
Empty Days & Sleepless Nights carries on the narrative songwriting style the band has developed about a family set in post-WWII America in a working class town in New Jersey. We were first introduced to these characters in Defeater's debut LP, Travels, which was released back in 2008 and received great critical acclaim. The album was hailed with such bold accolades as "a new artistic peak for hardcore" (Punknews), "brilliant" (Absolutepunk) and "the perfect definition of modern hardcore" (Lambgoat). Travels was followed up in November of 2009 by the equally well-praised EP Lost Ground, which followed a man's (the "Prophet In Plain Clothes") journey from the military to post-war life. Empty Days & Sleepless Nights traces back to the family setting from Travels, but focuses on the older of the two sons and at times runs parallel to Travels, yet the events now unfold through the older sibling's eyes. Empty Days & Sleepless Nights is another chapter in the conceptual opus that is Defeater.
Empty Days & Sleepless Nights was once again recorded with Defeater's guitarist, Jay Maas, at his own Getaway Recording Studios in Wakefield, MA, throughout Fall of 2010. Maas commented on pulling double duty on the record as guitarist and producer by saying, "It's nice to be behind an idea all the way from it starting in your mind to actually shaping the way it will be heard as a final product. At the same time, there is an extreme level of stress that is reached when working so hard to both write AND record an album. But I wouldn't trade it for the world." Fortunately, Empty Days & Sleepless Nights has benefitted from such TLC and turned out to be an absolute masterpiece.
Check out two songs off of Empty Days & Sleepless Nights by pre-ordering the Dear Father EP, which features one acoustic track ("I Don't Mind") and one heavy track ("Dear Father") from the album now on B9Store.com. This album teaser hits streets on February 8th while the ED&SL full length will be available everywhere on March 8th, 2011. Defeater will tour Europe in February and March with Carpathian.