Personal Punk review Hauntu’s ‘The Unknown Reigns’
- david1170
- 6 hours ago
- 2 min read
Coming hot off the heels of their 2024 EP “I” on Sell the Heart Records which garnered a nomination for Best Indie/Alternative in the San Diego Music Awards, Hauntu returns with ten beautifully furious songs about living through late stage capitalism and finding themselves at the precipice of a fascist state.
With this San Diego, CA band providing ten tracks of self-styled ‘ghost-punk’, you may be expecting 80s goth inflections, all spindly guitar and Siouxsie vocals. It ain’t that. Opener Crooked Teeth‘s anxiety is punchy, the haunting The Knife has bite even as its insistence is danceable, Rebecca’s vocals soaring as it builds. The catchy chorus of Sadist Sun sees mournful male backing vocals as fitting accompaniment to Rebecca’s cool, spooky charm, the latter more Lovich than Sioux. The dogged riffing and rhythm section of By Designbacks those spell-binding vocals perfectly, but The Arrival‘s building anxiety comes with a SYSTEM OF A DOWN theatricality that is as welcome as it is unexpected. The histrionics return on the roaming End Of Days with its SOAD riffage, and the spaghetti westernisms of All’s Well (In Hell) sees the vocals straddle spooky and dramatic with aplomb. The atmospheric dirge of Bellwether is followed by the eerie, pop-melancholia of Panic, before the spirit of Serj returns on Dot Dot Dot, a wonderful slice of burgeoning melodrama.
Rebecca’s vocals are formidable, the band providing a backdrop that is at times stark, other-times locked-in ‘n riffing, a la QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE. Where The unknown Reigns truly soars though, is when drama is built in to their already heady brew, resulting in a refreshingly full-blooded listen. Excellent stuff.
Incidentally, the vinyl is a thing to behold; described as ‘coke bottle clear with red’, to my eyes it’s more ‘minty green clear with amorphous red blob’, which sounds even better, right? Sounds so rich, too. Pretty reasonable these days at 17 quid. Just sayin’.
‘The Unknown Reigns’ was released on 14th November 2025. Available on 12″ Coke Bottle Clear with Red (Colour-in-colour) via Sell The Heart Records (U.S.) and Engineer Records (U.K.). Vinyl limited to 200 units pressed. Also available on CD and Digital Download.
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