KEN mode are currently streaming their forthcoming sixth full-length 'Success' exclusively via Stereogum!
The Winnipeg power trio comments: "Some of you are going to love this, some of you are going to hate it. This is a time warp for us, back to a simpler time; to when we were 15 and excited to be listening to Nirvana, Cop Shoot Cop, the VSS, Drive Like Jehu, and Circus Lupus - and NOT fitting in with anyone we knew. This is the record we as a band needed to make, and as an artist, it is the most proud I am of any piece of art I have been a part of making, both sonically and visually. People will file these things where they want, so pigeon-hole away."
'Success' will hit the stores on June 15th and represents a bold move towards sounds that originally inspired the band at the beginning sixteen years ago. The album can already be pre-ordered in various formats through the Season of Mist shop: Season of Mist - Predefined Search
KEN mode recorded 'Success' with legendary engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, The Jesus Lizard, PJ Harvey) to capture the material in a fully live and analogue session in the band's hometown in November 2014. This set-up brought to fruition the most raw, rock and roll sound this band has ever put forth.
Tracklist:
1. Blessed
2. These Tight Jeans
3. The Owl
4. I Just Liked Fire
5. Management Control
6. A Passive Disaster
7. Failing At Fun Since 1981
8. A Catalog Of Small Disappointments
9. Dead Actors
Rock, noise, math, indie ' KEN mode offer a root to it all on 'Success', locating a common ancestor that's behind all that they do and have done as a band. It's one seriously fermented sound that pervades these recordings, a goldrush of skewed rhythms, corrosive riffs and scorching pickup abuse, so diligently pulled off and inherently important to the band. Their path first appears to be one of complex inspiration, but a lineage soon becomes clear, lighting up a way through concentric circles of legacy that encompasses the full spread of inventive heavinesses that fed in to the grunge estuary, and out in to the open sea of independent labels in the final decade of the last century, where KEN mode first appeared.
'Success' is a funny concept; in its rawest, most pure form, it is entirely relative, and this was the subject KEN mode chose to approach their new album with. Sonically, and lyrically, a shift has been made from the classic spitting of metallic hardcore tinged vitriol, that the band has become known for, to a rawer, more mature, even humourous indie rock aesthetic. In April 2014, the band set out to pay tribute to where they've come from: a salute to both their Canadian Prairie roots, and a time when they first started to care about making music; the burgeoning 'grunge' and Touch & Go/Dischord scenes of the late 80s/early 90s, with bands like Nirvana, Big Black, Cop Shoot Cop, The Cows, Circus Lupus, and Drive Like Jehu warping their teenage minds. Lyrically, the band's fascination with comedy spirals around classical western concepts of "success" - from employment, sex, marriage, religion, socio-economic standing, and particularly the many perceptions people have of how they, and those around them, happen to fit into the world.
Frontman Jesse Matthewson describes his upcoming work as being "a decidedly stripped down northern noise rock apocalypse to be unleashed on the world. Time to take this back to our roots."
Line-Up:
Jesse Matthewson: Vocals & Guitars
Shane Matthewson: Drums
Skot Hamilton: Vocals & Bass
