Alright, new rule: whenever a band’s press junket uses words like ‘honest’ and ‘authentic’ to describe their new material, don’t believe it. Terms like that have been pejorated into marketing buzzwords rather than anything meaningful, evidenced in their use by the least deserving subjects. It’s the bands who, rather than embodying honesty and authenticity in their work, have to state it so you know it’s there. And even then, it rarely is. What, exactly, screams “authentic” about, say, a grown man prostrating through the same verbiage as everyone else who expressly wants to curry an emo-teen fanbase?
On a not-unrelated note, here’s The Hara’s The Fallout. It wants, with a burning passion, to be a Hot Milk album, though sees the only prerequisites as being gobby and from Manchester. It also has Josh Taylor doing his totally-real, not-put-on Yungblud voice again, so right away, that’s two strikes against the idea of ‘authenticity’. For the full strikeout, that comes just a moment in. “I wear my skin like a trophy / So they give a fuck about me” is the first lyric sung on the album, and the tone of bland, melodramatic formula is set. If this is supposed to be what passes for The Hara at their most raw and real, you’re left seriously questioning if they know what those words even mean.
But like with so many of these albums, deniability is an unbreakable shield. There’s clearly a core of real emotion being bled out as a driver, and any criticism of that makes you the bad guy. It’s never outright stated, but you sometimes get the idea that that’s the axis some bands want to work on. In the case of The Fallout, there’s a proper, honest line on Twist The Arrows where Taylor sings “I found my faith and contemplated suicide”, the heart of tangible humanity to keep the album going. But if you’re relying on one line to negate how trite and pat the child-skewing malaise feels elsewhere, you’ve got nothing close to a sustainable model. Compare it to the actual Hot Milk and it becomes blindingly, blisteringly apparent. I THINK I HATE MYSELF brings individual vision to tackle similar topics; BREATHING UNDERWATER finds surpassing the played-out strokes of its titular metaphor to be the easiest thing in the world. Meanwhile, The Hara have songs called Monsters & Demons and Psycho Killer, the entirety of which can be intuited by their names alone.
To be clear, that’s not surprising at all. As one of the groups of dancing monkeys who’ve become most subservient to the Reels algorithm, to find The Hara prioritising marketability is a shock on par with finding out the sun has risen in the morning. Doesn’t make it any less grating, though. On the bright side, Psycho Killer isn’t a hatchet to the genius of David Byrne, though another performative, croaky-voiced ‘villain’ role isn’t better. Stay might be even worse—part whiny, winded dejection sold without an inkling of nuance; part ‘anguish’ where the unnatural scream at the end feels here out of necessity, not impulse. All the screams on The Fallout are that way, in fact, where there’s a sharpness and gnash to Taylor’s execution but not a bit of potency to speak of. All edge, no point.
If all of that weren’t enough, the sound of The Hara is fittingly gutted to match. Again, there are very few noteworthy Hara-isms to speak of; it’s a rather dull emo / alt-metalcore sound that’s never as heavy as it needs or wants to be. The missteps are obvious, too—see the gummed-up drums nestled at the bottom of Easier To Die’s chorus-sludge, or the failure to pick up as a moment of grand power on Bury Me. Furthermore, it’s produced to have this unpleasant, greasy texture over it, presumably another stab to emulate Hot Milk that falls flattest of all of them. Outliers do crop up, like the grubbier garage-rock riffs of Intergalactic Sabotage or the out-and-out strongest melody on the whole album on Kings. Though on the latter, there is still a guitar lead fixed in immobile grind and Taylor’s howling, scabbed-over vocal performance to stymie a lot of good will, so you do have to wonder how accidental its success is.
Perhaps the moment where everything comes together most, however, is Violence. It’s not because of tremendous craft or insight (it’s a toxic relationship song where—good heavens!—both sides are at fault), but as a collaboration with As December Falls’ Bethany Hunter Jiménez, you’ve got another band involved who are also without a single original idea, yet have been whisked forth to the alt-rock vanguard regardless. That’s on the cards for The Hara, without question. As a commercial rock band with all the potential in the world to sell to a young, enthusiastic (or gullible; delete by preference) audience, you’ll likely hear about them a lot in 2026. More’s the pity when bands like this are ten-a-penny and frequently have at least something going for them. The Fallout reads most like a band doing what they believe is correct, such is the efficacy with which every box is ticked and every facade is kept. They’re real and raw and gritty because they say so and they write about the right topics; pay no mind to the interchangeable way they do it all!
Maybe the real ‘authenticity’ of The Hara is how craven they are to get themselves up the ladder, to the point where they can’t even pretend to hide it. Wouldn’t that be a twist?
For fans of: Yungblud, Hot Milk, Kid Brunswick
‘The Fallout’ by The Hara is released on 23rd January on Mascot Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
