Kerrang! Magazine counts New Years Day among an elite handful of bands inspiring the next generation. Led by “the vibrant force of nature that is frontwoman Ash Costello,” New Years Day unleash anthems of discontent and empowerment, delivered with gothic flair and theatrical bombast.
It’s a sound that crashed into the Mainstream Rock Top 40 for the first time in 2019 with a top 15 rock radio charting single "Shut Up" followed up by the cathartic “Hurts Like Hell,” which finished 2022 as one of SiriusXM Octane’s Top 25 songs of the year. Each successive victory is a celebration of hard-fought creative freedom, unstoppable determination, and dedicated fans. Throngs of diehards and newcomers alike sing and sweat along with New Years Day, at festivals, in clubs, or on tours with Halestorm, Falling In Reverse, Motionless In White, Ice Nine Kills and In This Moment.
Saints and sinners, victims and victors. In sound and vision, New Years Day walk the line between darkness and light. The band’s duality comes to fruition on their new album Half Black Heart, an unrepentant and unashamed album championing discovery, from the darkest secrets to one’s inner strength. It’s a message destined to connect with those who struggle with self-acceptance and who fight to belong.
“What’s pumping blood into our veins and keeping this band alive is our absolutely
diehard fanbase,” Costello declares. “They are the heart of the band. And so, the Half Black Heart is dedicated to them.”
Half Black Heart is full of themes of struggle, conquering one’s own fear, and
confronting adversaries.
The unapologetically heavy “Vampyre” is a searing rebuke of malignant narcissism, a personality disorder responsible for incalculable harm on friends and romantic partners who suffer in silence. “‘Vampyre’ is about a certain type of person who sucks the life out of you emotionally. It’s a song for anyone who has dealt with this type of person. It insists, ‘You’re not going to drain the life from me.’ ”
“Secrets” unravels the double and triple lives led by the deceitful, whose power derives from constant lies. “Bulletproof” is about those moments when an abusive partner’s mask begins to slip.
“Enemy” is about a specific type of realization. “You’re sleeping with the enemy. You’re literally in bed with that person,” Ash explains. “You realize, ‘Not only do I need to get out of this bed, I need to burn it.”
Unrestrained fury collides with arena-ready glamor, confrontational DIY passion, and melodic hooks. Where earlier material saw Costello discovering her strengths as a songwriter and band leader, Half Black Heart puts that strength into undeniable action.
Ash and guitarist Nikki Misery (by her side since 2011) are rejoined by the trio of
guitarist Jeremy Valentyne, bassist Brandon Wolfe, and drummer Trixx, all of
whom first joined New Years Day in 2015 and recently returned.
“I feel like I’m in a dream” Ash says. “When people ask me what it feels like to have this lineup back and our team around us, I answer that my little black heart is so full. It’s bursting at the seams with joy.”
“Hurts Like Hell,” “Vampyre,” “Bulletproof,” “Fearless,” the title track, and the rest of Half Black Heart join an already impressive catalog of songs, like “Come for Me,” “Skeletons,” “Kill or Be Killed,” and “Shut Up.” Fans have streamed “Angel Eyes” more than 14 million times on Spotify alone.
Victim to Villain (2013), Malevolence (2015), and Unbreakable (2019) deeply resonate with listeners who cherish them as timeless keepsakes, marking different times in their own personal evolution. It’s because Costello, who skillfully conjures horror and comic book aesthetics as allegory, is one of them.
Costello was a long way from her triumphant, breathtaking performance at WWE
WrestleMania 37, where she sang Rhea Ripley’s theme song when she first dreamt up her band in Anaheim, California. She vividly remembers growing up, worshipping bands like My Chemical Romance and AFI, dreaming of a life of deeper connection and bigger meaning in worlds beyond her window.
The adoring “half-heads” who champion Ash online understand that their Scream
Queen, who cites Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses as her favorite movie and DC antihero Harley Quinn as her muse, is just like them. She’s a bundle of insecurity and mental health struggles, with an unwavering commitment to her art, equal parts victorious-onstage-siren and shy, reserved homebody. New Years Day captures that complexity, with each new song more confessional and relatable than the last.
Half Black Heart, Produced by Mitchell Marlow (Papa Roach, Starset, In This Moment) and Scott Stevens (Shinedown, Halestorm, Dorothy, Nothing More, Lilith Czar), Unbreakable opened at No. 3 on the Hard Music Albums chart on the heels of the Top 50 debut of Malevolence on Billboard’s Top Albums chart. Distorted Sound hailed the “excellent” Unbreakable as “without question” the band’s strongest work. Loudwire included it on their list of 2019’s Best Rock Albums, alongside the likes of Bring Me The Horizon and blink-182.
The band spent much of 2022 and 2023 working with Marlow and Stevens on their career-defining fifth album. Half Black Heart resurrects the chemistry of the New Years Day lineup that first crystalized on Malevolence, with the experience and confidence earned during Unbreakable.
“So much of Unbreakable was about having to be strong through hard times,” Ash says. “It was important to stare my fear in its face. I discovered my strength during that process. There are still dark themes on Half Black Heart, but now it’s about knowing I'll be okay because I believe in my newly discovered strength. I’ve got this.”
In cinematic music videos, transcendent live performances, and daily interaction (virtual or in-person) with like-minded misfits, this band makes pleasure from pain. Even when it hurts like hell.
The swashbuckling gothic pirates in New Years Day summon hooky hard rock with wit, charm, and a vengeance. Like the music that shaped Ash Costello – including the larger-than-life and seemingly superhuman heights of Garbage and Michael Jackson, the sorrowful heartbreak of The Smiths, to the soaring and empowering songs she sings today - New Years Day turns adversity into strength.
