Post-black metal trio, Still, are graring up to drop their sophomore album, A Theft. The long-player is due out November 15th through emerging new UK label, Floodlit Recordings. The label was founded by Joe Clayton (Pijn, Leeched, Curse These Metal Hands), who is also owner, producer, and engineer at Manchester’s No Studio (Bossk, Mastiff, Underdark, Wode, Wallowing, and many more). Keep reading below to find out more.
Pre-order A Theft here: https://wearestillaband.bandcamp.com/album/a-theft
An ominous drone beckons you in the empty, cold darkness. A faint beacon of light glimmers through the harsh fog. A distress siren screams out, pained and tormented as instruments of distress bellow into life. The path you came from is now a tangled web of thorns. With no way to turn back, you become ensnared within the bleak, suffocating dissonance of Still. This is the sound and immense grip of A Theft. A record you don’t just play, but get swept away into it’s harrowing tide. Across a lean 35 minute runtime, the Hull based trio concentrate all their ferocity, intensity and emotional wrought into their most direct and sharply honed set of songs to date. A lesson in mounting eye-watering tension punctuated with a throughline of discordance and anxiety-ridden freefall. A true amalgam of extreme and post metal subgenres, Still brew together savage contemporary black metal, sludgy atmospheric tones, and a shifting high-velocity impact akin to powerviolence, across non-linear avant structures laced with experimental subtleties and blossoming textured nuance. After the wide acclaim of their abstract debut full-length titled { }, Still have reduced to a trio, with guitarist Fraser Briggs and drummer Jack Green sharing vocal duties. Following their debut and multiple tours across the UK, Still have worked on these sonic maelstroms across a two year period, but were blindsided by personal trauma in the midst of their artistic journey – The sudden loss of Fraser Briggs’ father.
A true exercise in catharsis, Still build on the insidious success of { } with towers of palpable grief rooted in the injustice of having life taken out of one’s hands. This hugely affecting and sudden change has turned and refocused Still to create a more blunt and direct outpouring. A Theft is a record that sounds haunted, with every fibre of hurt, confusion, anger, betrayal, and sorrow clawing at the seams of these eight songs. The subtle promise of deliverance that crept throughout their debut album is expelled. A Theft sweeps aside any notion of resolution and observes, with welling sadness, that nothing lasts forever, most of all hope or family. A new era has begun for Still to upend their trusted method of contrasting harsh energy and ambient disquiet with a redoubling of asymmetric dissonance. “Only Time Will Tell” drops you straight into discomfort, with icy, angular guitars violently gliding over battering blast-beats and thundering bass. Establishing a compositional commonality, Still drop the listener straight into a relentless barrage that rips you out as harshly as it drops you in. The connected flowing centrepiece of “Light” and “Dark” continues to pursue and maraud with menacing speed and malevolence. Only on “Life Eclipses Living” do Still loosen up into a raging sludgy crawl, as Briggs roars his mantra of defeat, “Everyday I am crushed by…” Still conclude with their most powerful composition to date. The fittingly titled “Unresolved” sees Still’s intensity swell and swell to the point where the wheels fall off, the magnitude of grief and catharsis has left the band broken and physically unable to keep going, in a final stride of pure chilling exhilaration; a rush that leaves both artist and listener feeling physically and mentally exhausted.
A Theft tracklisting:
01 Yearn [5:14]
02 Only Time Will Tell [3:19]
03 Light [4:21]
04 Dark [3:07]
05 Oscillate [1:04]
06 Life Eclipses Living [6:16]
07 Small Mercies Of Falling Apart [4:55]
08 Unresolved [6:24]
Still have reunited with their producer, engineer and mentor Joe Clayton at Manchester’s No Studio – a small basement dwelling and vintage gear haven lurking under the imposing shadow of Manchester’s Strangeways prison. Described by the trio as their “unofficial fourth band member“, Clayton has become a trusted observer across the making of this record – as well as taking on the release on his label – carefully capturing Still’s immense outpouring of turmoil, allowing them a space of both inner reflection and undeterred volume. A Theft is not without experimental flourishes; the treated sounds of a droning cello becoming a leitmotif across the entire album. A transportative atmosphere binds these recordings with the snowy winter air that places Still’s promotional imagery. Clayton has gracefully documented the Hull trio at their rawest and most vulnerable, emptying them of every ounce of sweat and gasp of breath akin to the physicality of their live performance. All that claustrophobic heat and shallow breath in turn comes piercing at the seams of this record.
Though A Theft is undoubtedly challenging, uncomfortable and fully confrontational, through all of its pain and horror, this record stands as a memento to loss and to unwavering devotion. Like the album’s finale, these feelings of closure remain unresolved, yet Still offer a small branch of comfort, an acceptance in their internal processing, and the strength for us all to keep moving forwards towards the faint light on the horizon.
“Cherish your loved ones, talk more, spend more time with them. Death is doubled edged; it feels like a loss of both past and future. There is no closure for loss.”
~ Fraser Briggs, Still
Still will be the first band outside of Pijn to release music on the newly founded Floodlit Recordings imprint, strengthening founder and Pijn guitarist Joe Clayton’s desire for interesting, inspiring and leftfield musicians to build a sonic community and a home of shared ethos. A Theft will be released on November 15th on limited run vinyl, CD and cassette, with hand-printed and assembled artwork. The album will be preceded by leading single “Small Mercies Of Falling Apart,” with a UK tour being planned to bookend the record’s release. Alongside heavy Hull founded peers Mastiff and Battalions, Still represent a small core of exciting metal bands emerging from the UK’s East coastal region. Since the wide critical acclaim of their debut album, Still have kept active in bringing their exhilarating and intricate emotional tour-de-force live shows all across the UK. Still performed at ArcTanGent Festival 2022 and have embarked on joint headlining tours with both Wallowing and Torpor. The trio have shared stages with like-minded artists including Agriculture, Glassing, Ashenspire, Hexis, Dawn Ray’d, Wren, Calligram, Hundred Year Old Man, Hidden Mothers and many more.
Upcoming shows
SEP 27 – Gorilla Studios, Hull w/ Malevich + Mastiff + Chewing Glass Collective
OCT 18 – Brew, Hull w/ Bug Facer + Creature Honey
OCT 31 – Billy Bootleggers, Nottingham w/ Inter Arma + Underdark
Previous discography
Karin – Demo – Self-Released – 2017
Reprieve – EP – Trepanation – 2019
{ } – Album – Trepanation – 2021
Still
Fraser Briggs (he/him) – Guitar and vocals
Jack Green (he/him) – Drums and vocals
Adam Williams (he/him) – Bass
Follow Still:
https://linktr.ee/wearestillaband
https://wearestillaband.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/wearestillaband
https://www.instagram.com/wearestillaband/