Tracklisting

Hellfire
Sugar/Tzu
Eat Men Eat
Welcome To Hell
Still
The Race Is About To Begin
Dangerous Liaisons
The Defence
27 Questions

Red vinyl LP

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 on Rough Trade.

Written in isolation in London after the release of last year’s Cavalcade, ‘Hellfire’ builds on themelodic 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.

Where as the stories of ‘Cavalcade’ were told in third person, Hellfire is presented in first-personand 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.

The track ‘Welcome To Hell’ tells the story of a shell shocked soldier’s excess and military discharge. The setting is a far-off military campaign - an exotic coastal town, commandeered by the invading army and swarming with soldiers. It is night-time; 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 - and he’s unable to handle the world in which he finds himself. The track is sound tracked by funky guitar sections, driving horns and a progressively snarling vocal. Its accompanying video was directed by Gustaf Holtenäs (who also directed the video for blackmidi’s ‘Slow’).

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

Genre: Rock
Style: Experimental, Art Rock, Math Rock