Titus Andronicus have a new album, The Will To Live, on the way. They’ve shared “(I’m) Screwed,” “Give Me Grief,” and the Cock Sparrer cover “We’re Coming Back” from it so far, and today they’re back with another single, the rousing and grizzled 7-minute “An Anomaly,” which climaxes with a guitar solo delivered by Partner’s Josée Caron.
“The titular ‘anomaly’ refers to the perversion of certain ‘natural’ impulses that have occurred within us humans upon taking ourselves out of the food chain, and the natural world in general,” Patrick Stickles said in a statement, continuing:
A lion killing and eating a wildebeest is not an act of evil, or even malice. Such imperatives are programmed into the very core of the wild animal. This drive exists within us also, but we have gone astray in not only holding on to this primal thirst for violence beyond the point of its utility, but expanding upon and fortifying it by way of our ever-more terrible technological advances, up to and including the invention of the atom bomb. If you want to know the true nature of that which we call ‘the Devil,’ that is where I would start.
“An Anomaly” comes with a music video directed by Stickles that was shot guerilla-style during his honeymoon in Paris. “It’s been clear for many years now that, in Paris, Titus Andronicus can’t get arrested,” Stickles joked. Watch and listen below.
The Will To Live is out 9/30 via Merge.
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