Crypto protocols have lost more than $606 million to hacks and exploits in just the first 18 days of April 2026, making it the single worst month for theft in the industry since the $1.4 billion Bybit breach in February 2025, according to data from DefiLlama.
Crypto protocols have lost more than $606 million to hackers across 12 separate incidents in just 18 days of April 2026, according to data tracked by DefiLlama. Yahoo Finance reported the figure from BeInCrypto’s analysis, confirming that April has already become the worst month for crypto theft since February 2025, when the Bybit breach alone accounted for $1.4 billion.
April 2026 Crypto Hacks Dwarf the Entire First Quarter
The scale of April’s damage is stark in context. The entire first quarter of 2026 saw $165.5 million in losses across a relatively quiet stretch. April’s $606 million total arrived in under three weeks, making the month 3.7 times larger than Q1 combined and pushing 2026’s year-to-date theft total to approximately $771.8 million across 47 separate incidents. Two exploits account for nearly all of it. The $285 million Drift Protocol attack on April 1, later attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and the $292 million KelpDAO breach on April 18, also linked to Lazarus, together represent roughly 95% of the month’s losses and approximately 75% of everything stolen in crypto in 2026 so far. As crypto.news reported, the KelpDAO exploit alone triggered over $10 billion in Aave outflows and sent shockwaves across more than 20 connected protocols.
The Attack Frequency Problem Is Getting Worse
Beyond the dollar totals, the pace of attacks is accelerating in a way that concerns security researchers as much as the individual incident sizes. DeFi recorded 47 separate incidents in the first four and a half months of 2026, compared with 28 over the same period in 2025, a 68% year-over-year increase in attack frequency. The shift in attack methods is equally significant. As crypto.news documented, April’s exploits cut across smart contract vulnerabilities, infrastructure attacks, and social engineering campaigns, including AI-driven attacks on wallets like Zerion. The diversification of attack vectors means that technical audits and code reviews alone are no longer sufficient protection for protocols with significant TVL. “None of these accounts for the collateral damage seen across TVL, user trust, valuations, and the space’s morale. DeFi remains a niche market until risk can be properly priced,” an analyst wrote in BeInCrypto’s coverage.
What the April Hack Surge Means for Crypto Markets
Markets have already begun pricing in what analysts are calling a “security risk premium” on DeFi assets. As crypto.news tracked, crypto’s cumulative hack losses have now crossed $17 billion over the past decade, with attackers increasingly pivoting away from smart contract bugs toward private keys, signing infrastructure, and human-layer social engineering. Institutional players are responding with emergency rate limits and frozen bridge flows, while Jefferies has warned the string of marquee hacks could temporarily slow Wall Street’s appetite for DeFi tokenization projects. If even one more mid-size exploit occurs before April 30, the month’s total could approach $700 million, according to DefiLlama data cited by BeInCrypto.
DefiLlama’s hacks tracker shows the attack frequency running at approximately one incident every 2.9 days in 2026, a pace researchers say reflects a growing attack surface driven by DeFi TVL exceeding $120 billion and the proliferation of cross-chain bridge infrastructure.
San Antonio Spurs guard-forward Keldon Johnson has been named the 2025-26 Kia NBA Sixth Man of the Year, earning the John Havlicek Trophy.
San Antonio Spurs guard-forward Keldon Johnson has been named the 2025-26 Kia NBA Sixth Man of the Year, earning the John Havlicek Trophy. pic.twitter.com/IpSvsiHNQ9
Johnson set a Spurs franchise record with 1,081 bench points this season. He passed Manu Ginóbili, who scored 927 in 2007-08 – his Kia NBA Sixth Man of the Year season.
Johnson joins Ginóbili as the only two players to win the award with San Antonio.
President Trump has used incidents of crime to justify an ongoing National Guard deployment to the capital, Washington, DC.
A United States district court has sentenced a Chilean man to three years in prison for stealing a handbag last year belonging to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
On Wednesday, the administration of President Donald Trump added that the suspect, 50-year-old Mario Bustamante Leiva, would also be subject to deportation after his time behind bars.
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“Bustamante Leiva came to Washington illegally to prey on citizens of the District. He methodically targeted women at restaurants, stealing their purses, and monetizing the stolen cards within minutes,” US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a statement.
“His pattern of theft ends here. He will serve his prison term and be deported.”
The bag-snatching case raised concerns last year about the efficacy of Noem’s Secret Service protection, as agents had been guarding the cabinet secretary on the night of the theft.
The Trump administration has also used the case as an example to justify its deportation push, as well as its military-led crackdown on crime in Washington, DC.
According to prosecutors, Bustamante Leiva was one of two suspects who were caught on surveillance camera stealing purses in Washington, DC, in April 2025.
His co-defendant, Cristian Montecino-Sanzana, reportedly joined him for the first documented theft on April 12. He has been sentenced to 13 months behind bars and three years of supervised release, but he too faces deportation.
Bustamante Leiva was also accused of a second theft on April 17 at the Westin Hotel in Washington, DC. In both cases, the stolen credit cards were later used at a grocery store to purchase gift cards.
The case involving Noem came on April 20, as the Homeland Security secretary dined with her family at Capital Burger.
“Surveillance cameras recorded Bustamente Leiva repeatedly looking down toward Noem’s purse before bending down and snatching it,” a statement from the US Justice Department reads. “Noem’s purse contained several credit cards and about $3,000 in cash.”
Bustamente Leiva was ultimately charged with three counts of wire fraud and one count of first-degree theft.
