Show Me the Body have announced Alone Together, a new album due July 10 via Loma Vista Recordings, and shared the new single No God. It follows last month’s Dance In The USA and keeps the New York band exactly where they are most useful: halfway between a hardcore show, a subway-platform argument, and a panic attack with rhythm.
No God is not subtle, but subtlety has never been the point with this band. Consequence describes the song as moving from a mosh-ready chorus into a traditional heavy-metal riff for the breakdown, while Stereogum points to its hypnotic, percussive guitars and Julian Cashwan Pratt’s shout-rap delivery. That combination is the Show Me the Body sweet spot: banjo-punk DNA mutated into something industrial, urban, and physically hostile.
The album was produced with Klas Åhlund and Kenneth Blume, according to Stereogum. Åhlund’s name might look strange next to Show Me the Body if you only know him through Robyn’s Body Talk universe, but the tension makes sense. Show Me the Body’s best work has always been about forcing unlikely materials into the same room until sparks start hitting the walls.
Pratt’s own framing makes the record sound less like a pivot than a reduction. In a quote published by Consequence and Stereogum, he recalls Åhlund telling the band: “Those parts only your band could do? You should just do that all the time. All the parts that sound like everybody else, you should just do less.” That is a very good assignment for a band that already sounds like almost nobody else when it stops trying to explain itself.
The No God video, directed by Alex Huggins, stars the masked street racer License and puts Pratt in the passenger seat as traffic turns into another form of pressure. Show Me the Body also start a North American tour with Provoker on May 14, with European dates supporting Deafheaven beginning August 26.
Alone Together runs 13 tracks, with No God sitting early in the sequence and Dance In The USA following two songs later. If those two previews are the operating thesis, the record is likely to be less about polishing the band’s attack than sharpening its ugliest edges until they become hooks.