Wreck and Reference Return with Fifth LP Stay Calm, Incoming August 22 on The Flenser

STAY CALM:

How can one stay calm when it is inherently terrifying to be alive in the first place? For Felix Skinner and Ignat Frege, staying calm means facing the void head-on. 

Fifteen years ago, two men emerged from an overheated garage in the harrowing wastelands of California with a singular vision for the future of dark, intense music: tortured samples, blasted acoustic drums, and a distinct lack of guitars. They walked straight past the orthodoxies of metal music and into the weird new dawn of electronic experimentalism. Since then, heavy music has evolved – yet Wreck and Reference's vision remains fresh, transgressive, and undeniably existential in its pressure against the current breed.

A lot has happened in the world since Wreck and Reference's last full-length, Absolute Still Life. Between a global pandemic, swirling political environment, and the rise of artificial intelligence, their new album Stay Calm is over five years in the making. It is in constant flux, a record that refuses to be inoculated, assimilated, or inured to the atrocities of daily life. It asks: is it fruitless to stake a claim in the all-too-fleeting ordeal of existence? Whatever the answer, embrace the implications.

Listen / share new singles Burning.
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