The Haunt don’t just play heavy – they embody it in all its forms. Through their emotionally charged lyricism, crushing musicality and the immersive energy of their live shows, siblings Anastasia and Maxamillion wield heaviness like a weapon, elevating the most vulnerable parts of their psyche through a death-defying blend of industrial, metal and alternative rock. The duo has, naturally, been musically linked since birth, eventually forming the band AnastasiaMax in 2015 over a shared love of hard rock, garage rock and blues-hewn influences like Amy Winehouse and The White Stripes. With Anastasia only 12 years old, they played clubs across their home state of Florida and soon toured the world alongside acts like Palaye Royale – eventually adopting a name that more closely mirrored the vulnerability, rage, darkness and sinister mystery of their sound. Accolades came quickly, with Kerrang! heralding The Haunt for their “gothic edge, flashes of punk vibrancy and riot grrrl attitude” and Rock Sounddubbing them a “Breakout Artist,” while their prolific musical output has helped their singles and EPs garner more than 40 million streams.
Now, on their debut LP, New Addiction (Nettwerk), The Haunt unfurl their craft in even more theatrical, therapeutic new ways: an exhilarating collection that sees the band continuing to bring their classic influences to contemporary spaces with every cascading breakdown, ascendant chorus, distorted bass line and toxic-tongued lyric. Produced by Kevin Thrasher (blink-182, Jelly Roll), the album is a bold step forward for the band’s evocative brand of rock, bolstered by supersonic sheen, Anastasia’s poignant vocals, and cameos from peers like MISSIO (“Can People Really Change?”) and Escape The Fate (the hit single “Masochistic Lovers,” a darkly hedonistic duet shooting up the Active Rock chart with high-octane rhythms and a devil-may-care snarl).
“We’ve always centered ourselves as a rock band but left the door open for a little push and pull,” Max says. “These songs are everything we set out to do: combine heavy music with soul.” The shared, almost unspoken musical connection between the siblings (“At this point in our lives, we’ve been playing music together longer than we haven’t,” he says) is ultimately the heart that’s omnipresent in their music.
Anastasia called the process of making New Addiction one of great healing, where the band was able to bring their darkness into the light, spinning tales of depression, crash-and-burn relationships, anxiety and the toils of the modern world. They’re directed both internally and outward, pulling the destructive nature of human duality into the light. “Own Me” finds the singer at war with herself, walling off her emotions to protect loved ones from pain, all while feeling increasingly isolated within her own mind, while the arena-stomper “Dead2Me” and pre-release, groove-heavy single “New Addiction” throw middle fingers to deadbeat exes, lording over the the chaos of emotional manipulation with unapologetic flair and grit.
They’re heavy topics befitting of the heavy musical treatment The Haunt provide, a cathartic experience that plays just as well to the barricade crowd at their sweaty club shows as to the back row of massive audiences at festivals like Download and Louder Than Life. And it’s ultimately proof in the power of self-belief, of forging your own path and using every heartbreak to rise up stronger and more resolute than ever before. After a decade in the making, The Haunt wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It feels like everything’s been building to this moment – all those thousands of shows we’ve played along the way and everything we’ve endured to get here,” Anastasia says. “It’s all waiting for us, and now we just have to go out there and capture it.”
