More about: The haunted youth

The Haunted Youth may be the band of 29-year-old Joachim Liebens, but within just minutes of chatting to the Belgian-born music writer, producer and singer, it became clear he wanted his self-made project to constitute something far more meaningful: a family for anyone who feels like they’re alone.

Ever since he began making demos in his bedroom during his time at music college, it became a form of cathartic release to channel his deepest thoughts into his nostalgically-sounding indie-psych sound. Now, The Haunted Youth have released their debut album, Dawn Of The Freak, to the world. A product of the last two years, the album symbolises everything Joachim represents. The record is an autobiographical portrayal of the highs and lows of life, it’s a documentation of feeling displaced in the world, but most importantly, it’s a symbol for finding somewhere that feels like home. 

As the dawn of the new album quickly approaches, I caught up with Joachim to ask him a few questions about everything from the last few years that has helped him channel his emotions into the new record, as well as all things The Haunted Youth so far. 

GW: Hey Joachim! I wanted to briefly go back to 2020 where this whole project began to find out a bit about what your drive was for making music at this time of your life? 

THY: For me, music has always been the main aspect of my life. I’ve always been touched by music, I’ve always been interested in it, but I guess it took so long because I didn’t really have the environment where I could get into that role. Growing up I was drawing and painting a lot so there was a lot of visual input, but I realised I was always portraying a song or using music as a guiding force. Especially when I was in high school, it became a kind of therapy for me because I was that lonely kid at the playground, didn’t really know how to make friends and kept to myself basically. You could see everyone around you connecting, having girlfriends and going out, but I never got to do that until I was nineteen because my parents kept me inside because I was a little rascal! 

"...that’s why I called it The Haunted Youth so it exists as a group… a generation of freaks trying to connect and come together.” 

When I was twenty or twenty-one I was studying painting in the arts school in Brussels, but month after month I was becoming more depressed because I wasn’t satisfied with the creation side. I decided to really go for music, learn how to play an instrument, sing, discover a lot of music that I wasn’t into before and really accept that side of me, even though I was twenty-one and starting the journey kind of late, but I really wanted it! Slowly over the years I started to find my own sound and what I liked and what I didn’t like so that when it came to forming The Haunted Youth, I wanted it to reflect the relationship I had with music in my own project. Even though I put a lot of myself into it, I always try to connect the story of the song with someone else so that they’re not alone and that’s why I called it The Haunted Youth so it exists as a group… a generation of freaks trying to connect and come together.

You seem to find such a balance between combining your vulnerable lyrics, calming synthesised vocals and the instrumentals into this really bittersweet sounding fusion. Was this something you have always tried to do with your songs? 

I used to be a lot more depressing in my songs. The best songs by other artists that were the most magical to me were bittersweet and I’ve always been attracted to artists like that such as Joy Division, who are one of my favourite bands of all time because they did that wonderfully. There is always this huge darkness but also something that makes you feel understood and at a place like home so I really like when music has two sides to it.

It’s refreshing to see just how deeply personal your songs are to you! I was reading up on a few comments on your songs online and people really relate to them. How does that feel when you know fans are so well connected to the music you make? 

When I won this radio contest in Belgium, that kind of kickstarted this whole journey for me like there was a period where I felt really disconnected from the whole thing because there were all these mums and dads listening to the radio showing up to my shows and was like these are not the people I’m addressing… But then I got over that and slowly I started looking online and saw a lyric video in Spanish for my song ‘Teen Rebel’, and the picture used in the thumbnail was a picture I saved on Pinterest that I printed out and put on my wall because it was inspiring to me. I saw that same shit staring back at me because someone on the other side of the world was feeling your shit and that really feels like family to me in a much more profound way than I have experienced whilst I was growing up.

The release of your exciting debut album Dawn Of The Freak is now upon us! How would you summarise the album, but also how did you find the actual process of making and finishing a debut album? 

It was a real deepdive into my own past in order to deal with topics I have found within. At the same time I was watching a lot of horror movies, especially the classics like the 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the OG, grainy, dusty shit you know, and what I started to notice was I kept empathising with the bad character or the evil guy because I always saw something that showed they were dealing with something or had been through something dark. For instance, Leatherface is an example of a traumatised person that has been raised by their environment in such a way that they can’t change anything about themselves. Then you see them, whether socially acceptable or not, trying to deal with it like he was trying to make a suit out of the skin of his victims and it’s almost beautiful or disarming in a way. That’s why I often use bizarre imagery like the mask you see in the video clips - that is my archetype of the freak! The mask almost has no face, but it’s still a face and it still expresses how I feel The Haunted Youth feels about themselves when they look in the mirror and take the mask off. The video clip of ‘Coming Home’ has no mask in it and that’s on purpose because the story is about being home and showing myself to my friends and my girlfriend, so I thought should the mask be here? I decided it shouldn’t because I’m where I need to be so there is no mask, which is kind of the whole idea.

