Cult Kansas City, Missouri post-hardcore amp-exploders Shiner have unveiled plans to put out their next full-length: BELIEVEYOUME. To celebrate the announcement, they’ve partnered with Revolver to premiere the album’s opening cut and first single, “Asleep in the Trunk.”
The veteran outfit’s sixth album follows 2020’s Schadenfreude, which itself had been Shiner’s first full-length release in nearly 20 years. Lyrically, it’s explained by the band that BELIEVEYOUME is themed around “aging, relationships, and self-deception,” while the album title — which references the harmonized chorus hook in “Asleep in the Trunk” — speaks to “the ambiguity and contradictions at the heart of human connection.”
“It’s one of those phrases that’s tossed around so much it’s lost its meaning,” guitarist-vocalist Alan Epley says in a statement. “But when you step back and think about it, it can mean so many things in the context of a relationship. It could be about believing in yourself, in the other person, or in the relationship as a whole, or it could be about the loss of belief.”
As for the track, “Asleep in the Trunk” props itself up with angular bass fuzz, orange-paisley guitar stacking, a whale-moaning bend solo and speaker-pushing kick work. Lyrically, Epley explains that the song is themed around the erosion of a relationship, though the clueless narrator thinks everything is still fine — even after his partner has chucked him in a trunk, “mob style.”
Don’t believe us? Well, you can hear for yourself by giving the song a listen through the record-revolving visualizer up above.
BELIEVEYOUME was recorded across a series of multi-day sessions at bassist/engineer Paul Malinowski’s Massive Sound Studio in Shawnee, Kansas. While the band came into some sessions with riff ideas on their phones, its arrangements were prepared spontaneously in the studio, apparently lending a raw and free feeling to BELIEVEYOUME.
“Schadenfreude was dark and maybe a little claustrophobic, which makes sense, in retrospect,” guitarist Josh Newton adds of their COVID era LP. “This new record feels more open and more immediate. We came in with fewer pre-written ideas and just reacted to each other in real time. Less brooding, more instinct. Still heavy, still weird — just breathing a little more.”
BELIEVEYOUME is out September 26th via Spartan Records, though pre-orders are already live and pre-save info is already up over here.
Limited edition color vinyl pressings of Shiner’s first four albums — running from 1996’s Splay up to 2001’s The Egg — are also available now in Revolver’s shop.
BELIEVEYOUME tracklisting:
Asleep in the Trunk
The Alligator
The Mutiny
So Far So
My Mirror Hates Me
Endless Summer
Lazarus
Not Too Much
Broken Satellites
Jackie