New York's industrial punks, Pop. 1280 return with their fourth full length and first in three years. The band's next record, Way Station, will be released December 6th, 2019 on Weyrd Son Records, and was just introduced with a gloomy number, the menacing Under Duress which finds the band taking a minimal approach, making the most out of drum machines and samplers, after the departure of their drummer, Andrew Chugg.
The band's lineup on Way Station consists of founding members, Chris Bug and Ivan Lip, alongside Matthew Hord on synths, and Scott Kiernan on additional guitar who is also responsible for the album's artwork.
"Under Duress started out as just a drumbeat that sounded like it had a song inside of it," the band comment on the newly revealed song. "We layered synthesizers and samples onto it and took it into the studio. There was an upright piano there, and spontaneously we decided to play that on the intro and throughout the song and it affected the mood incredibly. The swells of analog synth and samples that bounce off each other like waves after the choruses really affect us and are very satisfying to play live.
Lyrically, this song is very open to interpretation, but it’s about losing people to death, empathy for them and for the other people who were close to them. It’s also about our inability to fully know another person’s experience and the frustration, comfort, guilt, and hopelessness that this can create. This feeling can even extend to how humans seem to look at huge issues that affect all of us. There’s hurting and empathy, but then a feeling of hopelessness and an inability to grasp the vastness of our problems. The car crash in the song was a real event, but stands as a symbol for that moment that changes everything, and we show up on the scene later to try to figure out what happened and how to move forward."
Cover photo by Scott Kiernan
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