Kerrang! Magazine counts New Years Day among an elite handful of bands inspiring the next generation. Led by “the vibrant force of nature that is frontwoman Ash Costello,” New Years Day unleash anthems of discontent and empowerment, delivered with gothic flair and theatrical bombast.
It’s a sound that crashed into the Mainstream Rock Top 40 for the first time in 2019 with a top 15 rock radio charting single "Shut Up" followed up by the cathartic “Hurts Like Hell,” which finished 2022 as one of SiriusXM Octane’s Top 25 songs of the year. Each successive victory is a celebration of hard-fought creative freedom, unstoppable determination, and dedicated fans. Throngs of diehards and newcomers alike sing and sweat along with New Years Day, at festivals, in clubs, or on tours with Halestorm, Falling In Reverse, Motionless In White, Ice Nine Kills and In This Moment.
Saints and sinners, victims and victors. In sound and vision, New Years Day walk the line between darkness and light. The band’s duality comes to fruition on their new album Half Black Heart, an unrepentant and unashamed album championing discovery, from the darkest secrets to one’s inner strength. It’s a message destined to connect with those who struggle with self-acceptance and who fight to belong.
“What’s pumping blood into our veins and keeping this band alive is our absolutely
diehard fanbase,” Costello declares. “They are the heart of the band. And so, the Half Black Heart is dedicated to them.”
Half Black Heart is full of themes of struggle, conquering one’s own fear, and
confronting adversaries.
The unapologetically heavy “Vampyre” is a searing rebuke of malignant narcissism, a personality disorder responsible for incalculable harm on friends and romantic partners who suffer in silence. “‘Vampyre’ is about a certain type of person who sucks the life out of you emotionally. It’s a song for anyone who has dealt with this type of person. It insists, ‘You’re not going to drain the life from me.’ ”
“Secrets” unravels the double and triple lives led by the deceitful, whose power derives from constant lies. “Bulletproof” is about those moments when an abusive partner’s mask begins to slip.
“Enemy” is about a specific type of realization. “You’re sleeping with the enemy. You’re literally in bed with that person,” Ash explains. “You realize, ‘Not only do I need to get out of this bed, I need to burn it.”
Unrestrained fury collides with arena-ready glamor, confrontational DIY passion, and melodic hooks. Where earlier material saw Costello discovering her strengths as a songwriter and band leader, Half Black Heart puts that strength into undeniable action.
Ash and guitarist Nikki Misery (by her side since 2011) are rejoined by the trio of
guitarist Jeremy Valentyne, bassist Brandon Wolfe, and drummer Trixx, all of
whom first joined New Years Day in 2015 and recently returned.
“I feel like I’m in a dream” Ash says. “When people ask me what it feels like to have this lineup back and our team around us, I answer that my little black heart is so full. It’s bursting at the seams with joy.”
“Hurts Like Hell,” “Vampyre,” “Bulletproof,” “Fearless,” the title track, and the rest of Half Black Heart join an already impressive catalog of songs, like “Come for Me,” “Skeletons,” “Kill or Be Killed,” and “Shut Up.” Fans have streamed “Angel Eyes” more than 14 million times on Spotify alone.
Victim to Villain (2013), Malevolence (2015), and Unbreakable (2019) deeply resonate with listeners who cherish them as timeless keepsakes, marking different times in their own personal evolution. It’s because Costello, who skillfully conjures horror and comic book aesthetics as allegory, is one of them.
Costello was a long way from her triumphant, breathtaking performance at WWE
WrestleMania 37, where she sang Rhea Ripley’s theme song when she first dreamt up her band in Anaheim, California. She vividly remembers growing up, worshipping bands like My Chemical Romance and AFI, dreaming of a life of deeper connection and bigger meaning in worlds beyond her window.
The adoring “half-heads” who champion Ash online understand that their Scream
Queen, who cites Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses as her favorite movie and DC antihero Harley Quinn as her muse, is just like them. She’s a bundle of insecurity and mental health struggles, with an unwavering commitment to her art, equal parts victorious-onstage-siren and shy, reserved homebody. New Years Day captures that complexity, with each new song more confessional and relatable than the last.
Half Black Heart, Produced by Mitchell Marlow (Papa Roach, Starset, In This Moment) and Scott Stevens (Shinedown, Halestorm, Dorothy, Nothing More, Lilith Czar), Unbreakable opened at No. 3 on the Hard Music Albums chart on the heels of the Top 50 debut of Malevolence on Billboard’s Top Albums chart. Distorted Sound hailed the “excellent” Unbreakable as “without question” the band’s strongest work. Loudwire included it on their list of 2019’s Best Rock Albums, alongside the likes of Bring Me The Horizon and blink-182.
The band spent much of 2022 and 2023 working with Marlow and Stevens on their career-defining fifth album. Half Black Heart resurrects the chemistry of the New Years Day lineup that first crystalized on Malevolence, with the experience and confidence earned during Unbreakable.
“So much of Unbreakable was about having to be strong through hard times,” Ash says. “It was important to stare my fear in its face. I discovered my strength during that process. There are still dark themes on Half Black Heart, but now it’s about knowing I'll be okay because I believe in my newly discovered strength. I’ve got this.”
In cinematic music videos, transcendent live performances, and daily interaction (virtual or in-person) with like-minded misfits, this band makes pleasure from pain. Even when it hurts like hell.
The swashbuckling gothic pirates in New Years Day summon hooky hard rock with wit, charm, and a vengeance. Like the music that shaped Ash Costello – including the larger-than-life and seemingly superhuman heights of Garbage and Michael Jackson, the sorrowful heartbreak of The Smiths, to the soaring and empowering songs she sings today - New Years Day turns adversity into strength.
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