There’s a point in “Lost and Haunted” where everything locks in — not in a clean, overworked way, but in that slightly chaotic, “don’t touch it, it works” sense bands usually sand away. Brightshade built their first single around chasing exactly that feeling, and then refusing to polish it out of existence.
They’ve been calling the band a “new save file,” which sounds like a joke until you hear what they actually mean by it. Guitarist Tom Illsley traces it back to something simple: too much heavy music started to feel finished before it even got interesting.
“As a huge fan of technical and polished production, one hard truth is that a lot of heavy music started to feel a bit sterile in recent years,” he says. “For me, being a ‘new save file’ is representative of the ‘perfection fatigue’ we’ve been feeling in the scene.”
That idea didn’t come from nowhere. The band formed in 2025 and immediately started pushing different instincts against each other — nu-metal’s groove-first approach, soundtrack pacing, and a shared obsession with older PC games. Half-Life, Quake, Halo, Bioshock — not as aesthetic cosplay, but as reference points for tension, pacing, and how atmosphere actually sticks. “The energy in the room while we were experimenting with that… was absolutely electric,” Illsley says.
Vocalist Dan Hill came in from a different direction entirely — pop punk — and didn’t try to blend in. If anything, he made things messier on purpose. “It’s OK to make mistakes. It’s what makes us human,” he says. “I’ve always gravitated towards bands that go against the grain… being that thorn in everyone else’s side, trying to make things a little organic again.”
That friction is all over “Lost and Haunted.” The track didn’t arrive fully formed; it stacked up in stages. First, an instrumental version that felt like it might actually point somewhere — “the drive from the guitars, momentum from the drums and… that lead guitar line in the chorus,” as guitarist Tom Moore puts it. Then Hill joined, rewrote large parts of it around something he actually wanted to say, and the song kept shifting.
Three moments stuck with them: the first full take that felt right, the final recording sessions, and hearing the finished mix and master from Tom Cory. Each time, it felt less like refining a song and more like confirming they hadn’t broken it.
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Hill describes it less technically. “I will always look back at this song as the embodiment of the many late nights jumping up and down after hearing new edits of the song, and everything just fitting into place.”
What sits underneath all of that is a pretty blunt idea. “Lost and Haunted” is about people stuck in cycles they don’t even clock — wasting their time, then reinforcing the same patterns that got them there. The band built the visuals alongside the song from the start, not after. Conversations between Moore and Hill about the story bled into imagery, metaphors, and eventually the full visual identity.
Hill and bassist Ben both come from visual art backgrounds, so nothing got outsourced early on. “I’m always thinking about how the music video will look when writing lyrics,” Hill says. “How we can further push our perspective or message outside of just the song itself.” That’s meant half-formed ideas turning into full concepts mid-conversation — “shaking Ben like a mad man” or pacing around kitchens before the song’s even finished.
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The cinematic side of Brightshade doesn’t come from trying to sound big for the sake of it. It’s closer to how film scores handle tension and release. Hill talks about soundtracks more than bands half the time — Christopher Nolan films, especially. “Listen to 1:20 onwards of ‘Trucks In Place’ from the Tenet soundtrack and tell me you don’t want to do a backflip off a table,” he says. “If we can make people backflip to our songs, without a conductor, we’ve done our job. I am the conductor, perhaps.”
They’re not operating in a vacuum either. Most of the band is based in Bristol, where the alternative and metalcore scenes are currently stacked — Split Chain pushing out internationally, and newer names like Mallavora, Masca, IOTA, and echochamber building their own momentum locally. There’s a push-and-pull there: enough activity to keep them sharp, but also enough overlap to make them double-check they’re not drifting into someone else’s lane.
Outside that, they’re paying attention to bands like House Of Protection, Vianova, and Moodring — groups leaning into personality, samples, and less controlled production. Beyond music, it’s a mix of sci-fi, horror, and whatever sticks emotionally: Dune Part 2, Project Hail Mary, Hamnet, Resident Evil Requiem, even The Muppets as a kind of reset from everything else.
“All I want,” Hill says, “is that same feeling of an ‘escape’ for people who listen to our music. Hopefully without puppets included.”
“Lost and Haunted” lands April 10 via Year Of The Rat Records.
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