Last year, Trump initiated a series of National Guard deployments around the country on the premise of safeguarding immigration agents and tamping down crime.
In August, that campaign came to Washington, DC, which Trump described as overwhelmed with crime. Official data at the time, however, put violent crime in the city at a 30-year low.
“Citizens, tourists, and staff alike are unable to live peacefully in the Nation’s capital, which is under siege from violent crime,” Trump wrote in an executive order on August 11.
As part of his order, he deployed thousands of National Guard troops to patrol the capital to address what he described as a “crime emergency”.
While court cases forced Trump to remove National Guard members from other parts of the country, the military has remained on the streets of Washington, DC, in part because of the Home Rule Act, which gives the federal government greater power over the capital.
But there are limits. Federal law otherwise largely forbids the military from serving as civilian law enforcement, so the troops cannot make arrests.
Roughly 2,500 troops remain in the capital to support local law enforcement. It is unclear when their deployment might end.
Noem, meanwhile, was fired as Homeland Security secretary on March 5, amid growing scrutiny of her government spending and her controversial immigration enforcement efforts in places like Minnesota.
She has since been reassigned to the Shield of the Americas, Trump’s initiative to encourage Latin American leaders to reject Chinese influence in their countries and use heavy force to stop crime.
Budget reconciliation would allow conservative lawmakers to bypass Democratic opposition in the US Senate with a simple majority.
Published On 22 Apr 202622 Apr 2026
United States President Donald Trump has called on Republican lawmakers to push through legislation to fund immigration enforcement through a process known as budget reconciliation.
That procedure would allow them to sidestep opposition from the Democratic Party, which has refused to approve such spending until immigration practices are reformed.
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In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump said that conservatives must “unify” behind the reconciliation push to end the current deadlock.
“Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and Senator Lindsey Graham, have taken a critical first step to passing another Reconciliation Bill to fund our Great Border Patrol and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Agents,” Trump wrote.
“Republicans must stick together and UNIFY to get this done, and to keep America safe — something which the Democrats don’t care about.”
A partial government shutdown has affected the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since mid-February, with previous efforts to break the impasse proving unsuccessful.
DHS oversees multiple agencies, including the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
But the opposition has been focused on blocking funding for two agencies in particular: ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Democrats have refused to support further spending for those agencies without reforms, following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good by federal agents in January, during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
Such reforms would include requirements for immigration agents to clearly identify themselves and avoid racial profiling.
Republicans, however, have rejected those demands. The right-wing party holds a small majority in both the House of Representatives and Senate, and it is now seeking to use budget reconciliation to bypass the Democratic opposition.
Budget reconciliation is a fast-track process wherein Congressional committees are tasked with crafting legislation to meet certain spending targets.
Those bills are then allowed to pass the 100-seat Senate with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes ordinarily needed to bypass a filibuster, but they must abide by certain limitations.
On Tuesday, in a vote of 52 to 46, the Senate approved a motion to start a budget reconciliation process that paves the way for funding ICE and CBP through budget reconciliation.
Senator Lindsey Graham called the vote a “significant step” in a social media post, adding that the effort would aim to “fully fund Border Patrol and ICE for the rest of the Trump presidency!”
“It’s not my preference,” Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Tuesday. “But it is reality.”
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the effort a “partisan sideshow” that would direct money towards immigration enforcement, “without putting any restraints on these rogue agencies’ rampant violence in our streets”.
Budget reconciliation was previously used by Republican lawmakers to pass Trump’s landmark tax and spending package without any Democratic votes last year.
The evidence gathered will support ongoing criminal investigations into suspected money laundering operations, the agencies said.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said Wednesday that it conducted its first coordinated raids targeting illegal peer-to-peer crypto trading, hitting eight London premises alongside tax authorities and organized crime units.
The Tuesday morning operation saw FCA officers issue cease-and-desist letters at each location, ordering traders to immediately halt unauthorized activities. The raids were conducted under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds Regulations 2017.
Evidence obtained during the on-site inspections is now supporting criminal investigations, the regulator said. The coordinated action involved HM Revenue & Customs and the South West Regional Organized Crime Unit working alongside FCA enforcement teams. Senior officials from the agencies emphasized the criminal risks posed by unregistered operators.
“Unregistered peer-to-peer crypto traders operating in the UK are doing so illegally and pose a financial crime risk,” said Steve Smart, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, in a statement. “We will use our powers and work with partners to disrupt them.”
Detective Inspector Ross Flay of the South West Regional Organized Crime Unit highlighted concerns about money laundering channels.
“By working with our colleagues at the FCA and HMRC, we are able to effectively target and disrupt unregistered peer-to-peer crypto traders operating illegally,” Flay said. “As law enforcement, we want to stop these traders providing a route for criminals to move, disguise, and spend illegal money.”
The raids represent a significant escalation in UK crypto enforcement. The FCA currently has zero registered peer-to-peer crypto traders or platforms operating legally in the country, meaning all P2P trading activity operates outside regulatory oversight.
P2P platforms typically allow users to exchange digital assets directly, often using cash or bank transfers. These characteristics have drawn increased scrutiny from financial regulators globally concerned about money laundering vulnerabilities. Tuesday’s coordinated raids mark the FCA’s first physical enforcement action targeting the sector after years of issuing warnings about unregistered crypto businesses.
Earlier this month, the FCA launched a consultation on regulated crypto activities, covering areas such as stablecoin issuance, trading platforms, custody, and staking. Crypto firms can begin applying for authorization from September 2026, with the full regulatory regime taking effect in October 2027.
