HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Songs To Scream At The Sun – Have Heart

6 July 2019: some 10,000 people descend on the parking lot of the Worcester Palladium, right at the heart of Massachusetts’ centremost city, to witness the fleeting return of the legendary HAVE HEART. As one of just eight reunion shows the band played that month – their first in almost a decade – it is widely considered the largest non-festival hardcore show of all time. But what brought so many people there? What made this reunion so special in a world where everyone seems to come back nowadays? Chances are those gathered would have given many answers; the relentless touring ethic of the band in their heyday, the motivational power of their lyrics, their fiery straight edge classic The Things We Carry (2006), and of course their masterful swansong Songs To Scream At The Sun.

It is the 15th anniversary of the latter that brings us here today. As indicated – and as we’ll get to properly in a bit – it was to become the band’s final studio album, although that wasn’t immediately apparent at the time. By 2008, HAVE HEART had come a long way for a band formed when its original line-up was still in high school; after making waves in a thriving Boston hardcore scene with their debut demo and EP in 2003 and 2004 respectively, they’d put out the aforementioned and outstanding The Things We Carry on the esteemed Bridge Nine Records in 2006 and hit the road hard from there. 2007 brought with it two European tours, multiple runs through the US with some of the biggest names in hardcore, and even took them as far as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Japan.

The point here is that the band had done a lot of growing up by the time they entered Kurt Ballou’s GodCity Studios to record their sophomore full-length; they’d seen a lot of the world, learned to look beyond themselves even, and it is this which ultimately makes Songs such a powerful and meaningful record. Yes, with Ballou’s help it is more sonically ambitious and better produced than its predecessor, but it is without doubt the thematic shift, the more emotive lyricism, the maturity even, that makes this particular record an undisputed modern hardcore classic. As vocalist Pat Flynn put it, “Songs To Scream At The Sun is the coming of age story. It’s about the growing process of a young kid shaking the chains of selfishness, but it’s everything about what you lose and gain in that process of growing up.”

It begins then with Flynn staring himself in the mirror in The Same Son, seeing “a boy not a man” as he comes to terms with his ignorance to the struggles and sacrifices of those around him. The highlight Bostons follows immediately after, here with the frontman realising all that his father has done to give him a better life than his own (“And in this father I hardly know / Was a son who took back what the bottle stole / So I could be the boy you couldn’t be / Have the father you didn’t get to see”). That’s just one devastating set of lyrics among many, and over the next 21 minutes Flynn screams evocatively of distance between brothers, of the gendered struggles of the women in his life, and even of whole families falling apart in images tinged with melancholy yet always brightened by love and compassion.

The journey comes full circle with Flynn turning once again to his reflection in The Same Sun, but now with his perspective broadened; “Wake up, look up, there’s a warmth up there / A reminder of peace, a reason to care / Wake up, look up, that’s something you share / There’s more to life than the boy in that mirror” he declares here, going on to draw on the poetry of E.E. Cummings as he brings the record to its final exhortations of “Arise, my soul, and sing”. That is what makes Songs To Scream At The Sun such a lasting masterpiece; it faces darkness head on but ultimately lifts its eyes to the light – to the sun even – to inspire and uplift its listeners. Plenty have attempted and even achieved something similar over the years, but few ever with such grace, beauty and power as this.

No wonder then that its impact was immediate. Multiple outlets named it as the best hardcore album of the year, many have since placed it among the finest of the 21st century, and from there the band launched a truly staggering world tour that saw them play in every major continent in the space of five months. Particularly stunning among this run is the footage of the five-piece performing at East Rand School of Arts in South Africa; following up a jazz set from the school band, Flynn makes an almost apologetic introduction as he invites the teenagers to come forward, clearly not expecting the deafening reaction that greets the band as they kick into Songs’ third track Pave Paradise. Kids screaming, sweaters whirled over heads, even a crowd surfer by the set’s end, if that isn’t a testament to the moving power of hardcore, then what on earth is?

And yet, as promised, it would all be over just months later. That was the plan though; just days into the start of the aforementioned world tour the band had announced that it would be their last, and on October 17th 2009 – National Edge Day – they played what would be their final show until those historic reunion dates. Flynn would later tell HardLore Podcast that it was “the norm” in Boston to go out on the top of your game, inspired by their forebears in bands like TEN YARD FIGHT, IN MY EYES and MENTAL, and in Songs To Scream At The Sun there is perhaps no finer example of this in all of hardcore.

Songs To Scream At The Sun was originally released on July 8th 2008 via Bridge Nine Records.

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