that Dead Poet Society like screwing with rock conventions — that’s been their aim since forming in 2013 as students at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Hilariously, at least in retrospect, it did take them a bit to find common ground.

“My best friend drummed for them, and I convinced him to leave the band,” Underkofler says with a laugh. “Six months later, Jack asked me to sing on a couple songs they’d written. My apprehension came from the fact that they were kind of a meme for being one of the worst bands at school. I kind of tried to push away — our old bassist just kept asking me, ‘Do you want to write with us?’ One day he showed up on my door step and I was like, ‘Fuck.’ After I wrote my first song with them [“145″], I was like, ‘I think there’s something here.'”

The newly solidified quartet quickly developed a chemistry: Underkofler and Collins had a mutual love of Coldplay, but their tastes sprawled over time along with drummer Will Goodroad: heavy acts like Royal Blood and Led Zeppelin, modern art-pop artists like St. Vincent, even hip-hop experimentalists like Tyler, the Creator. Not all of those influences are detectable on the largely self-produced -!-, which features a handful of tracks co-helmed by studio veteran Alex Newport. But that eclecticism makes sense, given their distaste for most modern rock.

“It’s just lame,” Collins says. “It has been for like 10 years. I think that’s because people are paying too much umbrage to classic rock — there’s this ‘passing of the torch’ thing that I think is just bullshit. Heavy music is the way we communicate — it happens to be rock music, but the expression itself and what we’re trying to say and how we want to make people feel is unique. That’s what bands used to do, and I think that’s what a lot of hip-hop artists do nowadays.”

“Our goal,” he emphasizes, “is to make someone feel something they haven’t felt before.”

This album contains no booklet.