Axis: Sova announce new album Blinded By Oblivion, share video and tour dates

What happens when you take a band operating within the imposing, steel-grey confines of Chicago and ship ’em out to the sunny beaches of southern California to make a record? You get Blinded By Oblivion.

Axis: Sova use a slew of heady musical inputs to inform a lyrical POV lit up by allegories of social estrangement and personality crisis on Blinded By Oblivion. While that’s not necessarily new to the Axis-verse, the band’s commitment to mutation and evolution led them to welcome (human) drummer Josh Johannpeter to the fold and split town, leaving Chicago to record in a fresh location. Combined with new drum machines, the rhythms found on Blinded By Oblivion weave organic and synthetic beats on every song. This stereo convergence opens space for Jeremy Freeze’s bass and Brett Sova’s guitar to tap the source with unprecedented contrast and brevity, providing a bedrock for their assured vocals to gloriously harmonize.

Thanks to the bold, hi-fi production of Ty Segall, who helped bring the band’s latest vision to life at his Harmonizer Studios, Blinded By Oblivion is at times ferocious; at others, gleamingly diamond cut. The clash of industrial alloy vs. indelible nature is sonically palpable.

Out today, lead single “Trend Sets” has a distinct feeling of ‘by the people, for the people, against the people’ spit out over a breathless 4/4 beat, excitement flowing from gritted-teeth verses to a rushing ah-ha release ever time the chorus flashes, both musically and visually, as presented in the video by Krzys Piotrowski.

It’s the human condition, and we’re all Blinded By Oblivion – coming Oct. 6th on God? via Drag City.