Meat Wave - New Album "Malign Hex"

Today, Chicago's Meat Wave announce their return with their first album in over five years, Malign Hex, set for an October 14th release via Big Scary Monsters. The trio's - Chris Sutter (guitar, vocals), Joe Gac (bass) and Ryan Wizniak (drums) - first full-length since 2017's universally acclaimed The Incessant is also previewed today with the release of new single 'What Would You Like Me To Do'.

A discordant, pummelling return cut through with sinewy, interlocking guitars, 'What Would You Like Me To Do' finds Sutter picking apart the entitlement of baby boomer men and older white dudes in America. Of the track, he writes:

"'What Would You Like Me To Do is the anti-ode to the baby boomer man. How can, as a society, we navigate the entitlement? The idea for the video started as an instructional dance routine by Ryan. It quickly morphed into something more freaky and free. The video is years in the making. Directed by myself. We usually try to avoid being in the video. But this time was different. We had a lot of fun doing it."

Watch the video for 'What Would You Like Me To Do' - directed by Chris Sutter - here:

The 10-track record, which features ‘What Would You Like Me To Do’ as well as previously released singles ‘Ridiculous Car’ and ‘Honest Living’, was recorded by Gac in 2019 at the band’s rehearsal space and respective apartments. Following The Incessant, Malign Hex is the band’s most cohesive, dynamic and ambitious work to date – “a culmination of what we’ve been doing for 11 years. We’ve been working towards this,” as Sutter deftly summarises. “Our sound in the beginning was consistently very driving,” recalls Gac. “Now, that characteristic is merely a tool we can reach for. I don’t think it completely defines what we’re doing.”

The band spent the last half of 2019 chipping away at the record, choosing to work on it slowly in spurts, as opposed to The Incessant, which was recorded and mixed in just four days. If that feels like an odd move – to veer away from a formula that worked so successfully on The Incessant, which received near-unanimous critical acclaim on release and was dubbed “an album meant for breathless angst, fists in the air, spit in your hair” by The Guardian – it’s one that pays off dividends on Malign Hex: a set of songs that finds Meat Wave at both their most gentle and abrasive, creating urgent and vital punk music that’s unafraid to dial things back and experiment, ready and willing to take a breath amidst the mayhem. Suffice to say, it’s a record of contrasts and juxtapositions.

“We recorded [Malign Hex] the same way we always have— live in a room together,” says Wizniak. “But we allowed ourselves to embellish more and take more chances with extra instrumentation.” And while the band did indeed incorporate more synths, organs and walls of guitar, it provides only nuance and atmosphere, not distraction from what Meat Wave does best. “We moved further away from the principle that we need to recreate every element on the album live,” Gac adds. “There was no shame in adding extra overdubs and different sounds.”

The album’s lyrics centre around themes of lineage; where we come from, and where we’re going. Malign Hex explores a litany of subjects and circumstances – addiction, greed, unreliable memory, obedience – through a surrealist, collage-like lens, loosely following a birth-to-death arc across its 10 tracks.

“A malign hex is something that is pertinent only to you, that is handed down to you, or was raised in you through time: depression, addiction, greed, envy. Everyone wears a backpack full of hexes. It’s heavy and familial. And it’s yours,” Sutter offers. “The meaning of malign is evil or malignant in nature. So, the idea was picking apart what my hexes are. Ironically, being in this band and making this band my life for so long has proved to be one of the hexes, but it’s also tied to more systemic hexes. It’s the evil algorithm that is you.”