End Hits Records and Hot Water Music are pleased to present “Remnants” and “Fences,” two new singles lifted from the Friday, May 10 release of Vows, the long-standing, influential punk outfit’s brand new album (pre-order HERE). Featuring contributions from Brendan Yates and Daniel Fang of hardcore heroes Turnstile (who named their band after the 1997 Hot Water Music song) on the rhythmic rocker “Remnants” and Thrice on the atmospheric “Fences,” these two singles continue to illustrate the power that the members of Hot Water Music put forth across this intense and musically daring 12-song showcase.
‘Remnants’ is a song of friendship and what it means to be a true friend to a person dear to us even through the toughest times of our lives,” the band says. “These values are based on whether or not we choose to be present for one another when all seems to fall apart.” Of “Fences,” the band says, “One of the toughest things in life is remembering and recognizing the importance of living in the moment. With so many distractions in our day-to-day lives, it becomes easy to get lost in the noise of this society and lose focus of our true and present purpose.”
Sacrifice. Loyalty. Camaraderie. These aren’t just words, they are the qualities that have defined Hot Water Music’s songs, lyrics and ideology for the past three decades. However, instead of celebrating 30 years of existence with a nostalgia lap or formulaic album, the band decided to mark this milestone with their most ambitious collection of songs to date. Correspondingly, Vows sees the band — guitarists/vocalists Chuck Ragan, Chris Wollard and Chris Cresswell as well as bassist Jason Black and drummer George Rebelo — taking their pioneering punk sound to bold new heights via inventive arrangements, pop-friendly sensibilities and a new generation of musical guests that include Brendan Yates and Daniel Fang of Turnstile, Thrice, Dallas Green of City and Colour and Alexisonfire, The Interrupters, and Popeye Vogelsang of Calling Hours and melodic hardcore greats Farside.
In order to capture these songs, Hot Water Music chose to reunite with longtime collaborator Brian McTernan — who produced the band’s classic albums such as 2001’s A Flight and a Crash to 2002’s Caution as well 2022’s Feel The Void — which allowed the band to revisit the raw, guitar-driven power of its classic releases like 1997’s Fuel for the Hate Game and Forever and Counting while still capturing the current dynamics of the band, most notably the inclusion of The Flatliners frontman Cresswell, who joined Hot Water Music in 2017 when Wollard stopped performing with Hot Water Music live. Not only does Cresswell feel more fully integrated on this album than he did on Feel The Void, his melodic vocals add a new dimension of tunefulness to these songs and smooth out its rough edges.
Not knowing what the endgame was, the band entered the process of writing these new songs with the simple intention of releasing music to celebrate this hard-earned milestone, be it a single, EP or full-length. What they were absolutely sure of, though, was that they didn’t want to make a new record just for the sake of it; this record had to be exciting, relentless and, above all else, necessary.
“For some reason — and maybe because this is such a huge milestone — subconsciously I was thinking, ‘Who knows what is after this?’” Ragan summarizes. “I would love to say we’re going to keep making music for as long as we’re all around, but the truth is we never know when that’s the last session we do and I feel like I thought of that more than I ever had in the past.” All five members of the band put everything they had into Vows, an album that is less of a throwback to the past or look to the future as it is a pause in the present moment to acknowledge how far they’ve come.
Preorder here: https://cvaushop.com.au/collections/pre-orders/products/hot-water-music-vows
or here: https://shop.resistrecords.com/collections/pre-orders/products/hot-water-music-vows-lp