Footage of Liverpool metalcore favourites Loathe debuting a new song has been uploaded to social media.
The band, who released their last metal album I Let It In And It Took Everything in 2020, have been testing out new material on their current North American tour supporting Spiritbox. On Saturday (April 12) at the UPMC Events Center in Pennsylvania, they played an as-yet-unheard track and got Code Orange singer Jami Morgan onstage for guest vocals.
Based on the footage, it seems that Loathe are returning to full-force heavy metal, having experimented with more ambient soundscapes on 2021’s The Things They Believe. Watch and listen below.
Even though the world hasn’t heard new Loathe music in four years, the band have been wildly busy on the road. Since the release of I Let It In… they’ve been supporting Spiritbox, Korn, Gojira and more around the world.
In August 2022, the band cancelled a run of UK and European shows to finish work on their upcoming fourth studio album. They said in part in a statement: “People of United Kingdom and Europe. After much painstaking deliberation, it is with regret that we have made the very difficult decision to cancel our upcoming September and October headline dates.
“We are currently in the penultimate stages of completing our new album, which the tour was initially booked to promote, and believe that opening up our time to focus entirely on the music is the correct thing to do, as using this time in September and October will allow us to complete the recording process.”
Loathe have a history of struggling in the studio. In an interview with Metal Hammer in 2020, singer Kadeem France and guitarist Erik Bickerstaffe said that recording I Let It In… was arduous, due to the band self-producing the album.
“We didn’t want others to go, ‘Oh, this is what Loathe should and shouldn’t be,’” explained France. “But it was the most stressful time we’ve had as a band.”
Bickerstaffe added: “Every song was an argument. Five creatives really do need that one person to tell them what to do.”
Loathe’s tour with Spiritbox, also featuring Dying Wish, continues on Friday night (April 18) at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. The run of shows will wrap in May, and Loathe are booked to tour Canada with Korn and Gojira in September.
