Failure are not interested in nostalgia, and “The Rising Skyline” makes that clear immediately. The Los Angeles trio return with a new single featuring Hayley Williams, a collaboration that feels like both a crossover moment, and a natural alignment of shared sensibilities.
Lifted from their upcoming seventh album Location Lost, out today, April 24, the track leans into a quieter kind of intensity. Built around an acoustic foundation, “The Rising Skyline” strips things back to expose a more fragile side of the band’s songwriting. It’s a breakup song, but one that resists melodrama, instead settling into something more restrained and unresolved.
Williams’ presence is not ornamental. Her vocal sits inside the track rather than on top of it, pulling out a softness that Failure rarely foreground. Ken Andrews notes the band doesn’t often collaborate, but the longstanding connection between the two artists made this one feel inevitable. The result is easily one of the most delicate recordings in their catalog, a shift that signals how far they are willing to push their own boundaries.
That evolution carries across Location Lost as a whole. Rather than revisiting the weight of Fantastic Planet or leaning into the familiar textures of their post-reunion run, the band approaches this record as something more unsettled. According to Greg Edwards, there are moments on the album that have no real precedent within their discography, a statement that reads more like a warning.
Early singles have already mapped that territory. “The Air’s on Fire” introduced a suffocating, breathless atmosphere, while “A Way Down” nodded to early post-punk influences without feeling derivative. Together, they suggest a band still experimenting with form rather than refining a fixed identity.
The timing lines up with a heavy touring schedule. Failure are kicking off a run of North American dates with multiple sold-out shows, including an album release performance in Los Angeles. A full fall tour follows, stretching across major cities with support from All Under Heaven and Quannnic, alongside festival stops that keep them firmly in circulation.
Three decades in, Failure are still moving forward, not revisiting past ground but actively reshaping it. “The Rising Skyline” is not a reinvention, it is a recalibration. One that trades volume for tension, and certainty for something far more interesting.
Featured image credit: Lindsey Byrnes