The consultation closes June 3, with final rules expected in summer 2026. DeFi and distributed ledger resilience rules will be addressed in separate consultations later in the year.
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Google plans to spend up to $185 billion this year on AI and cloud infrastructure to power the “agentic era,” its CEO said.
Sundar Pichai said nearly 75% of new code at Google is now AI-generated and approved by engineers.
New deals with Citi, Thinking Machines, and a $750 million partner fund show Google’s plan to monetize agentic AI.
Google is making one of its biggest-ever bets on artificial intelligence.
Speaking Wednesday at the Google Cloud Next event in Las Vegas, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company plans to invest between $175 billion and $185 billion in capital expenditures this year—up from $31 billion in 2022—to build the infrastructure needed for what he called the “agentic era” of AI.
“As we move into the agentic era, we are taking this to the next level,” Pichai said. “We are making big investments now and for the future.”
The spending surge highlights Google’s effort to compete with rivals, including Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI, as the industry shifts from chatbots to autonomous AI agents capable of completing tasks with limited human oversight. According to Pichai, Google is already using those systems internally.
“Today, nearly 75% of all new code at Google is AI-generated and approved by engineers, up from 50% last fall,” he said. “We are now shifting to truly agentic workflows.”
However, despite the push into agentic AI, Pichai emphasized that human engineers review the AI-generated code. He said Google is also using AI to automate parts of its cybersecurity operations, helping teams process large volumes of threat intelligence faster and respond to risks more quickly.
“Each month, our teams receive unstructured threat reports at a scale that will take thousands of hours to review—a nearly impossible task,” he said. “Today, our security operation center agents automatically triage tens of thousands of unstructured threat reports each month by accelerating the extraction of critical intelligence and filtering out the noise. It’s reduced threat mitigation time by over 90%; we are more on the front foot than ever before.”
Google also used Cloud Next to show how it plans to turn that spending into revenue. The tech giant announced a $750 million fund to help its 120,000-member Google Cloud partner ecosystem build and deploy agentic AI products. The initiative includes engineering support, early access to Gemini models, and incentives for companies such as Accenture, Deloitte, and McKinsey & Company.
While Google used Cloud Next to show how it plans to turn its AI spending into revenue, other companies, including Citi and Thinking Machines Lab, revealed how they are using Google’s infrastructure and AI tools to launch new products and train frontier models.
Citi unveiled “Citi Sky,” an AI-powered wealth management assistant for U.S. clients. At the same time, Thinking Machines Lab said it expanded its use of Google Cloud’s AI Hypercomputer to accelerate AI research and model training.
“One thing that is super clear: We are firmly in the agentic Gemini era,” Pichai said. “The conversation has gone from ‘Can we build an agent?’ to ‘How do we manage thousands of them?’”
Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication to correct the day of the event.
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Jon Favreau is finally admitting he was wrong to warn Joe and Anthony Russo against killing off Tony Stark/Iron Man in 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.” Favreau gave rise to the Marvel Cinematic Universe when he cast Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man in the 2008 movie of the same name. They re-teamed for 2010’s “Iron Man 2,” with Favreau continuing to work with Downey in other Marvel movies by playing Tony’s assistant and driver Happy Hogan.
“I called the Russos. I was like, ‘I don’t know about — I don’t think people — I don’t know if people are going to like — I don’t know! I think it’s going to really impact people because there they were kids that grew up with that character,’” Favreau remembered on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” about objecting to Iron Man’s “Endgame” death.
“But I have to tell you, it was handled so well by them,” he added. “And Gwyneth [Paltrow] and Robert [Downey Jr.] did such a wonderful job acting, and I think it added a poignancy to it. I think they did a wonderful job. I was wrong. I was wrong. I was choked up! Even though it’s a movie, those characters have been part of my life for so long.”
The Russo Brothers originally revealed in a Vanity Fair video interview that Favreau was staunchly against their decision to kill off Iron Man, with Joe Russo saying: “I remember pacing on the corner of a stage on the phone with Favreau trying to talk him off a ledge because he’s like, ‘You can’t do this. It’s gonna devastate people, and you don’t want them walking out of the theater and into traffic.’ We did it anyway.”
Downey is now returning to Marvel, not not as Iron Man. He’s taking on the villainous Doctor Doom in this December’s “Avengers: Doomsday,” which Favreau said he’s “excited” to watch. The filmmaker lobbied for Downey’s Iron Man casting at a time when Downey’s personal struggles had made him a pariah in Hollywood.
“He was great for Tony Stark,” Favreau said. “As soon was we cast him, everything else was easy decisions. There were a lot of Marvel movies before that… other ‘Spider-Man’ movies, ‘X-Men.’ Nobody knew who Iron Man was. I knew with Robert in that role — to cast someone who is that good of an actor in that type of role — it created something that was bigger.
Watch Favreau’s full interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in the video below.
Bitcoin is reasserting its absolute control over the cryptocurrency market, with its market cap dominance breaking past the 60% threshold for the first time in 2026.
Bitcoin’s dominance ($BTC.D) has surged to 60.63%, leaving the broader altcoin market in the dust.
$BTC.D via TradingView
The metric, which tracks Bitcoin’s share of the total overall crypto market capitalization, had been consolidating in the 58% to 60% range throughout the first quarter of the year before staging a massive breakout in late April.
