Bacchae – Next Time
Today, D.C. post-punk band Bacchae announce their long-awaited follow up to 2020’s Pleasure Vision with new album, Next Time, produced by J. Robbins, along with the title track.
Next Time arrives on July 5, 2024 via Get Better Records.
The band states, “Next Time” is a crunchy, morbid and irreverent heavy-hitter about mental illness. “Tomorrow you’ll be just the same/ squealing like a popped balloon/ everybody pays to play/ one tragedy from total ruin.” It’s a song about being overwhelmed by daily life, feeling disgusted and terrified by your reactions to it, and living in a capitalist society that pushes us dangerously close to falling over the edge. Maybe next time things will work out differently. “Next Time” is a frantic song about depression and shame set to dancing bass riffs and squealing guitars.
Bacchae (“Bock-eye”) have been making eclectic, hooky punk music in DC since 2016. Their sound veers between gnarly dissonance, bittersweet choruses, and melodic earworms. An excellent soundtrack for despairing about the state of it all while channeling the anger to do something about it. Also appropriate for mourning a dying relationship, or envisioning yourself as a literal rat eating trash. Whether you’re into 70s proto punk, 80s synth pop, or 90s hardcore, you’ll find something to love.
Next Time is a lament. Almost every song on the album is about mourning or regretting something that has been lost: work-life balance, a lover, a way of life, your motivation, your mental health, a sense of self. The displeasure of work and the disappointment of the daily grind are topics revisited throughout the album. “Cooler Talk” and “Dead Man” describe the insanity-inducing reality of corporate labor and the misery of going to work. Other songs like “Next Time”, “Drop Dead Gorgeous”, “Try” and “Wicked Fountain” address the dissatisfaction and loneliness of living in a dystopian reality. We get a little goofy with our dance number, “Just a Rat”, and explore love and self-doubt with the spooky and atmospheric “Feeling the Same.” Musically, these songs draw from many punk, post-punk and eclectic influences. As with their 2020 album, Pleasure Vision, Next Time was recorded with punk musician and engineer J. Robbins.
#bacchaeband