Young Knives announce first album in seven years with lead single "Sheep Tick"

"Sheep Tick" arrives after last year's comeback single "Red Cherries", which will also feature on their new LP.

Barbarians will be Young Knives' first album since 2013's Sick Octave. The new LP was written, recorded and mixed by Young Knives at their studio near Oxford.

The duo's Henry Dartnall says of their upcoming album, "Everyone should have a manifesto. This is ours. It’s pretentious as hell, as it should be. But every creative person needs a guiding principle and this manifesto is a reminder not to believe in our own myths or the myths others believe about us."

Dartnall adds, "As with every Young Knives album, me and House always need a good reason to make it. We often start with some high concept that we feel passionate about and use it like a framework to build lyrics and motifs around. As confirmed but self-aware nihilistic miserabilists we often have to dig our way out of a spiralling bleak world view that would make for a super depressing listen. This album is no different. But I think that’s the point of the records we make: how can we turn the worse aspects of humanity into something really fucking entertaining? Obviously there was a lot going on around the world at the time we were writing the record, with the rise of the alt-right and politics designed to divide us. All this fed into a sense that humans are always going to have this battle between our collective existence and the existence of the individual, some days we give and some days we take."

"I read Straw Dogs after having put it off for years because of the hype. It’s something you can’t un-read," explains Dartnall. "Its key point is that no matter what scientific progress we have made, what advances we have made in our understanding of how the universe works, we have not become better humans, we are no less barbaric. I just thought that it was such an undeniable point; we are obsessed with self and social improvement, but we don’t get any better as human beings. What if cruelty to others is just part of who we are? How do we live with that?"

Tracklist:

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