All Killer. No Filler.

With Eddie Hennessy on their latest album release

Bèau Mondè

PHOTO CAPTURED BY GUS GONZALEZ

WRITTEN BY SIENA ROBB

I recently caught up with Eddie Hennessy, frontman of The Dead Bolts — a rock band born on the South Side of Chicago and sharpened by dive bars, late nights, and the kind of chaos that keeps art alive. Their sound sits somewhere between post-punk urgency and new-wave polish, drenched in emotion. It’s the kind of music that makes you wonder if someone got inside your head and made an album about everything you’ve ever felt.

The band began with John and James, two childhood friends, once performing under the name The Bolts. Years later, after a drunken promise at a neighborhood bar, they found themselves back on stage, this time with Eddie, Matt, and Tyler in the mix. “In 2023 we added our guy Corb as our keys and synth player” Eddie says. The name The Dead Bolts stuck, a ghost of their first act, now perfectly suited to their rebirth.

Their influences are a collage of Kings of Leon, Talking Heads, Fontaines D.C., Shame, The Cure, and The Clash: punk spirit meeting post-millennial polish.

“Bèau Mondè”

“Bèau Mondè was definitely a big step forward for this band,” Eddie explains. “We were determined to write an album full of songs that could all stand alone as singles — all killer, no filler, as Matt likes to say. We wanted to capture the energy of our live shows, to cut through the noise of the modern music industry, and to make something that felt like our most professional work yet. Doug Malone at Jamdek Studios was essential in bringing that vision to life.”

The result is The Dead Bolts’ boldest leap yet: an album that sounds like a band finally realizing what they’re capable of. Their packed out  launch at Chicago’s Thalia Hall sealed it. “800 people. Chaos. Surreal,” Eddie laughs. Across its nine tracks, Bèau Mondè dives into themes of disillusionment, emotional ambiguity, self-reflection, ego death, and reinvention.

The title track, French for “beautiful world” is the album’s axis, a song that masquerades as grandeur while quietly unraveling beneath its own gloss. From the first beat, it’s electric: heart wrenchingly tight drums and guitar and bass shimmering like city lights, the sound is modern yet nostalgic.

“Promised Land”

The sixth track, Promised Land, is deceptively complex. It’s music video shows laid-back scenes of living a fun, chill and easy going lifestyle, but the lyrics hit deeper. The song captures the restless pull between contentment and the hunger for something more, convinced that somewhere else or someone else, will make everything click. Eddie’s vocals carry both defiance and exhaustion, caught in the loop of always wanting out. “I heard it’s greener on the other side, take me there.”

Then comes the gut-punch: “If there’s a hole in my soul, I’ll fill it with whatever.” It’s one of the album’s most engaging lines, not about healing, but coping. It’s not an effort to fix the emptiness, but to silence it. The “whatever” could be love, noise, work, bad habits; anything that numbs the ache for meaning. It’s the heart of Promised Land: wanting to feel whole but not knowing how.

“Breaks”

Breaks is comparable to that feeling of quiet after the chaos,  a song suspended in that numb space where grief turns into reflection, which is proven in lyrics like “Why don’t you make yourself useful…shift the gears to neutral, conceding… To everything that runs its course”. It’s a song about the ache of stillness, the exhaustion of pretending you’re fine, and the uneven rhythm of healing. Gentle, haunting, and brutally honest.

“We just want people to feel like we’d bleed out on stage for them,” Eddie tells me.

When he told me that, I instantly thought of Blood and Water, one of the tracks that first pulled me into their sound. “I run like blood and water” might sound instinctual, but it carries so much weight. The sound of someone torn between belonging and becoming, rooted in love but wired for motion. That’s the thing about The Dead Bolts: they’re not chasing rockstar mythology. They’re chasing truth, a sound that makes you feel something real.

Almost as if The Dead Bolts built a time machine out of distortion pedals and self-reflection, it’s a sermon on the contradictions of the “beautiful world” we’re sold. The curated perfection, the pursuit of status, the quiet panic that comes when you finally get what you thought you wanted. When Eddie sings, “The throne I sit on is fit for a king,” it lands like a smirk and a sigh at once.

He’s playing the role of the man who has it all, but the cracks show. The chorus bursts open like catharsis. The guitars and bass blurring into and across each other, drowning out the noise of everything we pretend not to feel. Beneath the confidence lies raw self-awareness: a man staring into his reflection, unsure who’s looking back. It’s poetic, existential, and alive with tension. By the final chorus, Beau Monde becomes less about illusion and more about endurance, the messy, beautiful act of living in it.

It captures what it means to be human in 2025: emotionally overwhelmed, self-aware, and still searching for something real. It’s not just The Dead Bolts’ best song; it’s their manifesto. 

“Some musicians play for themselves, but we don’t care how good someone is at their instrument,” Eddie says. “Can you make the audience care? Are you authentic? You only get one good impression in life, and music’s no different. We just want to represent something true — something people can relate to.”

Looking ahead, the band’s momentum shows no sign of slowing.

Listen to Bèau Mondè Here

Instagram @thedeadbolts

Spotify: The Dead Bolts