HalfCutLemon are back with a vengeance, and their new album This Ain’t Real, released September 25, 2025, via Aenaos Records, stretches this Copenhagen four-piece’s palette to its peak. Recorded at the legendary Sweet Silence Studio with Flemming Rasmussen, the same producer who shaped Metallica’s early sound, the nine-track record runs the gamut from jagged chainsaw punk to lush baroque pop, while still keeping the band’s raw urgency intact. With guest turns from post-punk icon Peter Peter and vocalist Persille Ingerslev, the album comes off quite feral and meticulously layered. It’s a daring step forward, even for them.
The opener, “Ointment,” wastes no time in deciding on the aesthetic. Churning, gnarled guitars collide with bustling drums to create a bruising wall of sound, strangely exhilarating. Over this storm, the vocals cut in sharp and questioning, “Was he not, was he not the right one?” It’s a deceptively simple line, but in delivery it captures the mess of doubt and second-guessing that comes when faith in another person—or even in yourself—collapses.
Midway through, “Up” takes things on its head spiraling off their hinges with splashing cymbals and guitars, as the singer lets loose in a frenzy, with his voice teetering on the edge of chaos. There’s something liberating in that abandon, like a refusal to let the world’s heaviness drag him fully under.
The closing track, “We Know Their Name,s” broods in its oddly infectious, The Doors-kinda way, it rides bounding drums and a desolate vocal delivery until it erupts into a tormented cry. Amid the buzz and clamor, despair bleeds into defiance.
So while This Ain’t Real might question reality, HalfCutLemon is keeping every note blisteringly true.
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Review by: Naomi Joan