One Step Closer will release their third album, Zero, on 19 February 2027 through Run For Cover Records. The Wilkes-Barre band have opened the campaign with two songs, ‘Blue Hour’ and ‘Was It Ever Enough?’, and one connected video directed by the band.
Zero follows All You Embrace from 2024. That record moved One Step Closer deeper into melody and emo without abandoning hardcore; these first two songs keep testing that balance instead of snapping back to an earlier version of the band.
Also read: why Refused’s restless version of hardcore still holds up.
“This may have been the hardest year for us, and that’s reflected in the songs.”
Ryan Savitski, via KINDA
Dusk, then sunrise
‘Blue Hour’ begins with a muted drum loop and an ominous guitar figure before breaking open on a homemade skate ramp. The video then follows the band into daylight for ‘Was It Ever Enough?’, where the pace tightens and the song ends on the kind of shared vocal line that makes sense with a crowd around it.
The two halves feel deliberately different. ‘Blue Hour’ gives Ryan Savitski’s clean singing more room than before; ‘Was It Ever Enough?’ pulls the band back towards circle-pit momentum and sharper guitar movement. Neither reads as a side project from One Step Closer’s heavier work.
Older-brother music for a worse year
Savitski and guitarist Ross Thompson describe one part of the album’s inspiration as ‘older brother music’: MapQuest directions to VFW shows, burned Myspace CDs, late-night music-video blocks and getting into Warped Tour however you could. They are borrowing the emotional directness of that period rather than simply rebuilding its sound.
Jon Markson, whose credits include Drug Church, Drain, Koyo and The Story So Far, recorded the ten-song album with the band. Pat Flynn of Fiddlehead and Have Heart appears on ‘About a Boy’, while Knocked Loose guitarist Isaac Hale contributes to the slower, atmospheric ‘A Fleeting Face’.
‘Blue Hour’ and ‘Was It Ever Enough?’ are streaming now. Zero is available to pre-order in several vinyl editions, on CD and digitally ahead of its February release.
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