Picking up on the momentum of last year's Any Joy LP, As Friends Rust is back for the attack.
Featuring 5 new tracks, the group's forthcoming Lightless EP is adorned with air-brushed, sci-fi-kissed cover art that vocalist Damien Moyal says echoes the record's themes of existential and cosmic loneliness.
Lightless finds As Friends Rust now joined permanently by bassist Andrew Seward, and the EP was mixed by long-time collaborator James Paul Wisner (Further Seems Forever, Paramore), and mastered by Will Killingsworth (Ceremony, Final Gasp) at Dead Air.
Moyal says the first single from the EP, "Lost in Space," is about "the idea that our aloneness in the universe, in this dark forest, propels much of the violence and desperation we feel. We act so assured in our place in the cosmos, when in fact we are hostages of the sun, utterly powerless, imprisoned by gravity. Earth is just a place. We're here, but against incalculable vastness, are we really?"
I asked Damien if he could have seen himself writing lyrics this heavy during As Friends Rust's early years in the late '90s and early '00s. "Probably not," the singer texted me.
"Earlier AFR lyrics tended to be hyper-personal, probably because at that age I was kind of mired in my own shit and too self-centered to think about extramental affairs, let alone extraterrestrial."
The music video for "Lost in Space" was done by Seppe Dausi, who's worked on a few other projects for As Friends Rust, as well as for Damien Done (Moyal's solo vehicle). "I wrote a treatment for the video, about a couple of amateur astronomers who, wanting to cure the world of loneliness, locate a planet with intelligent life and make contact," Moyal told me.
"Working with Damien was really a collaborative experience, even though we were on opposite sides of the planet," director Dausi said of the music video process. "He’s hands-on and engaged, but also open to input, which made the whole process fun and inspiring. We’d have late-night or early-morning conversations, bouncing ideas and drawings back and forth despite the time difference.
"Damien would send me old movie frames, comic book panels, and even some character designs and animations he did himself. He had a lot of influence on the final characters and the stylistic approach to the black-and-white universe."
From a stylistic standpoint, I asked Moyal how he would compare the material on Lightless versus some of As Friends Rust's previous releases, especially the band's Doghouse Records era. "The overall approach is similar, but the ingredients are maybe distributed in different ratios. There are melodies and hooks, but this EP is a bit more aggressive than past releases - even more so than last year’s Any Joy LP."
To celebrate the release of Lightless, As Friends Rust will be going out on a run of European tour dates with Hot Water Music and Quicksand. If you've followed the band's career you know how much more popular they are there than at home in the States. "We were able to tour there almost immediately, as Goodlife Recordings put out our first couple of releases," Moyal explained when I asked him what he attributed their success in Europe to.
"At the time, Goodlife was to Europe what Victory (once) was in the US, and they had already released a couple of our other bands, Culture and Morning Again. This afforded AFR a bit of a jump start overseas, but the US was vast and sprawling, and the momentum Goodlife gave us in Europe had no real value here.
"So, since touring Europe was pretty much the only time we could count on a hot meal, we went often. We eventually landed on Doghouse and Equal Vision, but in 2002, just as we started to do more in the States, we split up."
Lightless will be out on November 1st via End Hits Records.
Here are the pre-order links:
US store
EU store
UK store
As Friends Rust on social media: Facebook | Instagram
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