Legendary independent New York-based rock label Equal Vision Records and Be Well are excited to announce the release of “A Tap I Can’t Turn Off” and “Without A Compass”, two brand new, introspective offerings from the acclaimed Baltimore melodic hardcore quintet.
“‘A Tap I Can’t Turn Off’ is about the fear of disappointing the people in my life who have unconditionally loved and believed in me,” frontman Brian McTernan says. “It’s about feeling unworthy and ending up hurting the people I care about the most.” Of “Without A Compass,” he states: “I have spent huge parts of my life feeling broken without any sense of how to start putting things back together. ‘Without A Compass’ is an acknowledgment of how hard that’s been, and my hope that I will figure things out at some point.”
Additionally, Be Well will be making appearances across the U.S. and Germany during May and June, performing headline shows and supporting punk vets Hot Water Music and New York’s I Am The Avalanche on select dates.
Formed by veteran punk and hardcore musician/producer Brian McTernan (Thrice, Turnstile, Circa Survive) in 2019, Be Well began as a collective of some of McTernan’s closest friends and musical colleagues. The project marked McTernan’s first significant work in the role of frontman and songwriter after many years devoted to producing other bands, bringing him in touch again with his early days playing in hardcore bands like Battery and Ashes. Signing to Equal Vision Records, Be Well issued its acclaimed debut, The Weight and the Cost, in 2020.
Be Well’s latest record, the powerfully cohesive six-song record Hello Sun, picks up, musically, right where The Weight and the Cost left off. This devastating collection of songs serves as the lyrical continuation of McTernan’s personal struggles with issues like depression, anxiety and substance abuse, but captures the vocalist and songwriter at a very different place from the last record.
“‘In The Weight and the Cost’ I was caught in the center of a storm,” he recalls. “I really couldn’t see anything except the destruction, and I had no perspective on what was happening. I felt when I was writing this new stuff, I had some real clarity on not only how I was feeling for the first time in a really long time, but also how universal a lot of the things I was feeling are to other people. During the writing of the last record, I was not able to see that it was a step forward for me. It wasn’t a step into the abyss; it was a step out of the darkness.”
Stay tuned for more information on new music from Be Well in the coming months.
