One Step Closer have set Zero, their third album, for 19 February through Run For Cover Records, and released two songs from it on the same day.
"Blue Hour" and "Was It Ever Enough?" share one video, co-directed by the band with Derek Rathbun. Putting two songs out together at the announcement is a choice about what the record is: a band confident enough to show two different sides of it before anyone has asked a question about the first.
They formed in Wilkes-Barre in 2016 and have spent ten years in the melodic end of hardcore, where the songs keep the speed and the aggression but let a melody carry the chorus. This Place You Know in 2021 made their name, All You Embrace in 2024 took it further, and Run For Cover have put out both.
February is a long wait from here, which suggests the two songs are the start of a campaign rather than the whole of it.