Listen: Battle Lines – Colonies [Premiere]

Leeds’ Battle Lines first showed themselves with a limited 7” single, ‘Hearts’ back in May, but its reach and reception proved, well, limited.

New track ‘Colonies’ carves out strong, vicious melodies, both vocally and with layers of crashing guitars. Everything is taken very seriously, and Battle Lines are all the more enthralling for it. You don’t suspect vocalist Carly Humphries sings ‘you mean nothing to me’, over and over with even a slice of satire intended.

The track isn’t a particularly comfortable listen, rather one that is rewarding and fulfilling if consumed with a little effort. The lyric ‘his dreamy eyes lay into me, blistered me with insecurity’, is unsettling in the most infectious way, and delivered with a dark assurance worthy of comparison to Portishead’s Beth Gibbons.

Battle lines play at Beacons, Reading and Leeds festivals this month.