Hawthorne Heights merits respect

This week, Dayton, Ohio’s Hawthorne Heights will release a new album. Chances are the album, “Fragile Future,” will be mediocre pop/rock at best that won’t raise much fuss except for the Hot Topic set, and even those fans might be long gone. The band has fallen hard and fast since late 2005 and early 2006, when they were at the forefront of the scene.

But considering everything the members of Hawthorne Heights have been through in the past year, the fact that they’re still a band says way more about them than any three-minute generic rock song ever could.

When Hawthorne Heights rose to stardom a few years back, the phenomenon surrounding them always seemed a bit weird. Sure, lots of lackluster bands make it big commercially, but the crowds at the 2005 Hawthorne Heights shows I attended were unimaginably large. More shocking – or maybe not – was how dreadful the band was live, yet every teenager in the crowd sang their heart out as if each track was their lifeline. Once their second album “If Only You Were Lonely” hit and debuted high on the charts, it seemed like the Hawthorne Heights machine was nowhere close to being slowed down.

But then came all the garbage with their label Victory Records, who they sued for breach of contract, copyright and trademark infringement, fraud and abuse.

And then screamer/guitarist Casey Calvert shockingly passed away on their tour bus of an accidental combination of medications on November 24, 2007.

For a band full of guys who never felt quite comfortable with the spotlight, Calvert was full of life any time any fans met him. It’s easy to give out paper-thin condolences when someone dies, but the outreach of support from fans on Web sites like Absolutepunk and MySpace was chock-full of personal stories about Calvert. To Write Love On Her Arms even created a shirt in his memory, which helped assist his family with funeral costs.

So obviously it’s unfathomable to imagine how the guys in the band felt during those dark days after Calvert passed away, but no one would have thought any less of them if they would have packed it in and went back to Dayton, never to be heard from again. To make matters worse, they were dealing with the lawsuit against their label, which sunk “If Only You Were Lonely” because of the case.

Now, basically three years after the band was at their most popular, Hawthorne Heights is releasing a new album without Calvert and on the same label they had all the problems with. It’s unclear how they patched things up.

Sadly, the fans that were behind them back in 2005 and during Calvert’s death probably won’t support them as much now, if only because Hawthorne Heights isn’t part of the “in” trend anymore. And although I’m not a fan of their music anymore, the guys of Hawthorne Heights deserve everyone’s respect and admiration, not as musicians, but as human beings.