Santa Cruz hardcore institution DRAIN dropped “Who’s Having Fun?” off their forthcoming new album …IS YOUR FRIEND, arriving November 7th via Epitaph. “Who’s Having Fun?” is the only track on the album where vocalist Sammy Ciaramitaro sings, backed by plenty of shredding, eventually climaxing into Ciaramitaro’s trademark growls.
“‘Who’s Having Fun?’ is summertime music written to be played really loud in the car with your friends and the windows down on a beautiful sunny day,” Ciaramitaro explains. “It’s what happens when you just write music that makes you feel happy and don’t really care about fitting into a box or meeting someone else’s genre criteria. DRAIN is gonna do whatever the hell we want. This was the first song that we wrote for this album – it started out as a pretty barebones punk rock song, but we kept adding little moments and flare and all the sudden we turned it into a badass song that truly encapsulates everything that DRAIN is. This song can be about whatever you want it to be – but I think when looking for the truth in life, a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself: Who’s Having Fun? Hopefully it’s you.”
For the accompanying Ryan Baxley (Green Day, FIDLAR) directed video, the band, who are known lovers of the great outdoors, set up shop in the woods, in front of an incredibly beautiful ocean view with rolling clouds, and on a vespa. The track follows “Stealing Happiness From Tomorrow” and “Nights Like These,” the video for which envisions the band still going at it in the year 2055 (using the band’s dads and uncles as older DRAIN).
All Streaming to “Who’s Having Fun?”
With their third full-length album and second for Epitaph Records, …IS YOUR FRIEND, DRAIN had two primary goals in mind: to capture their quintessential live essence on recording, and to write new songs that’ll make their next shows even crazier. Their previous albums were written before DRAIN were on the road all year, and they spent the last few hundred nights onstage making note of which songs their fans respond best to. …IS YOUR FRIEND is designed to maximise their audience’s shit-losing abilities. Its 10-song track list includes the heaviest mosh parts, the catchiest choruses, the tastiest thrash riffs, and the most scream-able lyrics DRAIN have ever written. Producer Jon Markson (The Story So Far, Drug Church, One Step Closer) tracked the whole album live — 100% real-time drums, no metronome, no programmed bullshit. It sounds the way DRAIN were always meant to: crisp, serrated, animated.
