Weakened Friends rebuild, rewire, and return with ‘Feels Like Hell’

The early afternoon sun was beating down at Back Cove Festival’s main stage, but Portland’s own Weakened Friends are used to playing through the burn. It’s a hometown set, technically, even if none of the members are from Maine originally. Still, after more than a decade in the city, they’ve earned their place here. “I think after ten years, you’re not a transplant anymore,” says vocalist/guitarist Sonia Sturino. “I don’t know who makes the rules, but this is home for me.”

With a new album on the horizon and a fall tour in motion, Weakened Friends are standing at a crossroads. Not the dramatic kind. There’s no teary farewells. It’s the quieter, more personal one: the moment when you start to build again.

“Our last album, ironically, is called Quitter. I had this sense of actually wanting to quit music. I was really frustrated.”

Weakened Friends, made up of Sturino, bassist Annie Hoffman, and drummer Adam Hand, aren’t household names yet, but they’ve carved out a reputation for delivering ragged, emotionally raw indie rock with a jagged edge. They’ve played everywhere from DIY basements to major festival stages, often the loudest band on the bill. Feels Like Hell, their upcoming third record, is both a continuation and a reset. It’s a more collaborative effort, a more spacious sound. And maybe most importantly, it’s a survival story.

From writer’s block to creative fire

After touring Quitter, writing felt impossible. “I had writer’s block for years,” she admits. “I’d start stuff, but nothing came together. It just wasn’t great.”

That started to change when Hoffman, who had long been producing and engineering the band’s records, joined the songwriting process for the first time. “Before, I’d just maybe make a suggestion about clarity,” Hoffman says. “This time, we really dug in together.”

It worked. After years of creative stasis, the band wrote the bulk of Feels Like Hell in just two months.

“It sparked something in me to have someone I trusted in the room,” Sturino says. “Annie kind of pushed me to go there and say things that maybe I wouldn’t have previously put into songs. I think that made the songs that much better. It brought them to the next level.”

The shift wasn’t just emotional, it was sonic too. Hoffman approached the production with a different mindset this time. “I definitely wanted to push our comfort zone. I wanted more space on stuff. We have a habit of filling up every sonic inch with just like, loud, loud, loud. But I wanted to explore leaving space.”

Between fury and focus

If their earlier work bristled with manic urgency, Feels Like Hell opens up the door to something deeper: still sharp, still forceful, but more controlled. It’s a record that explores the aftermath of collapse, rather than the collapse itself.

“It’s funny because the title sounds dark,” says Sturino, “but it’s really about what you do after things fall apart. You can either sit in the mud or be your own savior.”

The record’s lead single, “NPC,” drops soon. It’s a cynical, slightly surreal take on existence told as a self-aware non-playable character. Elsewhere, tracks like “Tough Luck” lean into the band’s signature middle-finger energy, filtered through a lens of resilience rather than rage.

“There’s a lot of yelling at the void on this one,” Hoffman says, grinning. “But it’s a little more… purposeful?”

Home, then the road

Despite living in Portland for over a decade, Weakened Friends rarely get to play this close to home, let alone at a new festival like Back Cove. “It’s an honor,” Sturino says. “For a city this small, Portland has such a vibrant scene. State Theatre, Thompson’s Point, Geno’s… it hasn’t lost the smaller venues yet. There’s a lot of creative people here keeping it weird.”

But with Feels Like Hell dropping October 10, they won’t be around for long. A national tour kicks off soon, with stops in Boston, Chicago, and a slot at Riot Fest alongside Blink-182, Green Day, and Weird Al. “It’s gonna be a wild one,” Hoffman says. “We haven’t been out in a while, and we’re ready.”

For a band that nearly fell apart, or at least thought about it, Weakened Friends sound sharper, more focused, and more alive than ever. They’ve traded chaos for control, noise for nuance, and burnout for breakthrough.

“You really just kind of like, have two choices,” Sturino says. “You can either sit there and linger in it, or you can be your own savior.”

This article was written for The Concert Chronicles. You can view the original article here.