Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

TRUTHSEEKER, the progressive solo project by Brendan James Hayter, released its new single “Where You Belong” on December 5, 2025. This is the first release from Truthseeker in 12 years, the follow-up to 2013’s “Blue Oblivion”. The single was self-recorded and mixed in October/November 2025 at a rehearsal space in Portland, Maine. This new release is a standalone track released in anticipation of the forthcoming album “The Reflection Fields”.

“Where You Belong” employs minimalistic recording methods and a tape-saturated sound, a motif that has continued to be an inseparable part of the overarching musical statement of Truthseeker. The song also marks the beginning of a more overtly progressive approach than previous works, while honoring the signature Truthseeker sound of nostalgic and heart-swelling melodies cutting through a bass-driven wall of distortion and echo, the sound first heard on the 2011 EP “Weightless at Dawn”.

Says Brendan, “The significance of the title is multi-faceted. On a universal level, this song pays tribute to the lifelong search for a sense of destiny and harmony that one thinks they can find in some special place on Earth. Some people never feel the sense of Home in their heart and they research and wonder forever about place after place, waiting for a sign from within that points to a certain town, state, or country as the place where the heart will find peace and life will find meaning. It’s a restless and somewhat tormenting obsession, and at the same time, the unending wonder of it all, the essence of Wanderlust, can be strangely beautiful.”

“On a personal level, this song is a tribute to the earliest days of my marriage. The riffs and melodies that comprise “Where You Belong” came from 2 long looper-pedal improvisations done on the second night after I relocated to my then girlfriend, now wife’s homeland…Very far away from my own, in another country, and very different. As a long distance / international couple there was a much more urgent and directly shared search for a sense of belonging and destiny in either one person’s world or the other’s. Those ambient guitar improvisations that I managed to capture, really resonate the thoughts and feelings of moving far away and finding a sense of belonging through someone, not somewhere. We’ve moved back and forth together, and to this day we still wonder where it is we should live out our days. On a deeper level though, somewhere in the early days, that burning search peacefully reduced itself to embers, when the sky itself became home. My lady’s company was home. Our cat sitting in my lap was home…”

“I made it a critical goal to finish this recording in time for our 10th anniversary to celebrate this entire journey, and to honor our very recently departed cat who was truly the center of our home no matter which house or apartment we were living in. When she got sick and I was tending to her or bringing her to the vet yet again, for some reason the melodies of “Where You Belong” started circling in my head through the whole experience. For both the warming and painful aspects of recent months, this song needed to be the one I finished first and restart Truthseeker with.”

“It’s been many years, but I never stopped working on new Truthseeker music and defining what exactly the band is or isn’t supposed to be. I continued to improve my drumming to be able to adequately support the new songs I was writing, plus I got a good grasp on tone and recording the types of sounds I wanted to hear, on drums and otherwise. I have my own minimal equipment now but that minimalism is a true passion of mine. I don’t believe in modern music production at all. I used 4 mics on the drums, and the mix of the song is just setting the volume of the tracks and adding reverb, no post-processing and not even a computer involved in the entire process. I intend to keep it this way for all future releases!”

Written, performed, and recorded by Brendan James Hayter, November 2025
Mastered by Aaron Charles at The Cathedral of Psychic Death, November 2025

Brendan is in the process of mixing “The Reflection Fields” and will release more singles from the album in the future. He also has multiple other albums in the works. Brendan hopes to assemble a live band and bring Truthseeker to the stage.

Purchase “Where You Belong”: https://truthseeker1.bandcamp.com/track/where-you-belong

Streaming on Spotify, iTunes and all other major platforms.

Also released under the banner of the Maine-based metal collective Hidden Dawn:
–https://thehiddendawn.bandcamp.com/music
–https://www.facebook.com/share/1ABXppCjKF/?mibextid=wwXIfr
–https://www.instagram.com/hidden.dawn.collective/