Breaking Waves of Sadness — 62 Dead Balloons Unveil Video for “It’s January Again” (feat. Geoff Metts)

Pain here moves with the certainty of a calendar page turned against one’s will. It’s January Again, the haunting new single and video from 62 Dead Balloons, settles into its duration like a room entered too many times to pretend surprise, each measure carrying the knowledge of what repetition does to the spirit. The vocal arrives restrained, low, steady, as if conserving strength for the long work of telling the truth. Nothing is overstated. Each phrase sounds weighed before release, shaped by the understanding that confession alone does not absolve anything.

The music holds its posture carefully. Electronic tones stretch and withdraw, industrial edges kept purposeful rather than theatrical. There is patience in the pacing, an acceptance that reckoning cannot be rushed. Geoff Metts’ guitar contribution deepens this sense of shared damage as recognition; another presence standing inside the same weather. Together, the voices feel like parallel testimonies, aware of each other, bound by similar bruises.

A portrait of regret surfaces that has learned its own routines. Love appears as something mishandled through fear, addiction, and exhaustion. The song understands how weakness can masquerade as relief, how self-destruction often arrives quietly, framed as necessity. Identity erodes in small concessions, repeated until they form habit. There is no plea for absolution, only an accounting. Time passes, wounds scar rather than close, and the cycle resumes with brutal familiarity. Yet the act of naming this recurrence carries its own resolve. The song stands upright within its cold season, refusing escape, documenting the cost of survival with clear eyes. It becomes a marker rather than a cure—proof that awareness, however painful, remains a form of staying alive.

That same resolve carries into the powerful self-directed video, which places AFFF against a seaside tempest, the external chaos mirroring the weather inside. The imagery feels exposed and unguarded, matching the song’s emotional gravity. It is a vulnerable, raw statement, marked by the courage required to confront such darkness during the most unforgiving stretch of the year.

Watch below:

The name 62 Dead Balloons alone tells you how close to the edge this music lives. AFFF recalls the moment with unsettling clarity: “One day I worked out that I had smoked 62 cigarettes in one day and thought to myself, ‘my lungs must be like dead balloons.’”

For calQtek, it stretched further, into thoughts of mortality, self-sabotage, and the slow leak that comes from running from pain too long. Both artists arrive carrying wreckage. AFFF doesn’t soften it: “I was at rock bottom, alone and extremely traumatised.” Some songs written during that stretch were abandoned, too exposed to revisit. calQtek, wrestling addiction and burnout, channels his own collapse into the sessions. There’s no posturing here, no safety glass. The record grows out of necessity, not ambition.

Live performances are being carefully considered: AFFF is on the autism spectrum and the pressures of performing onstage can prove a challenge. “I really want to work on this in the future and start performing again,” he says. “I’m hoping I can start doing shows next year.”

At its core, 62 Dead Balloons runs on a shared belief that music still serves a purpose beyond release schedules and market logic. AFFF states it without flourish: “Without music life is meaningless.” He goes further, offering a credo that doubles as a warning: “Don’t be silent. Express yourself. Don’t be scared to show who you really are… ask for help when you need it. Life is too short, and we only have one shot at this. Don’t waste it. Live.”

calQtek frames the work as an ongoing discipline, a commitment to “self-reflect relentlessly and make every mistake beautiful.” Together, they describe the project as “genre fluid,” united less by form than by feeling.

Listen to It’s January Again below and order the single here.