Minnesota trio Halfway Down offer up a lively and diverse punk rock meets metal sound that they describe as “huge, dynamic and sad.”
The St. Paul-based band is formed of Blake Deneweth (lead vocals, guitar), who grew up in Southern Arizona, and brothers Shawn (backing vocals, guitar and bass) and Cameron Kraft (drums), who are from Central Minnesota. Blake originally auditioned to be the lead singer of a band that Shawn and Cameron were in but didn’t get the gig. However, the Kraft brothers liked his positive attitude and creative direction, so they started Halfway Down as a side project.
On what to expect from the band, Blake told us: “Our sound is in the same ballpark as: The Story So Far, The Wonder Years, Four Year Strong, A Day To Remember, and others in that zone. For people who are not familiar with the genre at all, I’d say we are in the middle of punk and metal.”
Our latest taste of this is Things Are Going Great, which was released on Friday. It opens up with distant vocals then heavy guitar chords, before dropping into effects-ridden vocals that flow into engaging vocals through a verse that, again, sees effects litter the vocals. That flows into a heavy chorus ending with a heavily effects-ridden cry of “things are going great.” The pace drops after a second chorus, with laid-back vocals and light guitars, which end with heavy guitar chords and choral vocals. Rolling drums come in and building vocals tee up a final blast of the chorus.
Speaking ahead of the release, Blake told us: “We are super excited for people to hear it! We record each song as we write them, so our style is always changing from song to song. We did something very unorthodox for this song. We have a feature essentially singing the first half of the song, and so our choruses have a very different feel as you move through the song.”
Things Are Going Great is the eighth track from Halfway Down’s drip-fed debut album, following on from previous singles like Nothing Left To Lose, a personal favourite heavier track Never Coming Back, Buried and their debut release Fool’s Gold.
The Halfway Down sound is inspired by similar bands who blendelements of punk and metal. Blake is a man after our own heart, having always had a thing for early 2000s pop-punk and emo bands like Blink-182, Say Anything and Taking Back Sunday. While Shawn and Cameron are both into 2010s easycore and pop-punk like The Wonder Years, Four Year Strong and A Day To Remember.
And on their creative process, Blake explains: “Nothing really influences us to write. It’s weird but the songs just kind of happen. We’ve never sat down and thought, ‘Let’s write a song about [blank].” It’s always a cool riff or chord progression that will exist first and then the song forms around that.
“Our music tends to always be about feeling emotionally or mentally lost. We are all in our 30s and so our lyrics tend to be about dealing with stress, living with regrets, working our lives away, stuff like that.”
Halfway Down are always writing new music, so expect to see plenty more new songs released this year. The trio also have plans to do regional mini-tours around Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois. And Blake adds: “If you enjoy our music or like who we are, reach out on Instagram. We are very open to collaborating!”
You can follow Halfway Down on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and check out their music on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
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