Kowloon Walled City announce first album in 6 years, ‘Piecework,’ share title track

Kowloon Walled City recently released their first new song in over six years, "Oxygen Tent," and now they've announced a new album, Piecework, due October 8 via Neurot Recordings/Gilead Media. A press release gives more background on the LP:

Singer/guitarist Scott Evans and guitarist Jon Howell, the main songwriters, self-imposed restrictions to push themselves creatively—“restraining ourselves into oblivion,” as Howell puts it.

Evans was dealing with the loss of his father during the writing of the album. He found strength in the women in his life, especially his maternal grandmother, who worked at a shirt factory in Kentucky for 40 years while raising five kids. The album name (and title track) is a nod to her line of work—and her quiet resilience. The themes of absence and death, surrendering to aging, and familial strength and love are all encapsulated in album artwork by photographer Melyssa Anishnabie—the tattered beauty of an abandoned home reveals the faint edges of where life used to be. Evans likens it to watching a grandparents’ house fall into disrepair. As with all previous KWC releases, Evans recorded and mixed Piecework (his impressive recording CV includes Thrice, Yautja, Great Falls, Ghoul, Town Portal, and many others) and like previous albums Container Ships (2012) and Grievances (2015) the tracks were recorded live at Oakland’s Sharkbite Studios, with minimal overdubs.

The album features "Oxygen Tent" as well as the just-released title track, which is another fine offering of spacious, discordant post-hardcore. Listen below.

Tracklist
1 Piecework
2 Utopian
3 Oxygen Tent
4 You Had a Plan
5 Splicing
6 When We Fall Through the Floor
7 Lampblack