Leeds-based post-punk band Autobahn have announced the release of their third studio album ‘Ecstasy of Ruin‘.
The follow-up to 2017’s The Moral Crossing, will be out on April 28 via Tough Love. Pre-order your copy here.
If 2017’s The Moral Crossing was a record defined by its dramatic rhythm section, then it’s not insignificant that the 2023 incarnation of AUTOBAHN arrives shaved to a four piece and sans their previous drummer. The change necessitates an evolution. Live drums have given way to drum-machines and sample-based percussion, and with it see the band reconfigure their typically blackened aesthetic into a hardened take on Electronic Body Music. As with their previous record, it’s an entirely self-produced collection, recorded between two self-built studios on a range of analogue equipment, the ghosts of their industrial forefathers haunting the circuits.
Industrial music by its very nature is a physical concern, often placing the human body and its experience in the context of technology, reflecting the varying trevails of late capitalism. AUTOBAHN strive towards some kind of articulation of that conflict.
The band have also aired the album’s lead single and video “Post-History“. Speaking about it, they say:
“Post-history, is a philosophical look of what happens after society ends. Does the concept of the past also come to an end? There would be no consciousness to understand history.
After being introduced to the theory of post-capitalism, I began to believe that all major historical events might be behind us and that my worth as an individual is diminished. It seems there is no escape from the capitalistic beast: fall in line or be forgotten.
This led me to question the point of all the struggle.
Which brings you to think “Who gives a fuck?”.
The video is a nod to experimental filmmaker Takashi Itoh. It depicts the human form, how it can be distorted, and a way to break on through.”
Watch the Craig Johnson-directed video now.
Check out the album’s tracklist and cover art below.
Autobahn ‘Ecstasy of Ruin’ Tracklisting:
- Post-History
- Silver
- Acid Child
- Fields of Blood
- Tension
- Cylinder
- Ecstasy of Ruin
- Breather
- Vanity
- Class War
