Less than three weeks until the new Grayscale album is in our hands. Are you excited? You should be. They always make music that is “a soundtrack to life.”
The Hart comes out January 31 and is sure to blow away everyone’s preconceived notions of Grayscale. The band, who has always pushed forward with their sound and never made the same record twice, created new material with so much personality for The Hart; it has true storytelling weaved through every musical fiber. They took their time with this album, though, and it shows. It also proves that 2025 is the year of Grayscale. We know it, and now so do you.
This pop punk group from Pennsylvania has had a unique run, but always maintained an upward trajectory. They emerged on the Warped Tour scene appearing to be very pop punk with Adornment, their 2017 debut. Then they started making a splash in the modern rock world with their second record, which dialed into a totally new and clean sound with Nella Vita in 2019. On their third album, Umbra, in 2021, the band had more synths and pop sensibilities than ever before – a twist that no one really saw coming. They went all in with that, especially on the choruses, but they never lost their roots, still incorporating rock-and-roll into everything. Now, on The Hart, they’re bringing it all together for the most quintessentially Grayscale album to date.
We had the incredible chance to chat with Collin Walsh, their lead vocalist, about this melding and molding of sounds and eras. Check it out below!
The Hart is out at the end of this month. How are you feeling?
Feeling so great! Truthfully, it’s the most excited we’ve ever been for a record. We’re very proud of it.
This is the longest gap between Grayscale records in history.
We’re really in a good zone. We took our sweet time and got everything right. We spent a lot of time being very deliberate about the sounds on the right songs, being in the right environment recording, all of those things. It was a long time coming, and we’re big supporters of the idea of not rushing art until it’s ready.
This record is more storytelling than anything before that we’ve done. Every record that we’ve written, lyrically, is a soundtrack to life. It’s life experiences that I’ve gone through or endured firsthand. It’s more of that, but it’s a longer amount of time. It’s the development of those stories coming to fruition.
Now that you’re four albums deep, do you feel your storytelling ability has gotten stronger? These new songs are top-tier Grayscale music.
Thank you! I feel very confident in the record and feel very good about everything we put into it. At the end of the day it really came down to making it from an authentic place; from the h[e]art – pun intended. It’s from a place of authenticity and telling the story of how we grew up and why we’re the way that we are. That was very much a goal. After the lockdown happened, we spent a lot of time reflecting on each other and who we are. That’s what we love about music. That’s what created the final product.
Even a track like “Kept Me Alive” still sounds so new, even though it is clearly Grayscale with that pop punk edge.
To be honest, we never considered ourselves a pop punk band, really, at any point. It’s different flavors of rock, but I can understand why there’s a punk aspect that’s associated with our early songs. Totally makes sense!
I agree with you. So much of that comes from the point I was bringing to light – how so much of it was written together from this authentic place. It was just amps and guys in a room. It was so much less computer and production. It was written and recorded (to some degree) in a raw way.
Whether there’s punk elements in the past of our discography, there’s always been this underlying line through everything that has just been: we’re an alternative rock band. In some aspects there are pop elements, and in some aspects there’s less. I think this one is a really good balance. If you put Grayscale through a colander, what comes out the bottom, the really good parts down to its core, is a rock band that has synths in it.
Honestly, I agree with what you’re saying. On Nella Vita, it was the first time you guys jumped into synths. It was so new and strange for a lot of fans, but three records since then, the fans expect it.
Totally, yeah! I think what we did differently this time around was use less sounds. We picked synth tones that fit the record, and there was handful of them. That was it. We weren’t cycling through a ton of banks of sounds and using different sounds for every song. There were two or three settings that felt like they should be on this record. It makes it cohesive and sonically sit in the right space. More analogue type synths, too – playing them and really locking in tones that are unique and not just using presets, if that makes sense?
It does! That adds texture to these songs, like on “Not Afraid To Die,” in which you can still hear drums, bass, and guitar. It still sounds like a band made the song. There were hints of that on Umbra, especially if we look at tracks like “Carolina Skies.”
That’s a good way to put it! Agreed. I think Nella Vita and Umbra both had more pop elements to them. To your point, the synths in some songs are pop-sounding synths used in rock songs, but some of the songs are more structurally pop in general. “Carolina Skies” is a good example. There are a lot of pop elements, but there are still live drums. Where we’re at now with The Hart, it was deliberate – being a rock band using rock-sounding synths. There was less emphasis on anything pop specific.