“The broader promise of crypto has failed”
The rest of the market is struggling to keep pace. This has prompted some to question the viability of the broader altcoin sector.
Veteran trader Bob Loukas has said that Bitcoin didn’t even need a euphoric, record-breaking run to crush its competitors this cycle.
“Bitcoin dominance bottomed out for the Cycle above 50%, without Bitcoin doing anything extraordinary, highlights the broader promise of Crypto has mostly failed,” Loukas stated. The general trend points to a market heavily concentrated on the flagship asset.
$BTC bulls eyeing $80K
Bitcoin’s dominance surge is happening in tandem with a powerful price recovery.
Bitcoin has now shaken off its bearish momentum after truly catastrophic losses in early 2025.
For most of March, Bitcoin has been seeing some volatile price action, with the top coin fluctuating between $62,000 and $72,000. It has recorded a series of higher highs and higher lows.
Currently trading around $78,900 (up over 3.3% on the daily session), Bitcoin is now on the verge of a major psychological breakout. It remains to be seen whether the flagship coin can successfully reclaim the pivotal $80,000 level in the coming days.
I distinctly remember the day in 1996 when KROQ DJ Carson Daly first introduced me to Failure. I recall just as clearly the moment the following year when Daly, as MTV’s newest VJ, reported their demise.
It didn’t make sense that an emerging genre-bending rock band could call it quits after tapping into something otherworldly on their third studio record, Fantastic Planet (1996). The Los Angeles-based group consisting primarily of vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Ken Andrews, multi-instrumentalist Greg Edwards and drummer Kellii Scott may have had their champions in the mainstream, but they were still a word-of-mouth band for the most part, so I had no way of knowing in the days of dial-up internet that heroin had wreaked havoc on yet another one of my favorite bands.
I would still be reminded of Failure in the subsequent years. My own musical pursuits led me to a week of sessions at L.A.’s Paramount Recording Studios in 2003. That’s when A Perfect Circle’s cover of Failure’s hypnotic ballad, “The Nurse Who Loved Me,” played in the musician-filled front lobby, kick-starting a whole what-could-have-been conversation in regard to the short-lived, influential band. Two or three years later, a friend insisted that I track down a buzzy new female-led band called Paramore, specifically for their cover of “Stuck on You,” Failure’s most commercial song during Fantastic Planet’s album cycle.
Then, in late 2013, when good news still existed, Failure reunited. Andrews and Edwards had already been testing the waters to see if they could recapture their friendship and unique songwriting alchemy. Once they were convinced, they booked a February 2014 show at the El Rey Theatre. It sold out in less than two minutes, confirming to the band that a whole new generation of fans had discovered their back catalog and were ready for more.
From there, Failure made up for lost time in prolific fashion. They released three self-produced studio albums — 2015’s The Heart Is a Monster, 2018’s In the Future … and 2021’s Wild Type Droid — as well as a 2023 concert film, We Are Hallucinations, and 2025’s Hulu-released documentary, Every Time You Lose Your Mind. They played approximately 220 live shows in between it all, and they are now on the verge of putting out their seventh LP, Location Lost, on April 24. With their newest release, the second phase of the band will officially have more output than their 1990-1997 tenure.
The third single off the ‘80s-infused new record, “The Rising Skyline,” features a rare yet fitting collaboration. Hayley Williams, the frontwoman from the aforementioned Paramore, joins Andrews for the emotional acoustic break-up song that builds to a dramatic finish. Her unwavering support for the band through covers and generous sound bytes is one of the key reasons why Failure was able to grow its audience in absentia.
“She digested [four songs] for a while [before picking the ballad], and she texted me a few times, going, ‘This feels like a different kind of Failure record to me. Good on you guys for doing that,’” Andrews tells The Hollywood Reporter.
The making of Location Lost had its challenges, a trademark of Failure’s entire career. Andrews was still recovering from debilitating back surgery, and Edwards felt adrift for the time since the band’s reunion. His creative North Star had disappeared, hence the album title of Location Lost.
“There was a lot of turmoil and life changes. Going through the process of this record, I wouldn’t say that we were the most cohesive, interpersonally, with each other. It felt like things were ripping apart a bit,” Edwards admits. “I lost the entry point of how to approach it. The documentary had a strange effect on me, and I think I withdrew. If I had been close to the center of Failure for a while, it took me more into the outskirts.”
In the February 2026 press release for Location Lost, Edwards weighed the band’s future by asking a big question: “Is Location Lost the last Failure record, or could it be the transition to yet another new phase? We’ll see where it goes from here.”
When I followed up on behalf of paranoid Failure fans everywhere, Edwards expanded on his current thought process without completely eliminating the less desirable option. “There’s no doubt that we could make another record. We already have enough material to cull another album, easily,” Edwards says. “It’s not that we don’t have the creative force anymore, and it’s not that we don’t have the ability to communicate through it. I just don’t take it for granted that we will continue from here.”
If Location Lost does mark the end of Failure once and for all, it would be a devastating blow considering the band is still writing compelling, forward-thinking music that doesn’t rest on their laurels. Andrews’ voice has also held up remarkably well unlike several of his ‘90s contemporaries. His vocal performance on the newest LP, particularly “Moonlight Understands,” is his finest yet. Moreover, there’s still a healthy market for ‘90s bands like Failure, and it’d be a shame if they didn’t continue to enjoy the fruits of their labor, both past and present.
