Photo by Elyza Reinhart

The present sounds like it’s meeting a future view coming fast for One Step Closer regardless of a world seemingly spinning slow on “Blue Hour” and “Was It Ever Enough?”, the first two singles off the Wilkes-Barre melodic hardcore band’s forthcoming third studio effort, ZERO.

Darkness is not an unfamiliar friend of vocalist Ryan Savitski, as the frontman has contended with varying degrees of inner emotional turmoil from a micro-personal level across their first two efforts in their 2021 debut, This Place You Know, and 2024’s sophomore follow-up, All You Embrace, but in adulting comes the realization that the cold truths of the greater world can leave you feeling paralyzed, especially when it’s the shit show we’re dealing with nowadays.

That sensation is especially heard on “Blue Hour”, though One Step Closer are very much not creatively trapped in place, as the listen’s panicked heartbeat expands into bigger picture in how they’re screaming louder into the shadows than ever. “Was It Ever Enough” hits a little closer to home and the “classic” OSC form with emotion crashing into momentum as Savitski seesthrough love’s blind eyes in a cathartic fury.

You’d not guess there’s so much turmoil going on within based on its adjoining two-part music video which the band directed alongside Derek Rathbun. It’s filled with fireworks, friends, lake jumps, and otherwise all of the affirmations that the smaller moments in life surrounded by good company are the ones you cling onto when everything else is a certain kind of hell.

Directed by: Derek Rathbun & One Step Closer

One Step Closer’s ZERO will be released February 19th on Run for Cover Records.