You touched on it there, but how did the eerie music video for your latest single ‘I Feel Like Shit And I Wanna Die’, directed by you and Robin Todde, come about? 

It’s a blend of a lot of different things all at the same time! The basic idea was there are two sides to the video: the don’t take yourself too seriously side and the bit where he actually feels suicidal and he just needs a song to reflect what he’s actually feeling. For me, a nice way of portraying it was this whole sad birthday concept where someone is really looking forward to all their friends coming over but nobody turns up in the end so he’s just sitting there with a cake. But also when the ghosts come and start to annoy him a little, it’s like everybody has those moments when it’s your birthday but you just don’t feel like your socially there and you’re the only one who is not ready for the party but everyone wants you to be happy and you’re just like oh my god… I wanna die! 

I think that description perfectly encapsulates The Haunted Youth! There are often such dark lyrics on the surface of your songs, yet underneath there’s also a side of celebration of youth and nostalgia, especially on your debut hit ‘Teen Rebel’. I’m interested to know what it was about that song that made you want to release it first? 

There just seemed to be a lot of excitement about that one! Obviously I like all my songs - more or less when I’m not sick of them because I’ve worked on them too long - but ‘Teen Rebel’ felt the most direct, and simple, but still had a lot of meaning. When we sent it to the radio for the contest, I thought fuck no… we’re never gonna win this and I don’t know what I’m doing! I like the song but I thought it’s nothing close to the mixing, producing or even lyrics of the other radio songs so I wasn’t very sure but then it took off! The song started as if it were a picture of my old-self as something I had been through with my first group of friends that I really belonged to. It was also at a time where there were extreme highs and extreme lows and we were trying to find ourselves in our early twenties, very disconnected from society and our homes. Everybody came together to that group to celebrate freedom and try to get away from the homes they were coming from. So it also has that sad vibe to it, but you could choose whether the song makes you sad or happy. I think just everyone being excited about that one helped me pick that song as my first because you’ve gotta start somewhere right!

The final song on the album, ‘Fist In My Pocket’, has a much slower vibe to the rest of the album as more of an acoustic sound that felt like a fitting response to the song before it, ‘Coming Home’. How did you decide upon the order of the album’s tracklist? 

In my personal chronology that I made around a year before making the final order of the album, I put it in front of ‘Coming Home’ because I wanted to grab everyone by the throat and then release it kinda thing. Also because of the production, it feels almost like a secret song on the record and in a way it glues it all together despite originally thinking ‘Coming Home’ did that. ‘Fist In My Pocket’ was actually the first song of the project and it was exactly what I wanted The Haunted Youth to be about and what I wanted to feel when I made music. I used to talk down on my own demos a lot when I wasn’t satisfied, I was always told like no it’s really good, you should release it! But for me, there was always something not feeling quite right and I wanted to make it perfect despite what people said, then I wrote the first bars to ‘Fist In My Pocket’ and I was like fuck… I’m crying writing my own song because it’s so cathartic for me. That song has the most lyrics of any song on the album and that one felt like opening up and letting it all flow out you know.

The version of that song that is on the album is actually the only recording I did for it because so much happened in that moment of recording. You can hear my girlfriend and dog entering the room, and I could just hear the footsteps of my dog and thought that’s cute, I’m just gonna keep playing. 

"It has never just been about music for me, there’s always been this multidisciplinary experience about how something makes you feel and discover about yourself..."

It’s refreshing to hear how dedicated you are to showing it how it is, but there’s also a lot of symbolism on the record. How important is imagery for you when constructing a song? 

Before a song or lyric, there is always an image, movie scene or even a GIF running through my mind, and that’s what I use to get into the story. That’s also why I like the album cover so much because in the background there is this single car driving away in the exact environment I was picturing. Three weeks before we had to send the album cover away for the vinyls and stuff, we had a completely different cover for like two years but then I saw a picture at my mum’s place where I thought, fuck, this has to be the cover! It has never just solely been about music for me, there’s always been this multidisciplinary experience about how something makes you feel and discover about yourself. I love when music can show you something you were looking for but you can’t really put into words because you’re still processing something and growing as a person. It just gets you… better than you get yourself sometimes, and that’s what I really love! I don’t think I would ever write a song about stuff like love in a Beatles-style way, like I still love those kinds of songs, I need to have some pain in the song and for it to be a necessity for me otherwise I’m probably not gonna finish it.

The Haunted Youth’s Dawn Of The Freak is out now.

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More about: The haunted youth