TICKETS > | Doors at 7 p.m.
With special guests BRKN LOVE
Asked what it is he wants audiences to take away from “FISSION”, the forthcoming second album from Dead Poet Society, Jack Underkofler offers eight small but powerful words: “We want to leave them with the truth.”
The affable and engaging 30-year-old delivers these words with the forthrightness that marks his discussions about the band he fronts, completed by Jack Collins (guitar), Will Goodroad (drums) and Dylan Brenner (bass), and the art this collective of college friends have exhaustively dedicated themselves moulding, too often to their own detriment.
It’s an answer that epitomizes the dedication with which the quartet approach their craft, and the search for its purest, most meaningful form. “It’s not as simple as saying we want our music to leave people with a positive outlook,” Underkofler explains. “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.”
After a decade defining, redefining and perfecting their art, where Dead Poet Society find themselves on the eve of their sophomore release is much clearer. Make no mistake: Dead Poet Society are a uniquely captivating group, rock’s next great breakout act, with “FISSION” set to capture the hearts and challenge the minds of fans old and new on the journey ahead.
Following on the heels of their acclaimed debut full-length “–!–“ (2021), “FISSION” seeks to unpack the personal journey its creators have been on during that ride to date. “FISSION”, as its title hints, is a 13-track study of personal change and the turbulence of growth that, as Underkofler attests, takes “a microscopic and broad look at the events that changed who we are.” 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,” the frontman admits. “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,” he adds. “But that can be difficult to wrestle with. There is a positive to it, but it is birthed through a lot of pain.”
“It’s both exciting – ‘Fuck you. I’m gonna take this head on’ – and at the same time, you’re terrified how you’re going to get through the next month,” adds Goodroad. “One day you’re super confident about where life is going, the next you’re second-guessing everything. It’s like the myth of Sisyphus: it’s a boulder you have to push up the hill every day.”
Twinned lead singles “Running In Circles” and “Hurt” weave through fears of following the wrong path while hiding behind false fronts. “How Could I Love You” and “I Hope You Hate Me” tackle the sometimes bittersweet, more often simply bitter fallout from a tumultuous relationship. “81 Tonnes”, meanwhile, sees Underkofler revisit a time of particular
helplessness and instability. ’I need peace now slow my body down can you pull me out?’ he pleads. ‘Too afraid of fission and faith to save me from myself.’
It’s that track which gave guitarist Collins his clearest understanding of the emotions he and his bandmates share, which were coming to the fore in song. “Jack described “81 Tonnes” to us as about being left with ‘a permanently altered state of mind’, which felt like the perfect summary of so many of those songs on the album to me,” he says. ”They all lead you to the finish line of, ‘I’m a different person now because of all this...’”
To some extent, through “FISSION”’s creation Dead Poet Society have become a different band, too. A more attuned one; more accomplished, certainly. “We were really trying to define our sound more on this record,” Collins nods. “We worked a lot more on guitar tones, bass tones and drum sounds, and paid close attention to melody. The aim was to make our sound bigger – we wanted a more dynamic record, where you could hear the best representation of us live. I feel like the evolution is us maturing a little bit, and wanting to create a sound that was less an obvious reflection of our influences – Muse, Queens Of The Stone Age, Nothing But Thieves, Royal Blood – and more definitively our own. We don’t control where the inspiration comes from. We just had to obey the songs and what they were telling us to do next.”
“We hone in on a feeling, rather than a sound,” adds Underkofler. “This album is the defining moment of when we truly became Dead Poet Society. It’s the closest we’ve come to realising the essence of the ideas we’ve always had for this band.”
The result is a compelling record of depth and substance, which weaves through the spectrum of anthemic alternative, dark hard rock and progressive indie. “FISSION“ is at once comfortingly familiar and disconcertingly alien; raw and analogue – “Profoundly human,” as Goodroad says – while possessing a colder, digital inflection. Unexpected turns and deviations reveal themselves often; repeat listens reveal greater secrets yet. It’s a multifaceted record of contrast and cohesion, on which the bright glow of the ballad “Tipping Point” and album-highlight “My Condition” – the sort of infuriatingly hooky earworm anthem with which alternative radio airwaves are dominated – can coalesce with the industrial-leaning mechanics of the piston-driven “Hard To Be God” and “KOET”.
