“The sing/speak vocals, droning guitars, and intermittent screaming on their new singles, all veiled by an introverted darkness, felt crisp and clean…”
— The Needle Drop (feature)
Los Angeles trio tankerlow have just released ‘SLAGROOM’ (Danger Collective Records), and they’ve just dropped off a suitably unhinged new single to mark the occasion. FORMULA BABY arrives with a P.J. Charles-directed video, and it captures everything thrilling about this record’s sense of freedom and experimentation — built, oddly enough, around a hammered dulcimer loop courtesy of the band’s Kyle Norvell.
The song’s grimier textures have an equally strange origin story. “The chugging train noise was [lyricist/vocalist] Guy [Azulay]’s voice pitched down super low and looped,” explains the band’s Connor Scheff, who engineered the album, on the post-punk-inflected standout. “The screechy sound at the end of the song and part of the sub came from me accidentally leaving my monitors on when I armed his vocal track. The pre-amps’ gain was cranked, so it started feeding back, and I recorded it in.”
‘SLAGROOM’ and its three additional singles — YES, I AM AN ANIMAL, GLORY HOLE, and ERGO/OGRE — have already been racking up praise from The Needle Drop (feature), FLOOD, The Alternative, Treblezine, Northern Transmissions, and more.
There’s an exhilarating, harrowing uneasiness running through tankerlow’s sophomore album, which also doubles as their Danger Collective debut. Ditching the post-hardcore leanings of their first release, ‘SLAGROOM’ instead barrels into an enigmatic, genre-blurring mix of noise rock, industrial, and dance, all anchored by Azulay’s bracing vocal presence. Across ten tracks, the band unlocks new creative chemistry, landing on their most personal and fully realized work yet.
After a lyrically playful debut, Azulay says ‘SLAGROOM’ was “a huge learning experience on songwriting” — one that ultimately helped him find his voice. Lyrically and instrumentally, the record wrestles with duality: light versus dark, right versus wrong, reality versus lies, quiet versus loud. “The album’s concept manifested by looking at my own life, observing what battles were happening inside my head. A lot of my lyrics are based around insecurity and these false ideations of who I am as a person.” That internal war seeps into every corner of ‘SLAGROOM,’ giving the record the charged, engulfing feel of a slow march toward a nervous breakdown.
Built over two meticulous years in the studio, every song here carries weight and intention. With Scheff behind the board, the band had room to chase ideas without rushing toward a finish line. Norvell describes the sessions as “very low pressure and judgment-free. We could control every detail, rewrite and recut songs as they evolved.”
Loud, overflowing, and a little feral, ‘SLAGROOM’ keeps listeners locked in edge-of-their-seat tension from start to finish. “Making this album brought out the best and worst of us. It was a bonding exercise and a learning curve above all else,” Azulay notes. “After months of trying whatever the hell we thought of, and arguing about what should or shouldn’t be ‘tankerlow,’ we found a sound to make our own. One motto stuck with us during the process that kept coming back again and again: How far are you willing to go?”
tankerlow Live Dates
10/12 — Los Angeles, CA — Zebulon
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