At the same time, it’s hard to be upset when they’ve already crafted a comeback story for the ages. Hypothetical questions no longer have to be asked about what the band could have done because they’ve now done it. They picked up right where they left off with FantasticPlanet, and the quality of their four LPs since then has set the new bar for any band that attempts a second act.
Below, during a wide-ranging conversation with THR, Failure’s Andrews, Edwards and Scott discuss the ins and outs of Location Lost, as well as the deep cut that has become their most popular tune in the streaming era.
***
Ken, when the four of us spoke for the Failure documentary last June, were you still quietly recovering from your heavy-duty back surgery?
KEN ANDREWS (Frontman, Multi-instrumentalist) Yeah, physically and mentally, it was a long road. It was definitely a long road. The funny thing is, I just met someone who had almost the exact same surgery, and they were fine four weeks later, both physically and mentally. I was like, “There’s no way you had that surgery.” We then showed each other our scars, and they were the same. I was like, “Damn.” But he’s a lot younger than me, so it definitely made me feel my mortality.
How did the injury happen?
ANDREWS I was actually just trying to get in shape. I basically had this incline sit-up device and bench. So I put it at an incline and hooked my feet in to go way back, and that was a mistake. When I started to feel a little bit better, I was so angry at the equipment that I kicked the shit out of it in my backyard. (Laughs.) Then I used a dolly to put it in the back of my car, and I drove it to the dump.
Failure’s Greg Edwards, Kellii Scott and Ken Andrews
Lindsey Byrnes
I desperately want you guys to have a dull moment for a change, but in between every record, there’s always some amount of upheaval that likely sparks the music that I love. Is that collective torture what makes Failure, Failure?
KELLI SCOTT (Drummer) I don’t think we experience more torture than anyone else. I think we’re just willing to talk about it.
Every record has been surrounded by something: breakups, health scares, addiction, label collapse, vendor fraud, a global pandemic, a producer and drummer exit …
ANDREWS Yeah, it’s kind of true. Even the first two records [Comfort, Magnified] had drama.
GREG EDWARDS (Multi-instrumentalist) Well, my perspective on it is that there’s always stuff going on in the exterior. But the interior self-inflicted suffering is ceaseless and constant — and that’s the source of inspiration. Sometimes, the exterior narrative of your life can season that internal suffering, but we’re all just on our way towards death. (Laughs.) I kind of get off on being in touch with that on a pretty constant basis. It actually has the opposite effect of making me depressed, but a lot of the lyrics I’ve written in this band have come right out of that.
Ken, your health informed Failure’s new record, Location Lost, in a lot of ways, as did the 1980s. That decade was a formative time for you guys as teenage musicians, so it’s always there, somewhere. But how intentional or unintentional was the ‘80s vibe?
ANDREWS Well, that’s interesting. You’re the first person to say that about the ’80s vibe. I hear it. I definitely hear it. But it definitely wasn’t intentional. I didn’t say, “Oh, I want to go more into the ’80s sound.” Maybe it was because we let go of trying to make a cohesive album and just focused more on each individual song. Also, my internal editor was less active once we took the music back to my studio. I was just following my bliss more than trying to make the next Failure record. And when I do that, I go back to that late ’80s sound.
I believe Location Lost ties Magnified (1994) withfour fade-outs, and that practice reached its peak in the ‘80s. So I assumed, wrongly, that it was meant to be another ‘80s touchstone.
EDWARDS I rarely think fade-outs are an intentional creative decision. It’s just ,”How do we end this fucking thing that goes on forever? How do we get it under 3:30 for radio?” On the Beatles’ White Album, “Helter Skelter” has the great fade out and fade back in. We did something like that on “Small Crimes.” We used it creatively. So it can be nice, but a lot of times, it’s just that there is no actual ending because the end of the song was jammed out for whatever period of time.
ANDREWS I also feel like the outros of certain songs lend themselves to a fade-out. I actually really like fade-outs because they stimulate your imagination. What are they still doing that I’m not hearing?
EDWARDS Yeah, I love fade-outs where some really cool stuff happens almost below where you can hear it. Whether it’s a really great fill or a bass note, you’ll actually wish it would come back up so you can hear what happened from there.
EDWARDS Yeah, you don’t want it to end, but it has to end. So it’s just going to subtly fade out, but it still continues somewhere way down in your subconscious. It never really ends.
Instead of self-releasing like the last couple LPs, you’re doing a more formal release for Location Lost. What prompted the change?
ANDREWS We just got tired of doing everything ourselves. I wanted to keep going musically, but I didn’t want to keep handling the business side of it. So we reached out to a manager named Blaze James who was interested in managing us in 2015, but we decided not to go with him back then. And to our surprise, he was still interested in working with us. So I’ve really enjoyed letting him do his thing and sinking back into more of a band member role.
Blaze’s company, The Fellowship, set you up within Virgin Music Group, and while that has the appearance of a major, I believe it’s Universal’s (UMG) imprint for indie artists. Thus, you still have your independence?
ANDREWS I don’t really know. The funny thing is we’ve actually had very little contact with Virgin. Again, it’s nice to just let someone else handle it. So Blaze is our interface to Virgin, and he brought them into the picture around the time the documentary came out.
Failure’s catalog is back on Spotify after four years. Their royalty structure was one of several reasons why you removed your body of work. Did your new manager convince you to give it another go?
ANDREWS Yeah, pretty much. I don’t think it was even a consideration for Virgin. It was something that they basically required. Again, I just let go of that side of things and focused on playing, writing and recording.
