Toronto’s post-punk outfit Gloin dropped “Horse Fighting,” the second single from their upcoming sophomore album All of Your Anger Is Actually Shame (and I Bet That Makes You Angry), set to hit shelves via Mothland on March 28.
The track lands with a video directed by Rose Cormier, shot by Ryan Faist, and drenched in analog chaos—glitchy, colorful, and jagged, mirroring the song’s raw edge.
It’s a three-minute burst of feedback, pounding rhythms, and sharp dissonance, layered with crafty basslines, guitar riffs, and synths that twist into an odd-metered, hardcore-tinged post-punk churn.
Gloin call it a reflection on “childhood trauma, shame and public standards,” and it feels like a fist clenched around something unspoken.
The album itself, clocking in at 35 minutes across 12 tracks, kicks off with an industrial thud on “20 Bucks” and doesn’t let up.
From there, it’s a relentless ride: “Bucket of Blood,” “Missed Call,” “controlfreak69,” “The Treatment,” “Horse Fighting,” “Swamp,” “A Body in the Outdoors,” “Sent from my iPhone,” “Salamander,” “Big Boss,” and a French version of “controlfreak69 (VF).”
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Recorded at Palace Sound and Wychwood Sound by Dylan Frankland, mastered by Phil Demetro, it’s a collective effort—half born from electronic sketches, the other half pieced together through jams. The band traded instruments, stitched ideas, and let the grit pile up. The cover, shot by Ryan Faist and designed by Rose Cormier, nods to Gregory Crewdson’s eerie stillness—a desolate scene with childhood toys scattered like clues, hinting at the mundane weight the album carries.
Gloin’s been at it since 2017, four friends—John Watson (guitar, vocals), Vic Byers (bass, vocals), Simon Kou (drums), and Richard Garnham (synthesizers, guitar)—bound by a shared frustration with life’s grind. “We are collectively and consistently inspired by shared misery lol, mainly the mundanity of life and how difficult things have gotten out here,” they say. That tension fuels their sound, tighter and more direct than their 2022 debut We Found This. The lyrics here cut deeper, grimmer, truer to the strain they feel. “Things become harder and harder to do and I think that shows in the music especially in this new release,” they admit. It’s not just noise—it’s the sound of pushing back.
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Thematically, the new album digs into the mess beneath the surface.
It’s about control slipping away (“controlfreak69”), the scars of a warped childhood (“Horse Fighting”), and the leeches who drain you dry (“The Treatment”). Broader strokes hit the daily grind, societal pressure, tech’s chokehold, and the sheer fact of existing. Gloin frame it as “a brutal but most-welcomed therapeutic musical onslaught”—vibrant, jagged, satirical, but never hollow. The title alone jabs at you, daring you to flinch, while the tracks balance paranoia and defiance with a strange uplift.
Track-by-Track
“controlfreak69”:
Controlfreak69 is first and foremost about control and what it means to be in control. The song plays with this concept of control being an illusion, and at any moment you could fall off the deep end. Is control an illusion?
“Horse Fighting”:
Horse Fighting plays upon themes of having a confusing upbringing and what at the time may have seemed normal having a deep impact on how you conduct yourself in your adult life. Without the proper support you may never realize that things you thought were harmless have presented you the problems that you have now.
“The Treatment”:
The treatment’s intro is a reference to an abomination mentioned in a book by author Christopher Beuhlman that depicts this mass of dead bodies that is raiding a town and picking up more bodies as it goes. This ties in to The Treatment as a whole conceptually because it discusses people that leech things they want from you then discard you; fake people telling you what you need to hear.
The rest—still under wraps until March—promises more of that angular post-punk sprawl, frenzied yet catchy, slicing through gloom with noisy hooks. Think Gilla Band’s snarl, FACS’s starkness, Chat Pile’s heft, Model/Actriz’s twitch, or The Psychotic Monks’ haze. Gloin’s not reinventing the wheel, but they’re spinning it hard, leaning into saturated tones and synthetic bite while keeping their electric core intact.
Come April, they’ll debut the set live in Toronto and Montreal, then hit the UK in May for The Great Escape festival and Meltchester in Brighton and Manchester—a long-awaited leap. By year’s end, they’re eyeing Europe.
The album cover ties it together: “a snapshot in time of something mundane, lost and/or forgotten,” they say, shot by Faist to feel nostalgic, heavy, sad. “Maybe you are sad,” they add, leaving it there.
Back home, Toronto’s scene has shifted, they reckon.
“It feels like maybe people have gotten angrier,” they observe, noting a turn from psych’s sprawl to something heavier, rawer. “That’s to do with the state of things, obviously.” Mothland, their Montreal label, gets it—backing oddballs and outliers, a roster that mirrors Gloin’s own bent.
Since their debut, critics have tagged them with Sonic Youth’s cool chaos and Lightning Bolt’s blunt force, but this time it’s less about echoes and more about what’s eating them now.
“All of Your Anger Is Actually Shame (and I Bet That Makes You Angry)” will be available on March 28, 2025, through Mothland.