What does the clover represent on the album cover?
We all grew up in or around the Philadelphia area. Everybody in our band is either fully Irish or Irish/Italian. We all (for the most part) were raised in Irish Catholic families. It’s always been representative, even early on when we picked logos associated with the band, that was one that always made sense to us. It reflected who we are, and this record is so much about who we are and where we’re from. While it’s something we’ve used on merch in the past, we wanted to make it an emphasis this time around when we had that sign built for the album cover.
Is that sign going to make an appearance on tour?
That’s a great question! You’ll have to come to find out. It’s definitely possible!
In a show like the hometown one you did last month around Christmas, this new album was still five weeks away, so fans didn’t know the lyrics or what was coming next.
Yeah, and it’s really exciting. It’s a fun thing, kind of old school like before the Internet was the Internet. Granted, six of the 12 songs have been out as singles. Obviously a majority of the record is still not out, too, so [the show] was definitely a lot of new stuff […]. Non-singles will definitely be new for people, and I don’t know, but I’m excited about that. There are plenty of times when people will be able to come and sing in the future, knowing the words, but ou only get one shot where it’s brand new and everybody experiences it for the first time. It’s special and the first time we had ever done this.
“Not Afraid To Die” is a single that dropped a year ago in September. Tell me about releasing a single that far in advance of the album it’s on.
We wrote that alongside the rest of the record, but it was the first song we wrote for The Hart that we were like, “Oh! That’s going to be on the record.” It definitely was the first one we identified that made the record. In many ways, it was our north star for the record. There’s a song called “Through The Landslide,” which is one of my favorites on the record that’s sort of similar; that was the moment where we really found this sound that we fell in love with. It felt so incredibly authentic to us beyond anything we’ve done in the past. We put that one out and let it sit for a long time! [We let] people get familiar with it leading up to the release of the record. That was intentional. I love that song. Fans really love that song. It’s one of our most popular songs. It’s been an incredible journey and that was the start of it for this whole record cycle. It’s all good in Camp Grayscale!
I feel like that song could be a title track of itself! Of course we do have to discuss 8123 Festival, too, which is right around the corner. What thoughts do you have about The Maine’s signature festival?
We’ve been friends with [The Maine] for a while! We’ve toured with them. They’re close friends of ours. I talked to Pat [Kirch] fairly often. They’re just wonderful people! We’ve written with John [O’Callaghan]. We wrote a song called “In Violet” and John was part of that song. [They’re] the kind of people that have always looked out for us. We’re very excited to be doing it with them! We’re fans of Bad Suns, The Starting Line, Charlotte Sands – there’s a lot of good artists on this! We’re really excited to do it. I know it’s an important festival for them. It’s going to be amazing.
In 2019, Forbes wrote an article highlighting your merch and how you’re revolutionizing the merchandise industry. Tell me about having the pressure on you over the last five years being ‘the band that delivers,’ especially when it comes to merch.
I think it’s a fun thing! It all started with us wanting to make quality merch for fans – merch where the garments are high quality and they last longer. We put a lot of time into the small network of ours that we have to do it. We’ve been focusing on music heavily, and that’s obviously been the main part of it, but it’s always a fun additional expression of our band. It’s a cool thing to give fans along the way. We do a lot of limited drops and a big Black Friday drop. We had a big drop of apparel alongside the pre-order launch, which is live now for the record. It’s always been a cool thing that fans enjoy. It’s a different form of expression – really trying to put time and love and care into our merchandise.
When you’re in that creative headspace and writing music, do those ideas ever transfer into the merch?
That’s a great question! I’ve never been asked that before. I would say no, though. Later on is when I will realize, “This would make sense for this.” I think the order of operations is the music first and foremost, then what the artwork looks like, and then how the merchandise would be depicted. For example, making “Not Afraid to Die” was writing it/recording it/making it. “It should be a nun outside of an Italian restaurant in Philly, so that’s the single art. Then the T-shirt can reflect that. It can be one of the images that wasn’t the final single art we have of the nun in costume. We can put it there and put our text over it.” Done!
ON 1/31, STREAM THE HART, & MAKE SURE TO VISIT THE BAND’S WEBSITE FOR MORE!
