A few years on from riding their distorted Dissolation Wave, long-running doomgazers Cloakroom have unveiled plans for their next LP. The Indiana trio have announced that their Last Leg of the Human Table is out February 28th through their new label home, Closed Casket Activities, and they’re promoting the release ahead of time with a new video for album track “Bad Larry.”
The new song arrives a couple months on from Cloakroom’s previous single, “Unbelonging,” which will likewise appear on the new album. The latest track scales back the paint-stripping approach of Cloakroom’s general ethos for a more echo-laden, retro-western space-pop sound, above which vocalist-guitarist Doyle Martin tunefully describes the song’s titular figure.
“It was written about a fabled character out of folklore like ‘Diamond Joe’ composed by Baldwin ‘Butch’ Hawes… if that’s who even wrote that song first,” Martin explained in a statement, adding of his own lore-building, “Bad Larry roams free and wants for nothing; living a life of experience and lives by his own rules and dying on his own terms; a life to vilify or envy.”
The eight-song Last Leg of the Human Table was recorded in December of 2023 between Chicago, Illinois’ Electrical Audio facility and Rec Room Recording in Des Plaines, Illinois. Engineer Zac Montez (Whirr, Turnover) was behind the boards “smoothing out the rough and turning up the quiet.”
The album is said to work with elements of pop, shoegaze, doom, post-punk, folk, and incorporates a sample of an old song from post-disco experimenters Was (Not Was), as well as a NASA recording “of the humming of Saturn’s rings.”
While it is their shortest full-length release, Last Leg of the Human Table apparently deals in heady topics like “what it means to be human,” “the high cost of the human experience,” and how “America has lost its soul.”
As previously reported, Cloakroom spent the fall out on tour with Full of Hell and Better Lovers. While a leg of dates supporting the new album has yet to be revealed, a record release party is due to take place April 12th at Chicago’s famed Empty Bottle venue.
Last Leg of the Human Table tracklisting:
The Pilot
Ester Wind
On Joy and Unbelieving
Unbelonging
The Lights Are On
Bad Larry
The Story of the Egg
On Joy and Undeserving
Cloverlooper
Turbine Song
Cloakroom tour dates 2025:
4/12 Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle (Album Release Show)