SECT, the vegan straightedge supergroup featuring vocalist Chris Colohan (Cursed, Unwell), guitarists Scott Crouse (Earth Crisis, Tooth & Claw) and Jimmy Chang (Undying, Catharsis), bassist Steve Hart (Day of Suffering, Mania For Conquest), and drummer Andy Hurley (Fall Out Boy, Racetraitor), have announced their fourth album, Plagues Upon Plagues, due June 7 via Southern Lord (pre-order). According to the album bio, the title refers to “the literal pandemic, and the metaphorical plague of the political state and the rise of fascism,” and Chris Colohan describes the album as “a funeral rather than a trial.”
“Our scene has already been screaming about the threat of an ecological breaking point and the looming threat of recurrent fascism throughout our whole lives,” he explains. “When both come to pass at the same time and you get the exact world you fought never to see, there are no more alarm bells to ring. You’re just burying your dead. It’s mournful.”
“The first five weeks of the pandemic told me more about where we’re at and where we’re headed than five decades of life, and it rendered most idealism irrelevant, regardless of how selectively we remember it in retrospect,” he continues. “We’re barreling towards the next mass atrocity just as the last century’s fade into the past. I’ve definitely had to let go of the ideal of survival in the wake of the last few years. Wasn’t the world we wanted to see but with all the checks and balances this thoroughly defeated, it’s going to play out however it does from here. Changing any minds at this point is kind of irrelevant – that’s largely the point of this album and the challenges we had writing it.”
The first taste of this album is the sludgy, slow-aced “New Low,” which perfectly captures the sentiments Chris speaks of (“Shit got dark” is the opening line). It’s a sludgy, slow-paced song that matches the subject matter, and it hits pretty hard given the social/political landscape of this exact moment. Listen below.
The band members tracked their contributions in varying locations– guitars and bass were done at Scott Crouse’s home studio, drums at The Hallowed Halls in Portland, and Chris’ vocals in a makeshift vocal booth set up in the Holy Mountain Printing warehouse in Raleigh–and Converge’s Kurt Ballou mixed.
Tracklist
1. No Uncertain Terms
2. New Low
3. Drowning In Sorrows
4. Zerzan Wept
5. #ForeverHome
6. The Lovers Of Life
7. Inventory
8. Six Black Lines