Tragic Hearts the newest EP from the Toronto punk band of the same name is set to release Monday July.29th for free via http://tragichearts.bandcamp.com

Tragic Hearts is the most recent effort from Dean Richards, formerly of The Artist Life (Underground Operations). Following the bands split, Dean had been toying around with song ideas that were too aggressive for TAL’s last record, but also didn’t fit with his then new act, The Victim Party. The result was 2012’s EP ‘Empty Art’, described on Punknews.org as having riffs reminiscent of “nothing other than pure Johnny Ramone”. When getting songs together for 2013’s self-titled EP, Richards recruited Pat Mathers (ex-Hostage Life) on guitar, Peter Krpan (ex-Moneen) and Matt Hemeon (ex-The Fullblast) to join the recording on drums and bass (respectively). This time the songs come from different directions lyrically and musically, yet remain very distinctly to what Richards describes as “Great-Lakes pop punk”. It’s no surprise that he lists Banner Pilot and Dillinger Four as influences, amid the more obvious ones like Rancid, Lifetime and The Explosion. The album was recorded at Fox Sounds at the helm of producer Derek Hoffman (producing, engineering, mixing and editing).