Four years have passed since Young Knives’ last studio outing – 2020’s aggressive and philosophical look at humanity’s propensity for hyper-violence, 'Barbarians' – and during this time the band have taken a step to consider the changing of the world around them, their place in it, and the sometimes-futile pursuit of controlling what it is that we leave behind when we’re gone.

Music fans will pick-up on the tongue-in-cheek use of the word "landfill" as an album title from a band that emerged during the post-indie-rock-revival of the 00s. But rather than dwelling on the derogatory landfill stick that has sometimes comes to beat them, Young Knives instead use this coming phase of their career to contemplate the nature of existence and how best to catalogue it through song. As lead singer and guitarist Henry Dartnall puts it, “it’s a record is about letting things go before they are taken from you, including the carefully curated images of ourselves. Embracing everything the world throws at you and not taking it to heart.”

Fans of Young Knives may be forgiven for thinking that 'Landfill' may be about to enter nihilistic territory, and with the band being evicted from their long-time home and studio during the recording process it is true to say that the album is imbued with a fear of the unknown, as adrenaline stokes the fires of vitriol. However, the record is far more concerned with retaining a philosophical outlook on how we view the passing of time, best exemplified by lead single ‘Dissolution’, which is partly inspired by the Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy quote “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” Dartnall expands: “I love ideas like this. What an amazing way to present such a deep idea but also make it fun. I just wanted to experiment with doing our version of that. You can’t force ideas on people, you can just suggest them and leave them hanging in a way that people might one day consider if they feel like it.”

Opening up more about the single, he continues: "This song is kind of dumb. The words are about the dissolution of the ego or ego death; a thing that appears in eastern religions and was written about in Joseph Campbell’s “A Hero’s Journey”. It’s the refocusing of your attention on the part of you that never becomes yesterday and can never become tomorrow, or something like that. It’s very similar to what people report from psychedelic experiences too. The problem is that writing and performing rock music is very much rooted in the world of the ego, so the idea of my big ego mouth shouting words about ego death is ridiculous. But then I thought that contradiction was kind of fun too."

We recorded the song to an old tape machine as a throwaway experiment. The tape we used was from a car boot sale and all perished and dusty. The channels of the tape machine kept failing because they were all clogged up with tape oxide. It was a live take and we did it with our friend’s Silke and Max Blansjaar playing drums and piano. It was also recorded at the end of our time in the studio we have had since we started together, so we were in the middle of packing it down. It felt like we were dismantling everything about our band and music so it all made sense at the time and felt very apt"

As a parting thought on the idea of identity and legacy, he offers: “We often think we have to fight the world to get success and legacy, or even just security and other such weird concepts. But even the most successful people in history have only postponed their second death (the last day someone says your name) by 500 - 2000 years tops. After that you are 'Landfill' FOREVER. So why do we do it to ourselves?”

TRACK LISTING

1. A Memory Of Venom
2. Ugly House
3. Cause & Effect
4. People From The Second Way
5. Dissolution
6. No Sound
7. Your Car Has Arrived
8. Completely Gone
9. Love The Knives
10. Fresh Meat

Barbarians was written, recorded and mixed by Young Knives (brothers Henry Dartnall and The House of Lords) in their studio near Oxford, UK. John Gray’s book Straw Dogs inspired the brothers to dial into the ultra-violent, brutal nature of human beings. Our progresses in science and knowledge have not made us any less barbaric: our entertainment is obsessed with it, our world is full of it. What if cruelty to others is just part of who we are? How do we live with that?

Building on a base of loved hits from their early work last decade (Voices of Animals and Men, Superabundance, Ornaments from the Silver Arcade) and the metamorphosis of 2013’s Sick Octave, Barbarians is a leap into sonic experimentation by a band who love to confuse and entertain in equal measure.

TRACK LISTING

1. Swarm
2. Society For Cutting Up Men
3. Jenny Haniver
4. Red Cherries
5. I Am Awake
6. Holy Name ‘68
7. Barbarians
8. Sheep Tick
9. Only A God
10. What I Saw

White Sands, the new single from Young Knives and recent winner of the BBC 6 Music Rebel Playlist, is the second single to be taken from Young Knives’ widely acclaimed fourth studio album Sick Octave.

Released on 7” white vinyl limited to 150 copies, each sleeve will be handmade by the band and feature an individual close-up photo of a grimy nook or cranny of the Young Knives studio. No two sleeves will be the same.

The B-side is an exclusive new track called I Only Want Your Love. Lead singer Henry Dartnall says about White Sands “This song highlights our new direction – industrial production, disquieting synth breaks, very loud guitars. It’s also one of our favourite songs on the album. White Sands has a very important message hidden within its seemingly vacuous exterior. When we’ve worked out what it is we will tell you. It’s something about hedonism, the military and the power struggle between Western values and the rest of the world.”

"Young Knives are Henry Dartnall (me), The House Of Lords and Oliver Askew. I’m the big cheese in the band. I write a lot of the songs, play guitar and sing. The House Of Lords is my brother, and he plays bass and keys and sings a lot. He has a cool stage name, so fickle people tend to think he is the best in the band. Ollie plays drums and sings.

Our first album Voices of Animals and Men was really popular! We had three singles entering the UK Top 40 and the album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2007. In 2008 we released Superabundance, we got a couple of Top 40 singles and the album included our most synched track Turn Tail; something to do with the big string section, I reckon. Then we decided very much that we needed to get away from major label pressures as it just didn’t suit our temperament, and although it may have been a naïve move, we decided to start our own label, Gadzöök. In 2011 we released our third album Ornaments from the Silver Arcade, and this felt like the last record in a trilogy. This record has some of our favourite songs to play live, like Vision In Rags and Woman.

Sick Octave has been a new start for us. It has definitely been the most fun record we’ve ever made. We almost didn’t make it a Young Knives record as it feels so different from what went before. But that would be a lie; it is totally a Young Knives record."

Young Knives return to their noisey DIY roots with new EP - as lead singer and guitarist Henry Dartnall explains “For some reason when you are working with record labels it’s an assumption that you book into a £500 per day studio and a producer tells you what is wrong with your music and makes it better for you. I know it’s a clicheì but after these sessions we have always felt there was no good reason why we couldn’t have done it ourselves like we always used to."

In terms of drastic reinventions, it’s up there with when Dexy’s’ Kevin Rowland started wearing a wedding dress, albeit a rather more appealing one. “We have tried to make a record that will mess with peoples expectations of us,’ Thomas ‘The House Of Lords’ Dartnall says. “We wanted to make something dark and nasty, something industrial, synthetic, crass but with a sprinkling of pretty shit.”

Some of it sounds like Kraftwerk. Some of it sounds like a late 1990s computer games console being forced into a food processor. Some of sounds like experimental Blur. Some of it sounds like The Fall. Some of those riffs do sound a bit like Gang Of Four still, actually. It’s the most intriguing, dark, out there yet still instantly lapel-gripping music the band has ever created. Young Knives under the bed sheets.

Following on from their critically acclaimed debut album, "Voices Of Animals And Men", Young Knives release their hotly anticipated follow up. A muscular clatter of pulsing guitars, head-spinning percussive thuds and harmonic, brotherly vocals provide the backbone to a rich throng of giddy, excited ideas and ageless, wry lyrical themes.