Greg, during the release of Wild Type Droid, I heard you mention that you were flirting with the idea of killing off Failure’s mascot, the spaceman, once and for all. If you were going to do it, Droid’s cover art would’ve been the perfect send-off. But he’s back on the cover of Location Lost, so is he just too synonymous with the band at this point?
EDWARDS Apparently, he does okay with head reattachment.
SCOTT He just won’t die. It’s like a recurring comic.
EDWARDS Yeah, [killing him off] was a dream I had at one point, but he’s probably here to stay in one form or another.
The cover art for Failure’s Seventh LP Location Lost
Courtesy
You guys really pride yourself on sequencing. Which tracks were the hardest to find consensus?
EDWARDS There was some debate about the sequence. We released In the Future in batches of four songs before putting them all together. But on all the other past records, I had a fairly strong sense of the narrative of the sequence. We’d go back and forth and discuss it in those terms. But on this record, I didn’t feel that. There were some debates about where a song should go and everything, but it didn’t seem to me like there was some immaculate, perfect sequence just waiting to be uncovered. So I was fairly open to compromise.
Ken has previously described you as his lyrical editor because you’ve done the lion’s share of lyric writing since the reunion. But Ken’s injury inspired him to write a lot more on this record, so did you serve that editorial role in a grander fashion this time?
EDWARDS Not so much. On some of the songs where he wrote almost all the lyrics, there would be a line or two where I would suggest something or change something. There may have been a word that wasn’t quite working, and we would brainstorm together. So we’d sit together in the room and go through each song to make sure that it was all working.
Kellii, Ken also said that he wasn’t processing the music as sharply as he normally does, and that he leaned on both you and Greg to edit and identify good ideas when you were jamming for the record.
SCOTT Well, the beauty of the jams is that there really is no editorial. You just plug in and start playing until you’re left with no more ideas. Then you pack up and come back the next day. We did that for several weeks back to back. The daunting part is editing down that plethora of material, but Ken was left to that, mostly. Even on previous records, if we had 20 hours of material, we would get cut-downs to three hours’ worth of material. Then we would each go through everything and give timecodes for what parts we liked. So Ken went through the whole thing, meticulously, and really narrowed it down to a few concise ideas as a really great starting point.
ANDREWS I wasn’t actually there for probably a third of the jams. It was more like I wasn’t participating as much in the jams, so my time to add my input came later.
“Someday Soon” is my favorite song on the new record.
SCOTT Really!?
Yeah, I was bewildered by it at first, but by the second verse, I became smitten. Would you categorize the verse as funk?
SCOTT I don’t think that drumbeat is funk. There’s something very disjointing about it. It always shakes you back and forth. It never really lets you settle into a hypnotic state. It’s always resetting you at the end of every bar.
EDWARDS But it is a funky thing that we’re doing with the EBow. From when we were jamming it, that may be one of the only songs that was sketched up similar to what it ended up as.
ANDREWS Yeah, when Greg started making that sound with the Ebow across the strings, I was like, “I’ve never heard that. It doesn’t even sound like a guitar.” So that was an exciting moment, actually. I remember being in the studio for that and thinking that this album is going to feel like a step forward.
I know “Distorted Fields” is a beefier song, but is “Someday Soon” in the same neighborhood, rhythmically?
SCOTT No, “Distorted Fields” is probably the most complex rhythm on any of our records. That song is fucking nuts to play.
Both hang on the same note before shifting at the end of each phrase, so that’s where I drew the comparison.
ANDREWS Yeah, the bassline is somewhat similar.
SCOTT The bassline could be similar, but the drums are not even in the same ballpark. “Someday Soon” is actually really simple and repetitive. “Distorted Fields” is, even to this day, challenging to play. It requires a lot of focus. There’s so many counterpoints going on in the drum beat, but it’s ridiculously cool.
Ken, you performed “Daylight” with Hayley Willams at a benefit show following last year’s L.A. wildfires, and Location Lost came up during that time. What songs did you provide her before she selected “The Rising Skyline” for her guest appearance?
ANDREWS I gave her four songs: “Crash Test Delay,” “The Air’s on Fire,” “The Rising Skyline” and “A Way Down.” So she digested those for a while, and then she texted me a few times, going, “This is really cool. This feels like a different kind of Failure record to me. Good on you guys for doing that.” Then I asked her which song she was really gravitating towards, and she picked the ballad out of those four. And I was like, “Oh, interesting,” because I could hear her voice on the song, an octave hire. So she just happened to be winding up her solo record in the studio at the time, and she spent an afternoon recording her vocals with her producer in Nashville.
How much direction did you give her?
ANDREWS I didn’t give her any direction. I just sent her the lyrics and said, “You don’t have to sing the first verse because I think I want that to just be me, but sing everywhere else.” I pretty much knew she was going to sing it an octave higher because it’s pretty low. So I was expecting that, but I didn’t even tell her to do that. It was just naturally in her range to be an octave higher in the second verse.
ANDREWS Yeah, it just didn’t work out with her schedule.
The breath at the beginning of “Crash Test Delay,” did you pull that from a sound library? Or did someone track that?
SCOTT Isn’t it Sammy?
ANDREWS (Laughs.) It could have been your dog. I actually have a library from the FantasticPlanet days, so it’s probably from that. I ripped it onto my hard drive, and I still use it.
Kellii, what’s going on during the verses of “A Way Down”? Is there a shaker of some sort layered on top of your primary drum part?
