DRAIN RETURN WITH THIRD ALBUM

Copyright: Clemente Ruiz

Santa Cruz hardcore institution DRAIN have returned with their explosive new album …IS YOUR FRIEND, out now via Epitaph Records. The band’s third full-length - and second for Epitaph - sets out with a clear mission: to bottle their ferocious live energy in the studio and craft songs built to make future shows even more chaotic.

Unlike their earlier releases, written before a relentless touring schedule, …IS YOUR FRIEND is shaped by hundreds of nights spent onstage, observing exactly which riffs, breakdowns, and shouts send crowds into overdrive. The result is a record engineered for maximum chaos and connection, packing 10 tracks of heaviest mosh parts, catchiest hooks, fiercest thrash riffs, and the most scream-along lyrics DRAIN have ever written.

Produced by Jon Markson (The Story So Far, Drug Church, One Step Closer), the album was tracked completely live, no metronome, no programming, just raw, real-time energy. It sounds exactly how DRAIN were always meant to: crisp, serrated, and fully alive.

That spirit carries into the lyrics as well. Rather than writing everything down line by line, frontman Sammy Ciaramitaro freestyled much of the record, channeling the whirlwind of his life since California Cursed: getting married, turning DRAIN into a full-time touring band, and living out once-impossible dreams, all while grappling with distance, disconnection, and the growing pains of success.

…IS YOUR FRIEND is both a celebration and a reckoning, an album that embraces the highs, confronts the lows, and proves that DRAIN’s greatest strength is their unbreakable connection to the chaos.