“I think the best way to make other people feel something is to make yourself feel something. The best songwriters are people who can take a particular emotion and feeling, and create the most narrow translation when someone hears that song,” Underkofler says. “If someone hearing a song can be taken to the exact headspace that the person who wrote it was in at the time, for me that is the mark of a great songwriter. And I feel with these songs, we’ve achieved that better than we ever have before.”
It’s a headspace you’re left to ruminate in long after Underkofler is finished protesting ‘But what if I’m always alone? / And I don’t like who I am anymore’ on the closing “Black And Gold”. Because when all is said and done, the truth is that the impact of “FISSION” and Dead Poet Society will reverberate now and in years to come.
𝘽𝙍𝙆𝙉 𝙇𝙊𝙑𝙀
Toronto singer and guitarist/BRKN Love founder Justin Benlolo dropped out of school at 16 with one goal in mind…
“All I could ever focus on was being on stage, screaming into a microphone, and playing my guitar in a rock and roll band for the world to hear,” he exclaims.
Encouraged by friends and family to pursue that classic dream, Benlolo landed in New York City in 2014. However, things got off to a rough start as young Justin didn’t gel with The Big Apple . Instead, he found the “gloom” of the city isolating. He retreated into himself and devoted the requisite “10,000 hours” to his craft, spending all of his time woodshedding and perfecting his voice. A change of scenery helped as the budding talent traded the East Coast for the West Coast and settled in Los Angeles. He gradually progressed by performing incessantly throughout the city’s rock scene, drawing on many inspirations.
In the midst of it all, he experienced a crucial revelation.
“The turn of everything hit when I was 18,” he recalls. “By then, I had been living on my own for a few years, and I had experienced enough of the world to cultivate what I saw myself as all along. I was too pissed off and angry at the time to not make music that was visceral and filled with attitude. It finally all made sense.”
With the advent of bands such as Royal Blood and Highly Suspect, he was inspired, and recognized the potential for a “different kind of band—that’s not too macho and slick, but edgy enough for the punks.” Justin started tracking demos for BRKN LOVE and shortly after determined that Joel Hamilton (Highly Suspect, Pretty Lights) was the perfect producer. Joel responded to the tracks by inviting him to Brooklyn to record at his Studio G. Together, they cut the 11 tracks that would comprise the album as the band landed a deal with Spinefarm Records after a New York showcase.
Recorded live to tape in the studio, the sound preserves “a raw, real, and alive” feeling in the riffing tempered by “relatable and emotional lyrics.”
Now, the first single “Shot Down” hinges on thick guitars before Justin’s howling takes hold. It seesaws between dirty blues verses and a skyscraping refrain as he chants, “Landslide, shaking the crowd…Shot down in the bottom of a valley!”
Written at the infamous Mate’s Studio in North Hollywood, CA, it captures all of the seedy, glorious grit of the San Fernando Valley.
“It’s got a lot of sexual innuendos,” Benlolo comments. “On the contrary, it can be interpreted as a massive disaster song. There’s a landslide shaking the ground, and we’re in the middle of the valley. The world’s ending as we’re playing away.”
The airy harmonies and syncopated riffs of “I Can’t Lie” take dead aim at West Coast fakery and “friends who stabbed me in the back for no reason” with a hypnotic and heartfelt chorus. Everything culminates on “In Your Hands,” which slides from a clean intro towards a wall of fuzz and a most impressive vocal performance – which is very present throughout the recording and very noteworthy in early live shows. “ ..Hands” serves as “an ode to life that we’re going to ride the universe’s wave without worrying.”
In the end, BRKN LOVE represent a new era for rock music that’s as powerful as it is emotional.
“The name represents who I am,” Justin leaves off. “You can honestly be a hopeless romantic and play tough music. Most of the lyrics deal with love and loss. That’s the vibe. You can share your feelings and still rock your face off at the end of the day. It’s what I’m going to do.”