Sunken Seas' new album Glass out today
With the blistering new album 'Glass' hitting the digital shelves around the world today, Auckland-based post-punk
upstarts Sunken Seas are charting their most impressive and intense territory yet. Now two LPs and one EP into their
career, the band have established themselves as a fixture in the international shoegaze scene, offering a glacial,
intoxicating slant on the long-lived virtues of post-punk. The band doesn't do things by halves - Sunken Seas' 2012
debut Null Hour was a searing full-length released to critical acclaim, even a nomination for the 2013 Taite Prize - New
Zealand's most prestigious music prize. Graham Reid (New Zealand Herald) described Null Hour as “...an invitation into
cathartic noise, chest-thumping volume and an impressive ride into darkness", awarding the record four-and-a-half stars
out of five.
The new record sees the band divulge an uncompromising, concise series of new tracks, emblematic of their steadfast
progress towards being one of the more intense musical outputs of the Antipodes. Album single 'Clear' is a dense,
pulsating cacophony; throbbing waves of searing, dissonant guitar and relentlessly piercing drums backdrop a spitting
vocal presence from singer Ryan Harte. The overarching themes of the songs push forth a sound which is cold, but as
Harte puts it "a drier cold" - the result of six days writing in the bone-rattling cold of the Aorangi Forest.
With an abrasive live show awash with impressive physicality as they play out their carnal dirges, Sunken Seas are
unwilling to shy away from the stage like many of their shoegazing counterparts. A national tour in support of the
scorching 'Glass' kicks off at Wellington’s Valhalla on 17 October. Later in October the band hit the deep South,
playing Christchurch’s Darkroom on 30 October, and Dunedin’s Chick’s Hotel for a suitably creepy Halloween show on 31
October. It all rounds off at Sunken Seas’ current city of residence, Auckland, on 6 November at Wine Cellar.
Don’t be afraid to get caught in the undertow - take a listen to Sunken Seas new record here:
ENDS