The Saddest Landscape have been weaving chaotic hardcore and emo together for the last couple of decades. Now, the Boston band returns with Alone With Heaven, their first full-length since 2015. It’s a record shaped not by absence, but by time itself—written, reworked, and lived through across nearly a decade of personal upheaval, shifting priorities, and hard-earned perspective.
The album also carries added weight as one of the final projects touched by the late Steve Albini (Pixies, Nirvana), whose unmistakable production approach helped shape key moments of the record. Also recorded with Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Whirr), Alone With You features guest appearances from Julien Baker, Jeremy Bolm (Touché Amoré), and Evan Weiss (Into It. Over It.).
In the conversation below, guitarist Daniel Danger and guitarist/vocalist Andy Maddox reflect on the long road to this album, the emotional weight behind its songs, and where the band fits in a post-hardcore landscape that continues to evolve around them.
Alone With Heaven is your first full-length in over a decade. What felt different about writing a record at this stage in your life? With all the different responsibilities you have in your life now compared to then, was it ever difficult to get into the right creative headspace?
(Daniel Danger, guitar): What's interesting is that the album wasn't written and recorded in the wake of us being in a different stage of life, but rather, we worked on the record across nearly 10 years, all while those changes happened in real time around us. We started writing this record soon after releasing and touring for Darkness Forgives in 2016, spent the next year or so with regular writing sessions and studio time, but life constantly intervened.
Our original longtime drummer, Aaron, told us he was having a child at the end of the recording session for “Forever Undone” in 2017 and would essentially be wrapping up his time with the band after nearly 20 years. I found out my wife was pregnant the morning I was headed to the studio to meet the band and mix the first iteration of 'Alone With Heaven' in 2018. Then there was the COVID era, then I was dying in a hospital, then there was my wife's health emergency, and on and on. Our daughter is seven now, she is a whole person, and everything about my life functions completely differently. My priorities have shifted, but the record was something we could always go to when we needed that outlet.
I don't think Andy and I are ever short of ideas, or feelings, or the desire to create things; it's just not who we are. We're always bursting. The biggest change in all of this is that we had to be way more careful and selective about how we used our time, what we chose to do, and accept that we would simply move more slowly. The major upside to accepting this new pace is that it gave us a gift most punk/hardcore bands never give themselves: real time to listen, make changes, and make new choices. We were in no rush. We had written and recorded a whole record, sat with it for years, stirred, butted heads, kicked the tires, and then one day, simply started over. Everything we loved, we kept, and really thought about how we could make it even better.
This album is one of the final projects Steve Albini worked on. Is there a certain aspect, or moment, on the album that you feel captures the essence of his creative touch and approach? How much did you bond with him in the studio? Or was it all business?
(Daniel): The title track of Alone With Heaven was very much written with Albini in mind. We wanted something very open and very drum-forward, quiet loud, quiet loud, clanging noises and riding tension; something that would play to the infamous room sound approach of Electrical Audio. We thought a lot about which aspects of TSL's sound could truly explode with his approach, and ultimately we wrote something slower so we could really hear the air move.
Obviously, we were Nirvana dorks who wanted that on-fire In Utero sound, and Big Black and Shellac are huge influences on me, so getting to work with him was a lifelong dream of ours. I think the first half of our time there was all business, because we were there to do a thing, and we were nervous, but by the second half, we got to spend more time with him and pick his brain and really enjoy the experience. I got to play the Big Black guitar and use his original 1970s Harmonic-Perculator pedal that is the entire sound of Shellac, which to me is like getting to hold a Hendrix guitar or whatever.
In “From Home They Run,” you describe moments where anxiety and depression briefly lift, offering a kind of relief. Was writing this album therapeutic in that sense, or did revisiting those emotions make things heavier?
(Andy Maddox, guitar/vocals): I think it depends on the song or the day. It helps to sort of articulate what I am feeling when I start to write it out, but it can also make it hard, knowing the lifespan of a song and having to revisit those feelings each time it is performed. It is a tough balance. The real therapy starts when we play the songs live, and we can see a connection, especially when they sing along, and people, including us, realize they are not alone. That is one of the gifts of this: that feeling of oneness with a room of strangers. It fills us with hope.
The record features guests like Julien Baker, Jeremy Bolm, and Evan Weiss. When did you envision their respective collaborations coming into the picture? Did that happen during the writing phase?
(Daniel): The collaboration with Julien was written solely with her in mind, and there really was no backup plan. We had never met her but heard she was a fan of the band. In fact, the file name for the demo session we would eventually pitch to her was “JULIEN HOPEFUL." Presumably, I meant to write “hopefully."
We are massive fans of her albums. I bought Sprained Ankle the day it came out and have always felt she pulled from the same raw, open nerve/heart-on-your-sleeve approach that TSL thrives on. It was a later addition to the record, in its second iteration, when we knew we wanted a song that felt conversational and would build to an absolute fever-pitch wall of guitars, unlike anything we had done before. We reached out, and Julien was immediately on board and excited, understood the concept, and went above and beyond what we ever expected in terms of her involvement. Andy and I both teared up the first time we heard her vocals during the ending of the song; it was overwhelming.
Looking at the current post-hardcore landscape, where do you feel the band fits in 2026? Do you think the time away has been a good thing, in that newer people have discovered the band since then?
(Andy): I am honestly never sure exactly where we fit. It has sort of ebbed and flowed over the decades, but I for one am excited about now, it is great seeing shows by genre legends like Orchid, Frail, Portraits of Past, Saetia, etc. over the past couple of years, along with great new(er) bands like Drought, Giliian Carter, No Man, breathing new life into the scene.
Plus, bands like Touche Amore and La Dispute have put out some of their best records recently. So, yeah, lots of reasons to be stoked on the present. As for time away, I am not sure. It feels like we have been working nonstop on this record, so it didn’t really feel like a break. I'm happy to play some shows, though.
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Alone With Heaven will be out on April 24th via Iodine Recordings (pre-order).
The Saddest Landscape on social media: Instagram
Upcoming show:
June 14th in Philadelphia, PA at the First Unitarian Church
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