Often when I'm jonesing for some melodic hardcore, I'll fire up some Bent Blue. The San Diego-based outfit has been around since 2020, marked by their tasty Between Your and You're demo. The band's Where Do Ripples Go? EP was one of my favorite hardcore releases from 2022.
Now part of the growing Indecision Records roster, Bent Blue will be (finally) releasing their debut album, an 11-song collection entitled So Much Seething.
"The experience writing this record felt really different from past records we’ve written," Bent Blue vocalist Tony Betrolino tells me. "Even though our EP Where Do Ripples Go? came out in 2022, we wrote those songs in 2019 and 2020. We’re all a bit older now and have had a lot of ups and downs in our personal lives over the past four years. A lot of the lyrics and the general feeling of the record reflect the output or analysis of those experiences."
"We also have our new drummer on this record, David, who has added new perspectives we hadn’t considered when previously writing. More generally, at 11 tracks, this new record is much longer than anything we’ve previously written. With that many songs, our intention was to write a record we’d want to listen to from start to finish."
Before we go further, check out "The Pearls You Clutch," the first taste of the forthcoming Bent Blue debut LP:
"As a band that tends to fluctuate in sound, we thought it would be cool to lead with a song that was more straightforward and traditional," says Tony about "The Pearls You Clutch" and why they chose to introduce the album with it.
"Lyrically, the song is about the hypocrisy of people who fake shock and outrage to prove their morality. The kinds of bad-faith actors with shallow ideologies who cry victim for the sake of appealing to some dishonest moral talking-point or superficial belief of their in-group."
Tony shares some thoughts on the making of So Much Seething. "Our recording experience was also different than anything we had previously experienced. We had the privilege of working with Colin Knight and Madison Woodward at Paradise Records to record the LP over seven days, which gave us time to slow down in the studio and consider certain parts of the record in ways we simply couldn’t with our previous records. We learned and stretched ourselves a lot with this LP."
With So Much Seething coming out in October, it looks like Bent Blue is planning on some world travel in the near future. "We’re currently organizing a record release show in San Diego for December. We’ll be announcing details for that show in the coming weeks.
"As for touring, apart from some regional weekend runs in the works, we’re excited to announce that we’re finalizing plans for an international tour early next year; we should have more details to share with everyone in the next few months."
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So Much Seething will be out on October 25th via Indecision Records (pre-order).
Bent Blue on social media: Instagram
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