SCOTT Well, there’s a hi-hat doing the counterpoint from the kick drum. But I think there is a shaker overdub in there. Is that right, Ken? (Andrews and Scott both pull out their phones to play the song and confirm.) Actually, no, that’s just me playing the counterpoint on my hi-hat. There’s no shaker. That’s just the drums.
ANDREWS Yeah, there’s no shaker. It’s a crazy beat.
SCOTT To play it, I literally have to hit the first beat by crossing over. The song is nuts. It sounds super simple, but it’s actually pretty weird.
ANDREWS It doesn’t sound super simple.
SCOTT It doesn’t?
EDWARDS No, it’s immediately a unique beat.
SCOTT I remember when I played it during the jams, and I was like, “What the fuck!?” It’s a really cool beat.
ANDREWS Yeah, as soon as you played that, I was shocked.
SCOTT I liked it so much that I played it for an extremely long time, which I don’t usually do. I usually change beats every couple bars to try and settle into something.
Kellii, once you track your drums, do you bow out for the most part? Or do you provide emotional support while Ken and Greg track everything else?
SCOTT I definitely fade to the background and become more of the peanut gallery. Everything goes through text messages and emails. But when it comes specifically to the drums, I kind of stay out of it. I make sure to do my due diligence before we actually come back [to the studio]. I think we re-recorded six of the songs’ drums, and the rest of them came directly from jams. So I know what it is that I want to play for the most part, and then I have a lot of confidence that Ken is going to turn whatever slop I do into something that sounds super cool.
EDWARDS It was just the group of songs that were worked up from the jams. There was one song that may appear later or somewhere. I don’t feel like it’s a necessity that I sing a song on a Failure record. I have such a conflicted relationship with singing anyway, so it’s easy for me to let that go.
SCOTT Is that the “ribcages in the moonlight” song?
EDWARDS No, it’s about going out to look at the night and slipping on the ice. You break through a frozen river and are trapped underneath the ice. Then the river takes you downstream until your body is found in the spring.
SCOTT It made me think of our trip to Montana.
EDWARDS Yeah, it’s actually based on a ‘90s news story in Montana. Someone was on acid when they fell into a freezing river. So maybe that will make its way onto a record at some point.
For clarity, that song was designated for your lead vocals?
EDWARDS Well, I don’t know. It’s possible that Ken would take a swipe at it and sound better — and the song would overall come across better. When I sing on a song, it’s more because it just seems to work. We’ll all feel like the emotion of a song is transmitted adequately with my voice.
“Solid State” will likely receive some “Stuck on You” comparisons due to the wall of sound and music box-type melody over it. Songs like “A.M. Amnesia” and “Headstand” have similar ingredients, but they’re delivered in a more off-kilter way. Sometimes, bands will run away from anything that resembles their most popular song, so did you guys ever consciously avoid interplay that was similar to “Stuck on You”?
EDWARDS Maybe a little bit. Those ingredients do appear in a number of songs; they’re just not as explicitly obvious as they are in “Solid State.” I’ve actually been trying to name a song “Solid State” for decades. So the comparison [to “Stuck on You”] was definitely somewhat conscious. I like when bands are eclectic within their own style, and they keep moving forward without repeating themselves. But I also completely respect and love the Rolling Stones — and bands that are so formulaic that they just keep slightly reinterpreting what they’ve already done. So having that conversation with your older material is okay.
ANDREWS “Stuck on You” is no longer our most popular song. It’s our second most popular song on Spotify by half the amount of plays. We were just looking at the amount of plays, and “Another Space Song” is our most listened-to song on streaming. It’s almost double of what “Stuck on You” is.
EDWARDS I get a lot of gratification from that.
ANDREWS It’s very strange because “Another Space Song” never had a video. It was a deep cut.
EDWARDS Yeah, it was. When we were working on FantasticPlanet, we had an early version with no vocals yet and just the music. I listened to a cassette of it while driving around the neighborhood of Lita Ford’s house in Tujunga. And I just remember having an epiphany about the musical arrangement of that song. I was like, “This is what I want.” I did have a sense that it would be a really cool album cut, but I never thought it’d be a single or anything. So I just love the fact that, after all this time, that’s the song that has resonated with people.
ANDREWS It has so clearly resonated with people.
SCOTT It’s the people’s choice.
ANDREWS Yeah, it’s the people’s choice, and that feels really cool. “Stuck On You,” if it didn’t have the video, I feel like it would be down the ladder a few spots, to be honest. I love it. I’m proud of that song, and we play it all the time. But it’s just interesting to me that the song that was least likely to be picked as a single back in the ’90s when we made FantasticPlanet is now the most played song.
The cream rises to the top. I also can’t believe that Ken Andrews just quoted Spotify data. How things have changed.
FAILURE (Laugh.)
Failure with former guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen in a 1996 press photo
Courtesy of Grandstand Media & Management
Hollywood is having a tough time generating younger movie stars. The loss of the mid-budget studio movie has had a role in it, along with IP overload, social media and streaming. As a result, movie stars from the ‘80s and ‘90s are still ruling the day in their 50s and 60s, and I feel like that’s the case for ‘90s rockstars as well. Bands that were around during the height of rock radio and MTV and a more rock-oriented culture still have an audience today. I can’t even identify who the modern-day rockstars are, unless the definition is broadened. Do you think you have a longer shelf life now due to the lack of an ecosystem that can generate younger rockstars?
