Boys Cry Too

Following the release of their debut, The Haunted Youth return with their second studio album, Boys Cry Too. On Boys Cry Too, Joachim 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. From the towering eight-minute opener ‘in my head’ to the closing track ‘ghost girl’, 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. The shadowy ‘castlevania’, for instance, is described by Liebens as “the perfect triangle of Nirvana, Alice In Chains and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.”

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.

Released: May 2026
Cat: PIASR1637LP
Label: Play It Again Sam

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Tracklist