King Sans’ debut opens in a dark room lit by a single lamp. Two figures step out of the shadow. What comes out of their mouths is a menu: rocks for lunch, rocks for dinner. Rubble for the masses. Stones are all you need.
“Sell the Cow” is the Chicago noise punk duo‘s debut LP, out August 21st, and we’re streaming it in full today.
King Sans are Iz (drums, co-vocals) and Jake (guitars, co-vocals), billed as the city’s “cryptids of noisepunk”. They lean into the pun. They’ve been at this since 2023, and “Sell the Cow” has been the destination the whole time.
“I’m so ready and pumped for people to finally get to hear the album in its entirety,” Iz said. “Jake and I are both so proud of it and have put so much energy and love into this. We’ve made so many connections in the community through this one album alone, and I’m so grateful for it, and now we’re finally ready to share it with everyone.”
The physical release is on Dipterid Records. Kevin at Dipterid met the band through a lathe-cut compilation he was organizing around Chicago’s Two-Piece Fest. King Sans submitted “Liar!” for it. Kevin caught their set at the festival and said it was his favorite of the whole weekend. He reached out afterward about pressing the record to vinyl. The album was already coming together, but the band hadn’t planned a vinyl release. That conversation eventually led to this vinyl release.
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The title carries more than one meaning, Iz said, and all of them work together.
Underneath the imagery, the record is about anti-capitalism and the human condition. Iz put it this way: “at the end of the day we’re all just human beings with wants, fears, hopes, etc., and at the bare minimum we should be allowed to simply exist, in a society where it seems that is getting increasingly harder to do and we’re sick of it.”
“Sell the Cow” as a phrase, Iz said, stands in for the pressure to sell out just to survive, even when you’re worth more than that. The literal source is the opening of Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack, forced to sell his only friend, the family cow, because if he doesn’t his family goes hungry. Sacrificing something meaningful because you feel you have no choice.
“It’s a feeling I can guarantee almost everyone in the community has grappled with,” Iz said. “Us included.”
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The title phrase surfaces on “Stonefed“, the album’s fourth track and, Iz said, the one that carries the record’s name in its lyrics. It’s a song about being fed rocks and being expected to smile through it. “There are people who can do whatever they want and are leaving us with nothing,” Iz said, “and we’re all so used to it that it seems normal.” The lyric that names the record sits inside the anger: “How do you like me now? I’m damn broke, gotta sell the cow. My body is carved out. I am Stonefed.”
“Let Me Lie“, earlier in the tracklist, is written from the perspective of someone kept awake by two jobs and still broke: “I’ve got a job for money, I’ve got a job for growth. Two fucking jobs and I’m still damn broke.” Elsewhere in the song, the picture widens: “With the prominence of the modern regime, all has been sucked out of our human experience, and we have to repeat it each day after day after day.”
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“No Diddley“, further into the tracklist, aims the same anger at a simpler point. Iz described it as the album’s clearest statement of “no duh, we’re all people, just let us live it shouldn’t be that complicated.” Iz called the track “an amazing source to put our anger into.”
“Lasting Hold” is where the record turns toward what it thinks the alternative sounds like. Iz described it as a song about people wanting to be loved and accepted, and about the risk of forgetting that feelings, emotions, and love itself matter because everyone is too busy surviving to be alive.
Then there’s “The Floodplain”, the odd one on the LP. Iz called it the reprieve. “It’s a song that feels like you found a clearing in a forest near a stream and sat down to rest,” Iz said. “It reminds all of us that even when everything feels like a struggle, we must take time for ourselves when we can.” The lyric: “Rest now, I’m tired. Been at this now for hours. In the muck and mire. We’re left to find our own.”
The record closes on “Sold.”, which ends where the title started, on the worship of gold: “Gold is a liar. Its prophets sing the twisted songs of desire.”
“Sell the Cow” runs eleven tracks: “Two Figures”, “Jumpstart”, “Let Me Lie”, “Stonefed”, “Dienen”, “Lasting Hold”, “S.Y.D.”, “Liar!”, “The Floodplain”, “No Diddley”, and “Sold.” They call it “delicate cacophony.” The live show is playful and sinister in equal measure.
Physical release via Dipterid Records. Digital distribution via All On Queue.
“Jake and I are so excited to share this with our community,” Iz said, “and we hope that the main takeaway will be that we all need to stick together. King Sans loves you.”
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