black midi Announce New Album, Out 7/15, & North American Tour

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, and a fall North American tour. 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 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 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”). 

Watch black midi’s video for “Welcome To Hell”

“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.

In November 2021, at the end of their celebrated US tour, black midi recorded a live album with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago capturing songs from across their catalogue. Six of those songs will be pressed on 6 Flexi Discs (one song each), which will individually be available with a limited number of album pre-orders from specific retailers.

black midi’s North American tour is on sale Friday, May 13th at https://bmblackmidi.com/. The band will play some of their biggest shows yet, including concerts at London’s Somerset House, New York’s Central Park SummerStage, Los Angeles’ The Wiltern, San Francisco’s The Warfield, Denver’s Ogden Theatre and First Avenue in Minneapolis. Experiencing the band live, feeling the power of the tension they carefully build up just before each explosive cathartic release, is essential to understanding black midi. Live, there’s Kaidi Akinnibi (brass) and Seth Evans (keyboards), summoning fearsome squalls of intensity at will. Simpson’s concussive percussion underlining everything, sometimes a boxer fighting a nightly bout with his kit, others silkily caressing the cymbals. Picton, the still centre of a cyclone, waiting for those moments when the band feel inevitable, invincible, like “that massive lurching machine from Mad Max Fury Road”. And Greep, stalking the stage, soaking up that exhilarating, combustible energy, pouring it all out through his microphone and guitar.

Pre-order Hellfire
 
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
 
black midi Tour Dates (North American dates in bold):
Tue. May 10 – Grenoble, FR @ La Bobine
Wed. May 11 – Milan, IT @ Santeria
Thu. May 12 – Zurich, CH @ Mascotte
Sat. May 14 – Vienna, AT @ Flex
Sun. May 15 – Prague, CR @ Meetfactory
Mon. May 16 – Berlin, DE @ Festsaal Kreuzberg
Wed. May 18 – Lille, FR @ Aeronef
Tue. May 31 – Istanbul, TR @ Zorlu PSM Jazz Festival
Thu. Jun. 2 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
Thu. Jun. 9 – Porto, PT @ Primavera Sound
Sat. Jun. 11 – Mannheim, DE @ Maifeld Derby
Sun. Jun. 12 – Hilvarenbeek, NE @ Best Kept Secret
Thu. Jun. 17 – Sun. Jun. 19 – Vilnius, LT @ 8 Festival
Wed. Jun. 22 – Sun. Jun. 26 – Somerset, UK @ Glastonbury
Wed. Jun. 29 – Sun. Jul. 3 – Budapest, HU @ Kolorado Festival
Thu. Jun. 30 – Bucharest, RO @ Club Control
Fri. Jul. 1 – Sun. Jul. 3 – Plovdiv, BG @ Wrong Fest
Thu. Jul. 7 – Sat. Jul. 9 – Trencin, SK @ Pohoda
Wed. Jul. 13 – London, UK @ Summer Series at Somerset House
Wed. Jul. 13 – Sun. Jul. 17 – Dour, BE @ Dour Festival
Fri. Jul. 15 –  Riga, LV @ Positivus Festival
Fri. Jul. 29 – Puglia, IT @ Sud Est Indipendente,
Fri. Aug. 12 –  Rees Haldern, DE @ Haldern Pop
Wed. Aug. 17 –  Essen, DE @ Ruhrtriennale
Sun. Aug. 21 – Winterthur, CH @ Winterthurer Musikfestwochen
Thu. Jul. 21 – Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
Sat. Jul. 23 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Asbury Lanes
Sun. Jul. 24 – New York, NY @ Central Park SummerStage
Thu. Sep. 1 – Sun. Sep. 4 – Dorset, UK @ End of the Road Festival
Sat. Sep. 3 – Manchester, UK @ Manchester Psych Fest
Tue. Sep. 6 – Baltimore, MD @ Ram’s Head Live
Wed. Sep. 7 – Richmond, VA @ The National
Fri. Sep. 9 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
Sat. Sep. 10 – Athens, GA @ Georgia Theatre
Mon. Sep. 12 – Birmingham, AL @ Saturn
Wed. Sep. 14 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
Fri. Sep. 16 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk
Tue. Sep. 20 – Tucson, AZ @ Hotel Congress Plaza
Thu. Sep. 22 – Pomona, CA @ The Glass House
Fri. Sep. 23 – San Diego, CA @ Music Box
Sat. Sep. 24 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern Theatre
Tue. Sep. 27 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield Theatre
Wed. Sep. 28 – Sacramento, CA @ Harlow’s
Thu. Sep. 29 – Reno, NV @ Cargo Concert Hall
Mon. Oct. 3 – Boulder, CO @ Fox Theatre
Tue. Oct. 4 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
Fri. Oct. 7 – Lawrence, KS @ The Granada
Sat. Oct. 8 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
Sun. Oct. 9 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
Wed. Oct. 12 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
Fri. Oct. 14 – Columbus, OH @ The Athenaeum Theatre
Sat. Oct. 15 – Louisville, KY @ Headliners Music Hall
Sun. Dec. 4 – Tokyo, JP @ O-East
Mon. Dec. 5 – Osaka, JP @ Club Quattro
Tue. Dec 6 – Nagoya, JP @ The Bottom Line