The Pennsylvania band launch their third album with two singles, drawing on the music that shaped their earliest connections to the scene.
One Step Closer have announced Zero, their third album, with Knocked Loose’s Isaac Hale and Fiddlehead’s Pat Flynn joining them on the record.
Due on 19 February 2027 through Run For Cover, the ten-track album arrives with two songs already out: ‘Blue Hour’ and ‘Was It Ever Enough?’. The Wilkes-Barre melodic hardcore band directed the connected videos themselves, according to the label’s announcement.
Flynn contributes vocals to ‘About a Boy’, extending a connection that goes back to One Step Closer touring with Have Heart after their 2019 EP From Me To You. Hale contributes to ‘A Fleeting Face’, although his specific role has not been detailed.
Recorded by longtime collaborator Jon Markson, whose credits include Drug Church and The Story So Far, Zero follows 2024’s All You Embrace. Vocalist Ryan Savitski describes the new material as a reflection of a particularly difficult year.
“This may have been the hardest year for us, and that’s reflected in the songs”, he says in the official album notes.
That sense of uncertainty has sent the band back towards music they associate with discovery and connection. They call it “older brother music”: MySpace finds, burned CDs, music television and the Warped Tour era, when a song passed between friends could become something you carried for years.
For Savitski, those influences sit alongside the unease he describes feeling when watching the news or looking at social media. He wants listeners to find their own experiences in the songs, even when those differ from the circumstances that produced them.
The label describes the two singles as contrasting introductions to that approach. ‘Blue Hour’ gives Savitski’s melodic singing more room before building to its climax; ‘Was It Ever Enough?’ starts at a faster hardcore pace and opens into a sing-along ending. Their videos move from night into daylight.
Both songs are available now, with Zero open for pre-order through Run For Cover ahead of its February release.
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