EDWARDS Yeah, the curation and gatekeeping of the major record labels — and the things they pushed when radio was king and MTV was king — it was often complained about and cast in a negative light. But if you had a hit or two back then, before all of that died, then it’s very likely you’re still playing shows now. You still have an audience because your music got to so many people. I’m always amazed to see one-hit or two-hit wonders still touring today just based on the fact that they existed in that terrestrial radio era. Now you don’t have anything like that, and the focused curation from the labels doesn’t exist. So you have all these options and choices, which is theoretically wonderful, but it’s just a completely different world.
ANDREWS I have a different outlook on it. I’m going to go back to Spotify because Blaze, our manager, sent us a graph showing the age groups that listen to us the most and the least. And our age group, 45 to 60, is the lowest group that we have. It’s 1 percent. The highest group is 18 to 35. So how did those people find out about Failure? It wasn’t because we were on MTV; they’re too young for that. It’s because of the discovery process that we have now, which is people sharing stuff and going, “Have you heard of this band? They’re from the ’90s.” Maybe the ’90s has a little bit of cachet because of the important bands that came out during that time. But we’ve shifted completely away from the age of our original audience in the ’90s. So it’s a tough one. I obviously don’t like Spotify. I don’t like the fact that they don’t pay artists. But at the same time, we wouldn’t have this new audience that we have now without the current discovery process that exists.
EDWARDS That’s true. For us, it may have been positive. Something has been gained with just the variety and diversity and access to so many acts. But something does get lost when you have less curation and gatekeeping from the top. There’s no longer a focused cultural moment.
ANDREWS The monoculture.
EDWARDS Yeah, that’s been lost, which is strange. You don’t even know what a rockstar is now, which is fine. I guess Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar are rockstars now. There are incredibly successful acts that stick out and make shitloads of money. But then there’s this whole middle world.
ANDREWS Yeah, the middle world is bigger now.
EDWARDS It’s totally different. Again, I just find it interesting that bands that had a moment with a song or two somewhere in the ’90s fill venues still. The people that heard those songs on the radio still go to see those bands because the nostalgia is there.
ANDREWS We’re not a nostalgia band anymore.
EDWARDS No, but when you discover music from 13 to 18, the nostalgic valence of those experiences can never be replaced by anything after that. There’s just something about your mental energy as you’re absorbing things at that age. That’s why nostalgia is so strong from your youth. When I used to listen to KROQ or watch MTV, there were just eight or nine songs. You’d hear the same song again and again, and that really ingrained it in you. So the access to a thousand different bands is great, and no one telling you what to listen to is great. But there’s something I miss about the [curation] in the ’80s, the ’90s and maybe the first few years of the 2000s. Right around 2005, it just started to die quickly.
Ken Andrews positions the camera while directing Failure’s 2025 documentary, Every Time You Lose Your Mind.
Grandstand Media & Management
Movies were a big part of Failure in the ‘90s. FantasticPlanet was an homage to the 1973 French film, and the “Stuck on You” video was James Bond-themed. Ken’s original career path was filmmaking. Do you still take inspiration from film?
ANDREWS Big time. The Dune series is a major inspiration for me. I watch it all the time. The sound, the score, the world building aspect of it, I love that side of filmmaking. I’ve always felt that world building is what we’ve tried to do. We’ve tried to create our own little universe of sonics and lyrical references.
EDWARDS There’s some lyrical references to [Michelangelo] Antonioni on this record, specifically Blowup. Anything but other musical acts and music itself is the best place to get inspired. I’ve always loved “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” from Sgt. Pepper’s. John Lennon basically saw a poster for a circus event with Henry the Horse, so that essentially became the lyrics to that song. It’s always great, especially when you’re stuck, to just pick something from somewhere else that seems completely irrelevant. Then it’ll somehow weave its way into the song or the greater album at large, and it’ll make sense.
Failure performing live in 2019
Courtesy of Grandstand Media & Management
Greg, you said something in the Location Lost press release that has caused me a lot of sleepless nights the last few months. You asked, “Is LocationLost the last Failure record, or could it be the transition to yet another new phase? We’ll see where it goes from here.” What’s behind this ominous question?
EDWARDS I just wanted to artificially pump up record sales and ticket sales for the shows. (Laughs.) No, there was a lot of turmoil and life changes. Going through the process of this record, I wouldn’t say that we were the most cohesive, interpersonally, with each other. It felt like things were ripping apart a bit.
ANDREWS The album title. When you said, “Let’s pull the title from the song ‘Location Lost,’” it all made sense to me.
EDWARDS Yeah, my location was pretty centered through the last bunch of records, but through the process of this record, I definitely felt like I lost the entry point of how to approach it. I felt a little lost in it for a variety of reasons, both personal for myself and also for what Ken was going through at the time. And the documentary, in a way, was cathartic. I suppose it was nice to get the story out there in that way. But I also have a lot of ambivalence about a document like that even existing. It’s just the fact that it’s one way of looking at it. So the documentary had a strange effect on me, and I think I withdrew. If I had been close to the center of Failure for a while, it took me more into the outskirts.
I appreciate your candor, of course, but if it looks like I’m panicking on the inside, I definitely am.
EDWARDS I’m just being honest with how I was feeling as I was going through that process. There’s no doubt that we could make another record. Through jams and things, we already have enough material to cull another album, easily. I also have no doubt that we could start from scratch and make another record. So it’s not that we don’t have the creative force anymore, and it’s not that we don’t have the ability to communicate through it. I just don’t take it for granted that we will continue from here.
*** Location Lost by Failure releases on April 24. Visit their official web site for upcoming tour dates.