Interview with Home Front

Home Front, a band from Edmonton, Alberta (Canada), are releasing their third album Watch It Die in November 2025, and it has already made it into our favorites of the month! Born during Covid times as a duo, today they play live with a full band and make us dance and mosh with their fantastic ’80s sound!

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• Radio Punk: Hi guys and thank you so much for being here. In Italy we’ve devoured every one of your releases and we’re really happy to get to know you better. Let’s start with a quick biography – how did Home Front begin and who are you today? Have you been part of other projects?

Home Front: First off thank you so much for being so patient with us. My apologies for being incredibly tardy with answering this thoughtfully crafted interview. It’s like the questions arrived right when everything went buck-wild and sort’ve got lost in the shuffle…so again, a little bit of house keeping, I sincerely apologize.

Okay onto the questions- hahaha 

Well you sort’ve touched on our history already. Home Front began as a recording project with myself and Clint Frazier as a way to pass the time during the pandemic. Both of our bands were on hiatus and Clint who was living in a rural village outside the city reached out and was like “We should do a New Order style project together…” and I was like “ummmmmm okay, I have these Blitz style riffs maybe it could work together?!?!”
So that’s sort’ve how it started and once we started rolling we realized we can add anything we want to make our sound. So we hit the record collection hard and pulled out a lot of 80s UK New Wave records like Depeche Mode or Flock Of Seagulls or OMD and thought it would be fun to mix it with Punk and Oi! music. I mean so many of my favourite bands from the early 80s sort’ve explored UK new wave later in their careers, so why can’t we. Like Blitz on Second Empire Justice or Reasons Why by Angelic Upstarts or the Running Riot ‘84 album by Cocksparrer were a few records that come to mind…man even Ramones Too Tough To Die had the song “Howling At The Moon” which has that great synth intro. Basically what I’m saying is, Home Front sort’ve came together as a musical experiment and has turned into something we can run with and it feels exciting to be in a project where we can do anything we want, so it’s cool to see where it might take us

• Radio Punk: Watch It Die is an album that’s very carefully crafted in every aspect, it manages to create an atmosphere to immerse yourself in, one song after another. Tell us about the themes and generally the concept that gives life to this full-length.

Home Front: The first song we wrote for Watch It Die was written after we finally worked up the courage to play a live show shortly after Think of the Lie first came out. At the time we figured Home Front was just gonna be a recording project, but after we assembled a wonderful group to perform the songs we returned home feeling inspired. The first tune we wrote was the song “Watch It Die” a tune inspired by “Thick As Theives” by The Jam. I think the idea was to write a song that looked back on our youth, realizing things how things didn’t turn out the way we imagined. From all the slogans and fights we had growing up to working jobs and worrying about making enough money to get by. Like plucking a flower from the soil and bringing it into your home to enjoy it’s company and it’s wild beauty while it slowly dies. However, for us on this record in the flower’s death the seeds still germinate beneath the soil growing into something new. In some ways it’s like it lives on in a different form. The flower, the great metaphor for resistance. You can destroy all the flowers but we are the seeds that are in the soil and we never die!
Essentially Watch It Die is about death. Not in a morbid gothic way, but more in the transitional sense. Like Death is only a stage in the cycle before a rebirth.  

• Radio Punk: Here in Italy the punk and skin scene is very connected to social spaces and generally to working class struggles. What’s the underground scene like in your city? And generally in Canada? How connected is punk to social and political struggles in your country?

Home Front: In some communities in Canada the struggle is very real. With poisonous drugs on the streets killing so many vulnerable people (where the health crisis is ignored), communities without clean drinking water or social services or like in our province where our bullshit right wing government tries to hide their corruption by blaming immigrants or trans youth. So yeah the struggle is part of our every day life. Some like minded folks take to the streets here, but not like you guys. I feel out here the system and the cost of living has made it difficult to risk everything by burning down a police station or something like that. At least we’re not there yet! Soon!

• Radio Punk: On November 21, you’ll be coming to Bologna, Italy. The album has been a huge hit here. What do you expect? Have you ever visited Italy? 

Home Front: Our drummer Warren and myself both played in Hardcore Punk band called No Problem and we played Milano and Parma and even had an amazing show in Bologna back in 2014. I’ve only ever played the north of Italy, hopefully one day we get to explore it all. I will say though every show I’ve played in Italy has been mental, so I’m really excited to come to Nabat’s home town and tear it up. So we are very very excited for this opportunity.

• Radio Punk: Mauro (from bands like Zeman and Cesoia), a dear friend of ours who loved your record, was curious to ask you a question that we’re happy to pass along: your music is very popular with the skinhead scene even though you don’t play classic Oi!. How much skinhead subculture and Oi! influenced your imagination and your artistic-musical production?

Home Front: Oi! is the secret sauce to Home Front’s sound. I think all the synths and drum machines help build the sound, but Oi! makes it tough. Makes the synths move. In Edmonton, the city where we’re from, it gets so cold that sometimes when you walk on the frozen concrete your Dr.Martens make a hard stepping sound and that was a big inspiration for how we wanted to attack synth music. Really hard drums. Hard stepping Oi! hahahahaha

• Radio Punk: All three of your albums have been released on the same label, La Vida Es Un Mus, which is based on the other side of the ocean, in London. How did this collaboration come about? Have you ever met in person?

Home Front: So back in 2015 or so my older band No Problem were invited to play K-Town and on the way to Copenhagen we played three or four shows with an amazing band from Mallorca called Orden Mundial. Anyway on that tour not only did we get along with these guys, but PAaco was travelling with them and that’s where we became friends. When we finished making Think Of The Lie I thought maybe this might be something up Paco’s alley. He was/is always putting out very cutting edge punk and hardcore releases and at the time he started releasing some of the best Oi! records too. Bands like Rixe or The Chisel were really inspiring to us, so we thought, maybe this weird synth record might be something he’d like. I’m glad he took a chance on us. It was very humbling to be part of such an amazing international roster. I think for us in Home Front it’s always been about working alongside friends and people we admire creatively/artistically over money and fame. It’s the artistry that’s the real driving force for the label and the band!

• Radio Punk: We’ve reached the end, thank you so much again and we’ll close with one of our favorite questions. Who are Home Front in everyday life? (What are your hobbies, your jobs and other curiosities/passions) Thanks again and we hope to see you soon in Italy!

Home Front: Ooooohhhhhh that’s a good one.
Let’s see for me, I’m an avid record collector who is always on the hunt for killer Italian punk singles (hint hint) while our synth man Clint Frazier is laser focused on finding vintage synths and drum machines and vintage clothes…currently he’d be in the market for any Italian Sta-press pants hahahaha. Our bass player Brandi Strauss is definitely our good time gal, who’s always on the hunt for great food and wine, while her partner and our guitar player Ian Rowley loves to skateboard and hit record shops with me. Our drummer Warren on the other hand likes one thing (other than his wife Sydney and his boy Liam). Drums.

Thank you so much for the interview and we look forward to hanging with you and the crew in a few weeks!!!