Kal Marks have announced a new album, Wasteland Baby, which lands September 13 on Exploding in Sound. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the lead single ‘Insects’. Check it out below, along with the album cover and tracklist.
“We really wanted the album to have a good flow so we treated it like a movie,” the band’s Carl Shane explained in press materials. “I would storyboard everything and find common threads in the words. I always kept notebooks on me to write lyrics, notes on the production, and just my overall feelings. Some days were really fruitful, some were filled with writer’s block and sleepless nights. Some of the songs I kind of hallucinated. I don’t know how to fully explain it, but it felt surreal. At times I even felt I was losing my mind and hearing voices.”
“‘Insects’ was an excruciating song to get right,” Shane commented on the new single. “We were listening to a lot more danceable music at the time. Anything from Depeche Mode, Giorgio Moroder, ‘Rhythm Nation’ by Janet Jackson, Cerone and DAF. We wanted to make something danceable and poppy but have it make sense in our world. We also loved the duality a lot of this music had with dark lyrical themes with upbeat propulsive rhythms. It’s a grim tune to tap your feet to. A lot of frustration in it.”
Of the accompanying video, director William Hart added:
I listened to the song probably 420 times while walking my dog and then I would come home and would put on The X Files and then some old reruns of Cops. I have this hatred for authority and oppression that the lyrics easily brought out of me. My friend Alex Purifoy listened to me ramble about an idea and helped give me some ideas which turned into this 12 Monkeys/Delicatessen/industrial surreal monster chase scene.
Theres was originally a whole bank heist and car chase story we scaled back but the characters exist in a world under a bridge in a polluted terrorzone.
Wasteland Baby Cover Artwork:
Wasteland Baby Tracklist:
1. Wasteland Baby (Intro)
2. Insects
3. Hard Work Will Get You Nowhere (Motorin)
4. A Functional Earth
5. Any Way It Goes
6. You Are Found
7. Whatever The News
8. Motherfuckers
9. All God’s Children
10. Midnight
11. Wasteland Baby
