Pias news – The Haunted Youth – new song ‘wake up’
THE HAUNTED YOUTH SHARE NEW SONG "WAKE UP"
The Haunted Youth - wake up
LAST TASTE FROM THE NEW ALBUM "BOYS CRY TOO" OUT MAY 8, 2026
VIA PLAY IT AGAIN SAM

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Having kickstarted their UK & EU tour with triumphant sold out shows in London, Paris & Amsterdam, The Haunted Youth return with wake up, the latest single to be taken from their forthcoming album, Boys Cry Too, out via Play It Again Sam on May 8, 2026.

The band's new material is far more fiery and red-blooded than their 2022 debut Dawn of the Freak, while the latest single wake up contains this icy morning-after-the-night-before regret that you can truly lose yourself in. The album as a whole is frequently one of anguish and aggression, as frontman Joachim Liebens reflects, "I was a kid on Dawn Of The Freak. It sounds almost like nursery rhymes to me – everything is so fragile and childlike, like a cry for attention." He pauses before breaking into a wide, Cheshire Cat grin. "And now I'm angsty and kicking in doors."

On Boys Cry Too, Liebens abandons the fragile, bedroom-pop innocence of Dawn Of The Freak — a debut that has since earned cult status back home — in favour of something far more confrontational and emotionally charged. The album lets go of restraint in favour of something more raw, blending fragile melodies with distortion and aggression to create a sound that feels both intimate and explosive.

It's a wide emotional spectrum reflected in a change of instrumentation for Boys Cry Too, with live drums and guitar coming more into focus ahead of the layers of sun-bleached synths that characterised Dawn Of The Freak.

Yet despite its squalls of guitar noise, Liebens says he was largely listening to hip hop artists during the record's competition, citing emo-rap outlier Lil Peep as a key influence as he crafted his own set of lyrical signifiers. "The lyrics in a lot of non-hip hop music try to bring resolution, but it's so much more powerful to have these lines that people just instantly engage with," he notes.

For all the killer lyrics on the record that grab you by the scruff of the neck, it was crucial for Liebens to leave space in his writing for the listener to impart their own experience into the songs. Boys Cry Too may have been born from his own pain, but he wants it to resonate with other people's lives.