Statues Released New Album “Black Arcs Rising”

90’s Alternative Rock was never anything else then great pop-songs filtered through screaming guitars. The Swedish based power trio Statues can be filed under your typical SST band. Simple, impulsive, eccentric, and just wonderful. They could be that third band that played somewhere in the midwest together with Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth during the late ’80s. Rock has perhaps never been this catchy. Statues are a tornado on a collision course with your hometown.

”Black Arcs Rising” is the third studio album by Swedish rock trio Statues. Recorded at Svenska grammofonstudion in Gothenburg, this 12 track full-length release brings back the imperishable soundscapes of 90’s alternative rock while showcasing Statues’ melodic, direct, and intense approach to songwriting. ”Black Arcs Rising” is produced and mixed by Christian Ramirez who also adds additional guitar on the tracks ”Perfect Storm”, ”Sardonic Grin”, and ”Eyes in the Sky”, and mastered by Magnus Lindberg. The album features guest vocals by Per Stålberg on ”Phantasm”, ”Dead of Summer”, and ”Hiding in a Hole”, and art direction by Joel Dunkels. As with Statues 2020 album ”Holocene”, ”Black Arcs Rising” is released by Swedish independent label Lövely Records.

We recorded the album in the Swedish gramophone studio in Gothenburg. The time before we got some kind of hubris and recorded 20 songs, but ended up with 12. We worked non-stop the entire studio time of 5 days and ate, slept and showered with the instruments. Johan triggered the alarm the first thing he did and a microwave oven and an amplifier caught fire. The Cat People soundtrack and Neu went hot on the stereo.

The title warns of worse times. Black Arcs can be seen in a chart, but it can also mean that there are black arcs rising from the ground that warn of worse times. Our texts are often prophetic by accident. The last record, Holocene, had a song called Lockdown and then came the pandemic. The lyrics are as usual of the darker kind, but there is also a kind of black humor in the absurdity described. If you do it wrong, things will go to hell and therefore it must be warned about the madness that exists. It may already be too late to save the world as the doomsday clock is close to midnight, but by pointing to the absurdities of environmental destruction, consumerism, capitalism, the annexation of other countries and an unwillingness to change behavior, we are doing what we can to encourage change.

”Black Arcs Rising” is released on May the 5th, 2023. The album will be available on all streaming platforms and in two color variants on vinyl; transparent green vinyl with red splatter, and solid white vinyl.