ULTRAPOP

Description

The album reaches the same extremities of sonic expression as the furthest depths of metal, noise, and otherwise heavy counterculture music subgenres but finds its foundation firmly in pop music and pop culture. As is always The Armeds mission, it seeks only to create the most intense experience possible, a magnification of all culture, beauty, and things. The band goes on to explain, crafting vital art means presenting the audience with new and intriguing tensions sonically, visually, conceptually. Over time and through use, those tensions become less novel and effective and they become expectations. The concept of subgenre becomes almost the antithesis of vitality in art itself a fetishization of expectation. ULTRAPOP seeks, in earnest, to create a truly new listener experience. It is an open rebellion against the culture of expectation in heavy music. It is a joyous, genderless, post-nihilist, anti-punk, razor-focused take on creating the most intense listener experience possible. Its the harshest, most beautiful, most hideous thing we could make. ULTRAPOP follows their recent contribution to the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack Night City Aliens and 2018s critically acclaimed album Only Love, which landed on Album of the Year lists from The Atlantic, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Vice, Stereogum, and many more. The album was co-produced by the bands own Dan Greene in collaboration with Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe) and features contributions from Mark Lanegan, Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age, A Perfect Circle), Ben Koller (Converge, Killer Be Killed, Mutoid Man) and many more. Kurt Ballou (Converge, High on Fire, Russian Circles) remains at the helm as executive producer.