Fire Track: N0V3L – “Group Disease”

N0V3L return with news of their debut full-length, NON-FICTION. The album functions as a treatise on modern existence and the perverse parameters within which it’s experienced. It’s a collection of agile, carefully-constructed post-punk, new wave and funk that’s been zapped and warped by an opioid overdose crisis, mental illness, populism, and the merciless onward march of time. NON-FICTION is dark and occasionally danceable, a macabre late-capitalist disco under a pall of confusion. NON-FICTION sees its release across digital retailers May 28 and will be in stores July 9 via Flemish Eye Records.

The album’s leading single “GROUP DISEASE” is a bitter analysis of ingroup/outgroup dogma and the accelerating violence of populism. The song stalks in with a woozy bassline and subdued percussion before needling guitars and mournful piano join. “Obsessed with patterns amidst the madness/A lust for meaning, a search for balance,” sings vocalist Jon Varley. As guitars trade outbursts, he laments: “A group disease to ease despair/Submit, believe, no cross to bear.”

You can pre-order the album HERE.