The Haunted Youth are kicking in doors: Hear the goth-grunge fury of ‘murder me’

There’s a quote buried in the press materials for The Haunted Youth’s new record that pretty much says it all. Frontman Joachim Liebens, reflecting on his debut Dawn Of The Freak, reckons it sounds like nursery rhymes now. “Everything is so fragile and childlike,” he says with a grin. “And now I’m angsty and kicking in doors.”

Consider the doors kicked. New single murder me — the second taste of forthcoming album ‘Boys Cry Too’ (out May 8, 2026 via Play It Again Sam) — is a full-throttle plunge into goth grunge thrash territory, and a pretty emphatic signal that the Belgian project has shed its bedroom-pop skin for something with a lot more blood in it.

The timing is good. The Haunted Youth have just come off a triumphant run at SXSW, and the new material sounds tailor-made for rooms that are too hot and too packed. Where ‘Dawn Of The Freak’ earned its cult status on fragility and sun-bleached synths, ‘Boys Cry Too’ swaps that gauze for live drums, guitars, and a sound Liebens has described as “the perfect triangle of Nirvana, Alice In Chains and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless” — and that’s just one track.

But beneath the noise, there’s real emotional architecture here. Liebens conceived the album as a two-act emotional journey through the male experience of heartbreak: the first half all walls-up paranoia and aggression, the second half peeling that back to expose something genuinely vulnerable. “I want to show the vulnerable part of men and boys and celebrate it instead of making it this whole stigma,” he says — a mission statement as much as a record concept.

The 11-track LP runs from the towering eight-minute opener in my head through to the closer ghost girl, with detours through icy post-breakup regret (wake up), New Order-indebted propulsion (i hear voices), and a ground-zero instrumental epic (falling to pieces). Oh, and Lil Peep gets a namecheck as a key influence — which, honestly, makes complete sense once you hear how Liebens handles his lyrics: less resolution, more gut-punch imagery designed to let the listener bring their own wreckage to the table.

‘Boys Cry Too’ drops May 8 via Play It Again Sam. Pre-order here.

TRACK LIST
1. in my head
2. castlevania
3. deathwish
4. emo song
5. wake up
6. hurt
7. murder me
8. falling to pieces
9. i hear voices
10. forget me
11. ghost girl

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