Chicago’s Nonagon have been around since the early/mid 2000s and they’ve released three EPs and a split in that time, but they haven’t released a full-length album… until now. Their debut LP They Birds officially arrives next week (3/3) via Controlled Burn Records (pre-order), and you can hear it early, as we’re premiering a full stream of it in this post. Guitarist/vocalist John Hastie tells us:

I know that 18 years is a ridiculous amount of time for a band to go without a full-length LP, but in a way it doesn’t feel that crazy to us. We’ve spent a lot of time prioritizing the other things: writing, practicing, playing shows, building a network, etc. Releasing songs that we weren’t completely sure of would have been an expensive distraction. We were fine being the band that only does EPs.

We thought that this might be another one of those until we sat down and looked at the material. This collection of songs felt more cohesive, confident, and worthy of redirecting the substantial energy and resources it takes to put a record out these days, especially if you want to do it right and on a DIY budget.

I guess the bottom line is that we don’t want to waste anybody’s time. Not ours. Not yours. Not the listener’s. I feel like we’ve succeeded.

If you’re unfamiliar with the band, they write in their bio, “We occasionally find ourselves compared to the likes of Fugazi, Jawbox, Naked Raygun, Drive Like Jehu, The Jesus Lizard, etc… all of which is deeply flattering but makes some sense given our influences and vintage,” and I couldn’t think of a more spot-on list of bands to compare them to. They Birds is a very nostalgia-inducing, mid-’90s-style record, and Nonagon do a lot of justice to the sounds of that era. If you didn’t know any better, you could mistake this as a lost gem of ’90s post-hardcore, and it sounds fresh today too. It was worth the 18-year wait.

The album was recorded by Jon San Paolo at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio and mastered by Albini’s Shellac bandmate Bob Weston. It also samples an excerpt of Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster’s “Postal Slap Fight,” used with the duo’s permission. “We still can’t believe they allowed this to happen,” Nonagon say.

Listen to the new album below…