LIFE return with ‘Friends Without Names’ – a shapeshifting first glimpse from their third album due next year – and it demands your attention. The track was premiered by Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 Music recently and is available to stream everywhere, watch the video below
Recorded in the dead of night with producer Luke Smith in a Chapel below Hull, the track hums with a dark, brooding and passionate atmosphere.
Vocalist Mez Green performed the trance-like vocals whilst Luke conducted the band in the round inside of the Chapel’s walls…
“Friends Without Names is the anchor and blueprint for our next record. In a remote part of Eastern England, close to the river Humber, we performed this track as if we were in trance; vibrating in a constant musical crescendo. Our aim was to push ourselves and harness differing time zones whilst giving in to the moments of beauty, horror, love and chaos depicted by the song’s lyrics.”
When the pandemic gripped the world in March 2020, LIFE were still in the midst of promoting their acclaimed second album – A Picture Of Good Health (Sept 2019); they had just completed an arena support tour with Kaiser Chiefs in the UK, a triumphant main stage appearance at Rockaway Beach and flown to New York for New Colossus Festival ahead of a packed SXSW and a US tour with IDLES. They scrambled home on the last plane back from New York on 17th March.
Picking up the pieces of their album campaign LIFE performed a series of live stream shows from their studio in Hull - the Moon Factory - and published a community driven art and prose book that encouraged global collaboration during the pandemic whilst also embracing the time to write their next record which saw the band re-unite with producer Luke Smith (Foals, Everything Everything, Depeche Mode) and mixer Claudius Mittendorfer (Parquet Courts, Yak, Weezer).
LIFE emerged back on stage this July before a tour for the Music Venue Trust’s Revive Live campaign in September.
Their rescheduled UK tour from April 2020 is now taking place in November & December 2021 and has been transformed into the start of a brand new album campaign, giving fans the first chance to hear the fruits of their labour during the pandemic ahead of the release in Summer 2022.
30 Nov - Bodega, Nottingham
1 Dec - O2 Institute 3, Birmingham
2 Dec - Waterfront, Norwich
3 Dec - Esquires, Bedford
5 Dec - The Cavern, Exeter
6 Dec - Exchange, Bristol
7 Dec - Lafayette, London
8 Dec - Joiners, Southampton
9 Dec - The Green Door Store, Brighton
11 Dec - Trades Club, Hebden Bridge
12 Dec - O2 Academy 2, Sheffield
13 Dec – Cluny 2, Newcastle
14 Dec - Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh
15 Dec - King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow
17 Dec - The Welly, Hull
18 Dec - YES, Manchester
Tickets for all shows: https://www.lifeband.co.uk/
A Picture Of Good Health was BBC 6 Music’s Album Of The Day, BBC Radio 1’s Album Of The Weekend and was one of BBC 6Music's Albums of The Year; all four singles from the album were play-listed at 6Music, and the band were nominated for two AIM Awards 2020 - Best Live Act and Best (Difficult) Second Album.
In 2019, earning a reputation for their live performances, LIFE packed out festival stages and tents across the UK and Europe including Glastonbury, Latitude, Kendal Calling, Paleo Festival (CH), Rock For the People (CZ), Pukkelop (BE), Best Kept Secret (NL) and many more.
Furthermore the band played a blistering BBC Maida Vale live session for Jack Saunders, put on a memorable album launch in a Camden kebab shop, supported IDLES on a sold out two-week tour before embarking on their own sold out headline tour through the UK and Europe.
Internationally, they have showcased at SXSW twice and Reeperbahn (where they signed their publishing deal with Bucks Music) and Nouvelle Prague and France, they appeared on national TV - Arte - alongside Primal Scream & IDLES for Jehnny Beth's ECHOES show, featured in Les Inrocks Magazine as part of a 6-page feature, playlisted at Oui FM and amassed hundreds of other radio plays across the country.
Recent Press
"Every song LIFE put their name to has electricity coursing through it’s veins’’ CLASH
"This raging, unrelenting dose of sonic chaos is a thunderous reminder of why guitar music is the worlds greatest creation" – Dork (4/5)
“this record is indispensable” – DIY (4.5/5)
“a wiry outpouring of internalised frustrations” – The Most Radicalist
“Thoroughly satisfying, a tremendously inspiring album.” - Louder than War
“A stand-out record” – The Line Of Best Fit (8.5/10)
“A beautiful piece of work that deserves our attention” – IDLES
“tightly wound guitars and lyrical zingers combine for maximum '80s Peel session effect” – MOJO (4/5)
"It's the album the Hull punks deserve" – Upset (4/5) “One of the only saving graces of the omnishambles of a time we live in is the emergence of bands that have something to be genuinely angry about. Few bands better epitomise that than LIFE” – NARC (4.5/5)
“It’s a ripper, as the shrill synth-tone guitar that accents the high-end vocals somehow also serves as a stand-in down beat.” – Stereogum
“a dose of Brutalist post-punk that refuses to pull its punches.”– CLASH
“a surreal, rough urban wormhole” – Paste