For Footballhead’s Weight of the Truth, a “post-grunge revival” is hard to claim. There have consistently been new bands popping up that play the style, while Nickelback and Three Days Grace have never stopped being discussed. Perhaps “post-grunge reassessment” is a better wording.
What in the 2000s was viewed as a gravel-throated cyst on the carcass of mainstream rock, by 2026 is “real music” with a tongue planted firmly in your cheek. The likes of Pierce the Veil and Cane Hill pushed their sound closer to it during the 2020s, and today, post-Jeris Johnson Generation Z solo artists Violent Vira, Leah Barrientos and Alexis Munroe rule TikTok. At some point this decade, Gen Z did what Gen Z did and made the term “post-grunge” fall out of favour, replaced by the more humorous “butt rock”.
Footballhead emerged from the fertile Chicago soft grunge scene alongside New Age Thief, Demo Division and Daybreaker. Though similarly named, post-grunge and soft grunge lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, where one side resembles nu metal and the other, emo. They began as a fairly unremarkable indie rock outfit, then transitioned into post-Turnover soft grunge on Overthinking Everywhere (2023). For 2024’s Before I Die, they built upon this soft grunge foundation to also incorporate post-grunge’s grooves, a fusion I’m sure we all hope nobody names “soft butt”.
In the lead-up to Weight of the Truth, singles “Used to Be” and “Diversion” furthered this push, making heavy use of a post-grunge riffing style with grooving power chords rooted on the sixth string, interspersed with fifth-string-rooted octave melodies.
It’s no secret that soft grunge (especially grungegaze) is oversaturated in 2026. However, while every group makes their sound dreamier, Footballhead seemed to be crafting their own path, subtracting the dominant hazy effects that allowed their grooves to truly groove. A similar take came on last week’s EP, Back to Dust, by Hollow Suns. While “Diversion”, “What You’re Whispering”, “Focus”, “You’re Not Making Sense”, “Comforting” and “Death to a Past Life” all have moments of callbacks to soft grunge, they’re mostly buried. Instead, most tracks lean more toward a fusion of post-grunge and emo-pop-punk.
Instrumentally, Weight of the Truth is quite an even split between Finch’s poppier moments and the heavier ones of Breaking Benjamin and Hoobastank. While post-grunge is mostly characterised by a gravelly yarl, vocalist Ryan Nolen’s pop-punk tenor gives a different dimension to the riffs, only really seen in Hoobastank. If we view it through the opposite lens, it often sounds like the post-pop-punk alternative metal that Story of the Year did on In the Wake of Determination (2005) and The Black Swan (2008).
An element less expected was the amount of nu metal that permeates its track listing. There were record scratches included in only one single, “Hesitate”, but on the record, they are on around half the tracks. “Comforting”, in particular, is a fascinating fusion, incorporating them into a wistful Turnover-esque sound.
From track five onward, Weight of the Truth’s template has been established, and it becomes apparent that many songs lack their own identity. While every chorus is huge, the melody is catchy, and the riffs hit hard, they blend into one. Most of their distinctions are whether they use a textured guitar tone or a mall-screamo backing vocal.
“Fall Away” is a major exception to this; it is the most stadium-ready song to come from any emo-adjacent band since the end of the 2000s. It swirls seamlessly from acoustic to overdriven parts as an emo-pop-punk take on Vertical Horizon. Its chorus is an earworm, despite the lyrical idea of “whisper[ing] nothings” in someone’s ear being a bit silly.
On Weight of the Truth, Footballhead outline a version of post-grunge and emo that breathes a breath of fresh air. Despite its repetitiveness, it defines an untapped sound without entirely abandoning its roots. In stripping away the haze, they craft a sound that feels both nostalgic and new. Weight of the Truth leaves a sense of a door just cracked open, waiting to be kicked down.