black midi – the UK-based trio of Geordie Greep (guitar, vocals), Cameron Picton (bass, vocals) and Morgan Simpson (drums) – announce their third album, Hellfire, out July 15th on Rough Trade.
In conjunction with the announcement, they share the album’s lead single/video, ‘Welcome To Hell.‘
Written in isolation in London after the release of last year’s Cavalcade, Hellfire builds on the melodic and harmonic elements of its predecessor, while expanding the brutality and intensity of their debut, Schlagenheim. As Greep describes it: “if Cavalcade was a drama, ‘Hellfire’ is like an epic action film” that delves into overlapping themes of pain, loss and anguish. It is their most thematically cohesive and intentional album yet.
Whereas the stories of Cavalcade were told in third person, Hellfire is presented in first-person and tells the tales of morally suspect characters. There are direct dramatic monologues, flamboyantly appealing to our degraded sense of right and wrong. You’re never quite sure whether to laugh at or be horrified.
Today’s ‘Welcome To Hell’ tells the story of a debauched soldier’s excess and military discharge. “The horrors of War are varied and plenty,” says Greep. “Horrors as inconceivable as they are inevitable. Even Periods of weekend leave, despite the lack of organised bloodshed, can offer as much to haunt, harrow and harass as the reddest battlefield. Our song takes place on one such weekend. The setting is a far-off military campaign – an exotic coastal town, commandeered by the invading army and swarming with soldiers. It is nighttime; erratic men rush up and down the strip in various stages of inebriation, neon signs light up the bars, and out of their open doors waft wisps of indeterminate smoke. Deafening howls of motorcycle engines linger all around, accompanied by a medley of languages – albeit, all slurred, coarse, hoarse and evasive of any true emotion.”
The track is soundtracked by funky guitar sections, driving horns and a progressively snarling vocal. It’s accompanying video was directed by Gustaf Holtenäs (who also directed the video for black midi’s ‘Slow‘).
“Almost everyone depicted is a kind of scumbag,” says Greep. “Almost everything I write is from a true thing, something I experienced and exaggerated and wrote down. I don’t believe in Hell, but all that old world folly is great for songs, I’ve always loved movies and anything else with a depiction of Hell. Dante’s Inferno. When Homer goes to Hell in the Simpsons. There’s a robot Hell in Futurama. Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jewish writer who portrays a Satan interfering in people’s lives. There’s loads!”
The mysterious military mining corporation behind Cavalcade’s ‘Diamond Stuff’ reappears in Picton’s new song ‘Eat Men Eat,’ and some of his best lyrics appear on the forcefully sweet ‘Still,’ Hellfire’s least abstract, most lyrically personal song. “There’s a lot of love and things like that on Hellfire,” says Picton. ”There’s a tender flipside to every song. The dark comes out strongly, there’s Hell and Satan and murder and unsavoury things, but every song has both light and dark.”
Creating Hellfire took six months, sprouting from a riff on one of the group’s oldest jams, which bloomed into the futuristic boxing drama, ‘Sugar/Tzu.’ The range, power and potent production of black midi’s music has never been greater than on Hellfire, partly thanks to producer Marta Salogni, who worked with the band on Cavalcade opener, ‘John L.‘ But, as always, the type of music black midi play isn’t as important as its quality. And whatever you think about black midi’s music isn’t as important as how you feel about it.
Hellfire Tracklist
Pre-order Hellfire
1. Hellfire
2. Sugar/Tzu
3. Eat Men Eat
4. Welcome To Hell
5. Still
6. The Race Is About To Begin
7. Dangerous Liaisons
8. The Defence
9. 27 Questions
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