Footballhead face the toughness of modernity by reveling in the past for an edgier take on their plying, youthful alt rock sound.
Release date: March 20, 2026 | Tiny Engines | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp
The 2000s were cool. It was kind of the beginning of the end as far as my generation’s concerned, and I’m sure others feel similarly. Shit just started to gradually suck more, even as things reportedly got ‘better’. Better tech, better ways to connect, better times (I was a teen then so I’m biased). Better music? Debatable. I feel like the 2000s were the weirdest era of music I’ve lived through, but I know better than to write off a whole decade because of that or any other reason.
Weight of The Truth seems indebted to the feelings above in many ways, especially with the edgier feel this album has. It’s their second LP now, from dropping poppier rock EPs and singles in the early 2020s, leading up to Before I Die from a couple years ago that I really liked. This is different. It leans into more of the radio rock aesthetic from a couple decades ago with bands like Seether, Tantric, Breaking Benjamin, maybe a tad Linkin Park before their legacy was soiled by a reboot, but not so much that the band lose their established identity – the head is still football-shaped.
I mean, you’d be forgiven for thinking there was a heel turn in order with the first track, “Peace of Mind”. The muted intro, song structure, guitar tones and effects that remind me of early Stabbing Westward, and yelled vocals all signal a shift in mood even if the lyrics still hold the line (‘Beside your shadow I’m still/Subdued and dying to feel/My wound’s refusal to heal‘). If you’ve heard the single “Used To Be”, then you also know what I’m talking about sans the harsher vocals I suppose. I wasn’t expecting it, but it felt nice.
I do enjoy Footballhead when they’re riding more gently melodic waters though. “Diversion” has a great feel on the verses, a little hazy and dreamy to go with the lyrics, but the hook still has some snappy weight to it. I especially love the drums there. “Fall Away” maintains this through the whole song and as such, it’s one of my faves. I could go back in time and put this shit on wack-ass Clear Channel’s rock radio stations and no one would bat an eye. I could probably even get away with “Death To A Past Life” which is urgently and endearingly pop punk with the quickened rhythms and soaring vocals at the end. Some of my favorite lyrics are on here, about wanting to bury your past before it buries you. I must also shout out “Comforting” which has some sampled(?) turntable scratches hanging in the back of its quieter moments – I wouldn’t have heard those if I didn’t listen to this album with headphones. Nice little easter egg there.
There’s a lot to like here, even though I’ll be very upfront in saying that I liked a lot of their earlier stuff more on the whole than Weight of The Truth. Footballhead make such a fun time out of whittling nostalgia from a sound that, from my estimation, isn’t really looked back on too fondly. You get super ’80s and ’90s nostalgia all the time, but even two decades removed now, people seem a little hesitant to take the sounds of the aughts and do something interesting and cool with them. Maybe I’m calling it too early – there’s still plenty of time to see where it all goes.
It’s funny, as I write this, I’m seeing a huge nostalgic retrospective on the Jackass films unfold on Twitter about the people behind it (Knoxville rules, RIP Ryan Dunn) and the best bits (anything with bulls was the epitome of dumb bravery, the classic “ass kicked by girl” segment featuring Japanese kickboxer Naoko Kumagai). There’s plenty of academia-aligned thinkpieces and informed opinions on how Jackass as a movement was insurmountably important to the American zeitgeist of the time, especially when it comes to boys and young men, and Footballhead just slot well into that sort of nostalgia, like how people lament the loss of garage bands with teens blasting on their instrument for the whole block to hear instead of watching Andrew Tate swindle boys by giving crash courses on how to become rich and assault or traffic women, whatever the hell he does now.
And maybe that’s all part of what makes Weight of The Truth and by extension Footballhead tic. Accepting truth has become harder with time – aside from the personal ones like getting older, we must also accept that the world isn’t the same as before in nearly every way. Prices are up, benefits are lower, evil at an all time high, decency dwindling rapidly. What the fuck happened? It’s tough to live now, existentialism claws at your back as you walk into the buzzsaws of the future and are told it’s the most prosperous era humanity has seen. My generation has made it a point to feed the child within them whenever and however possible so in that sense, I feel compelled to hang on every riff found in this album and feel good for once in a time where bad is commodified, encouraged, and, if you got the money, totally legal. The weight of the truth is indeed burdensome, but it is hackable with bands like Footballhead on the scene.
Band photo by Calla Flanagan
