Zero [Standard Version]

Audio Mixer: Brian Virtue .
Recording information: Modernist Movement Studios.
Photographer: Jeff Chenault.
After bouncing back from tragedy with the more mature Skeletons in 2010, Hawthorne Heights continue to grow as a band with Zero, a dystopian, post-hardcore concept album that follows a group of iconoclastic teens known as the Zero Collective as they fight against an oppressive corporation in a near-future middle America. Oftentimes with an album like this, the conceptual elements feel a bit tacked on, but even though the album is filled with lots of big hooks and melodies, there's an underlying darkness to it that shows just how deep into the marrow of the album the concept has penetrated. Even divorced from the narrative, Zero is a solidly crafted album from a band that seems to keep getting better with time and experience. In a way, it feels like the album -- a tale of young people fighting against a group trying to subdue them by making them feel as though everything is fine, regardless of how messed up the world actually is -- is a way for Hawthorne Heights to, in the grand science fiction tradition, allegorically address the events that led up to Skeletons rather than simply rehash them again and again, while also providing a commentary about the times we're living in and the way we choose to deal with tragedy. All in all, Zero is an ambitious album that's amazing not just in how well done it is for a post-hardcore concept record, but in the way it shows that Hawthorne Heights aren't afraid to take risks 12 years into a long and successful career. ~ Gregory Heaney