Belgian five-piece Whispering Sons follow the recent announcement of their second album ‘Several Others’, with two new live videos of their recently released tracks Satantango and Surgery.
The entrancing new sessions perfectly exemplify the powerful vehemence of the band’s live shows, capturing their raw emotion and brooding energy. Although it’s coming up to a year since they last played a gig – they were the support for Editors on their European tour at the beginning of 2020 – Whispering Sons haven’t forgotten their power as performers. Along with the record, they’ll be releasing each single along with a corresponding live session, to be compiled and released as a live film along with the record which features visuals that centre on a recurring image of a woman dancing and slowly transforming into something inhuman, eventually leading to destruction and purification. It brings us back to the central intensity at the core of Whispering Sons; a constant, uncompromising drive for something more. Watch the live videos for Satantango and Surgery via YouTube below.
Satantango and Surgery see the band distil the ferocious post-punk aesthetics from which their sound first emerged and pushes them to the absolute limit. The tracks toy with the delicate balance between moments of fragility and their capability for relentless and driving intensity, experimenting at the point in which no wave, industrial and avant-punk converge. The anxious and propulsive instrumentation is eerily abstracted, whilst Fenne Kuppens’ words, sung in a dramatic and distinctive low register, inject that extra central tension and darkness.
The band also released a limited edition 7″ of their earlier single Surface last month, which sold out of all 500 copies in half a day, as well as earning plaudits from a vast array of publications. There was also a session released for that single – watch here.
‘Several Others’ album details
‘Several Others’ marks Whispering Sons first full-length release since their 2018 debut ‘Image’, which saw them garner early support at press and radio as well as tallying up millions of streams for their dark and unique blend of experimental and frenetic post-punk. Similarly, prior to lockdown, their infamously ferocious live shows had also seen them begin to firmly cement themselves as a must-see live band playing alongside the likes of The Murder Capital, Patti Smith, The Soft Moon and Croatian Amor.
Having retreated to the Ardennes last summer to work on the new material, the band took the strongest parts of their earlier work and refined them even further with a strong focus on their greatest strength – sheer, unpretentious intensity. Whispering Sons have constantly outstripped their own expectations. With every momentous step forward that they take, they redraw the boundaries of what they consider possible then duly go beyond them yet again.
‘Several Others’ track listing
1. Dead End
2. Heat
3. (I Leave You) Wounded
4. Vision
5. Screens
6. Flood
7. Surface
8. Aftermath
9. Satantango
10. Surgery
‘Several Others’ is out 18th June via [PIAS] – pre-order here
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