It’s been almost a year since the release of the latest epic from orchestral post hardcore / screamo / post metal blender RESPIRE, and it has not lost any of its appeal. Today, we’re stoked to give you their newest musi video for the album closing ouvre “Catacombs Part II”, produced by Vanessa Gloux who also oversaw the band’s clips for Cicatrice and To Our Dead Friends. Watch above and be sure to check out our late 2020 Tour Special at this location.
The new cinematic visualizer arrives as the band has signed to Dine Alone Records, with both a digital re-release of the nine-song album available now and a vinyl version arriving in early 2022.
“’Catacombs Part II’ is about the ego’s destruction of nature, the collective, and inevitably, the self,” explains Egin Kongoli.
“The human condition has long created false idols in its image, forsaking the natural world we co-inhabit for our self-gratification and self-aggrandizement. Our delusive mania for man-centric order now threatens to dislodge the entire pendulum of civilization and society. We have no one to blame but ourselves and our own egos. Our only salvation lies in community, in nature, and in finding what it means to live authentically as a collective.
“The Toronto sextet come from the world of screamo, but their sound also draws on black metal and shoegaze and post-rock, sometimes all at once. Respire can be majestically beautiful and punishingly fearsome, and those tendencies never seem to be at war with one another. Instead, they’re parts of the same whole.” – Stereogum
With an army of collaborators in tow, Respire have independently released two critically-acclaimed albums: Gravity and Grace (2016) and Dénouement (2018). Black Line weaves an anti-fascist narrative of redemption against the backdrop of impending global climate catastrophe.
Written over two years and produced over six months, Black Line finds Respire turning away from the sickness of the self and onto the sickness ailing the world. Yet despite its towering inferno of anguish, Black Line is a call to arms – to burn away the ugliness that threatens to divide and destroy us, to reclaim agency in a world spiraling out of control, to find beauty in destruction and hope in rebirth.
Respire is Ben Oliver (bass / voice), Travis Dupuis (drums), Darren Scarfo (guitar / voice), Egin Kongoli (guitar / voice / vibraphone / synth / banjo), Rohan Lilauwala (guitar / voice / vibraphone / glockenspiel / synth) and Eslin McKay (violin / viola / voice / piano).
Respire have announced a trio of Canadian tour dates:
November 11 Cambridge, ON Rhythm and Brews
November 12 Toronto, ON The Garrison
November 13 Montreal, QC La Sala Rossa
