black midi have announced their next LP: Hellfire is out July 15 via Rough Trade Records. The follow-up to last year’s Cavalcade is led by the single ‘Welcome to Hell’, which is accompanied by a music video from director Gustaf Holtenäs (who also helmed the video for black midi’s ‘Slow’). Check it out below, and scroll down for the album’s cover artwork (by David Rudnick) and tracklist.
black midi worked on the album with producer Marta Salogni, who previously recorded Cavalcade‘s opening track ‘John L’. “Whereas the stories of Cavalcade were told in third person, Hellfire is presented in first-person and tells the tales of morally suspect characters,” according to a press release. The band’s Geordie Greep commented: “If Cavalcade was a drama, Hellfire is like an epic action film.”
“Almost everyone depicted is a kind of scumbag,” Greep continued. “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!”
Hellfire Cover Artwork:
Hellfire Tracklist:
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
