So Hideous Laurestine

NYC's So Hideous will follow Last Poem/First Light with their sophomore album, Laurestine, on October 16 via Prosthetic. They recorded it with producer Dean Baltulonis (Modern Life Is War, Give Up The Ghost, The Hold Steady) and like on their debut, they were accompanied by orchestral arrangements courtesy of The FIrst Light Orchestra, which now has increased its size to 30 members. Album opener "Yesteryear" is seven and a half minutes of devastating, end-of-the-world type shit, putting screamo, post-rock, and atmospheric black metal in a blender and really letting those modern classical influences shine with the orchestral parts. It's like Deafheaven for the Ecstatic Music Festival crowd. Check it out -- "Yesteryear" premieres below.

So Hideous will also be touring soon with their Prosthetic labelmates Set and Setting, another band who know how to mix the atmospheric and the heavy. That tour kicks off in So Hideous' hometown on August 28 at Saint Vitus. The show is billed as 'Silent Fest' and also features North, Bereft and Sangharsha. Should be a good night all around. Tickets are on sale.

Set and Setting play other shows before and after the run with So Hideous too, including The Fest. Check out their video for "Coping" off last year's A Vivid Memory, with the list of dates and new So Hideous song stream, below...

Guitarist/chief composer Brandon Cruz says Laurestine is a concept album that follows one man's interior journey in the 7 minutes after dying, and adds this about the new song:

As the notes of the opening piano strike the "man" is dying; his heartbeat slowing into the arrhythmic cadence of 7. When the percussion and full band crescendo, he's drawn his last breath; "opens" his eyes only to wake in an unfamiliar place with strong ties to his memories. Lyrically, Yesteryear deals with the blurring of dreams and memory, death as "awakening", fugue state and the strange sensory landscape he walks through prior to finding Laurestine.