KEN mode announce their seventh full-length Loved which is incoming via Season Of Mist (and New Damage Records in Canada) on August 31st. The album represents yet another pivot point in the group’s sound, a departure from the indie/noise punk focused songs on their previous album, Success. On Loved the group delve deeper, and darker than ever before. This vicious full-length may be the group’s quintessential statement of violence and despair made sonic.
The band also shared the video for “Doesn’t Feel Pain Like He Should“, the first unveiled track off the forthcoming album.
Drawing from not only the desperate noise and industrial sonics of the 80’s and 90’s, KEN mode has mixed in the decidedly more extreme tone and presence of death and black metal, expertly captured by Andrew Schneider’s (Unsane, Cave In, Daughters) sick vision of noise and girth. “We entered writing for this album with one goal in mind – to please the smile”, states frontman Jesse Matthewson, referring to the cover piece by the band’s long-time collaborator Randy Ortiz – see below.
Jesse continues…“We wanted to make an album that represented a thinking person’s reaction to the political/technological climate we are existing in today. We wanted to make the perfect album to put on repeat while pushing your physical limits to their maximum, if only to silence the noise that is constantly whirring around inside of your own head, even for a brief moment. We wanted tones that bash and cut, and for you to feel that desperate part of yourself clawing for a way out. And then, just when things are at their most bleak, you start to focus on what’s actually being said, and you’ll see the humour in absolutely everything that is transpiring before you. THAT is Loved.”
Loved Tracklist:
1. Doesn’t Feel Pain Like He Should
2. The Illusion Of Dignity
3. Feathers & Lips
4. Learning To Be Too Cold
5. Not Soulmates
6. Very Small Men
7. This Is A Love Test
8. Fractures In Adults
9. No Gentle Art