Dive Exclusively Here Into Thrilling Heavy Mania Of The New Walking Bombs Album

Imagine if your favorite grunge rock band added a noise artist and began performing music that sounded at home coming from a hardcore punk act. Based in upstate New York, Walking Bombs come roaring out with accessible but trippy mania on their new album Sphinges, Sibling Selves And Queens, which traverses that unique ground. The record packs an astonishing whirlwind of styles united — and really, defined — by a readily apparent unyielding passion. Check it out for the first time exclusively below ahead of its release Friday, August 23 via Nefarious Industries.

When veering from the opening’s noisy psychedelic rock into harsh, thrashing metal (and a lot more) later on, project mastermind Morgan Evans keeps his project’s boat upright by zeroing in on the struggles of and ways forward for living outside of boundaries of “normalcy” in present-day society, defined as it remains by some people’s favorite identity standards. Out there beyond that choking tumult, there’s a whole wide world of real human experience with places for everyone — and this new record captures that sense quite powerfully.

There’s an incredibly poignant sense that pops up multiple times in the lyrics in various incarnations centering on an expression featured closer to the beginning, when Morgan sings with strikingly smooth heavy vocals about an aim “to remind you that you’re alive.” You might not have even known you needed such a reminder before hitting play here, but the refreshing, cohesive, and ultimately quite powerful musical weirdness on the album drives the reminder. Lyrically, the album packs a range from embracing nonbinary gender identity to anger at those tone policing or outright perpetrating violence against those who dare to stick out — and it all lands powerfully.

Evans shares:

This record is funny in that it is one of my most ‘real’ and also one of the most ‘escapist’ at the same time. I mean, the first lyric of the album is talking to a hallucinatory duck about the ‘60s and astrology and how the world is spinning through space, so everything is always kind of absurdly surreal in life.

Overall, the album is about how regardless of what is going on we have to kind of work through the mysteries of self and try to lift one another up, but also keep our boundaries when being pushed around or shit-on. Learning how to be your own new best friend or who you’ve wanted to be but maybe held back, as well. In that sense, it also has some very real issues discussed. Trans military rights, public perception, self-determination and multi-gender issues, hateful religious fundamentalism versus real open-minded love, music scene backstabbing, tone policing, the daily grind, and the dangers but also liberations in counter-culture pseudo-vampirism all get touched on.

This one also features a lot of friends I have known for many, many years – a blessing. It is also dedicated to several various genre artists and friends who died during the making of the album, which only added to my continued drive to try to tackle different sounds and make use of the lifetime I have been given to not hold myself back creating within the lines.

Check it out below! The record features a wide array of guest performances, including from Dava She Wolf (Star & Dagger, Cycle Sluts From Hell), Alison Babylon (The Beautiful Bastards, Oblivion Grin), David Brenner (Gridfailure), Elizabeth “Le Fey” Gomez (Globelamp), Jem Violet, Nate Kelley (Shabutie, Laterals, PPSP, Kentro), and Justin Pierrot (Stormland). Julie Catona of Future Illustrations crafted the cover art.