Following on from the success of their Worlds End EP in May of last year, the long-awaited second album from TANTRUM is due for release July 28th, 2023. Entitled Another Life, the ten-track album is not only the first to feature Baz Fitzsimmons on guitar and Micah James Lewis Snow on bass but is also the first time the band has taken a fully collaborative approach to writing, with eight of the ten tracks being co-written to varying degrees.
“This album is a true collaboration between bandmates—a merging of musical minds. The songs have been honed and crafted to be the music we would love to listen to ourselves as lovers of heavy metal music—no frills, high-impact metal that doesn’t rely on gimmicks or trends.”
While the collection of ten tracks displays a quantum leap in terms of both musicality and storytelling, there is no doubt that, at their core, each song is still in keeping with what fans have come to expect from TANTRUM—strong hooks, driving rhythms, and themes to get you thinking.
“The beautiful thing about this album is that it tackles real-life issues, social injustices, and quirky historical tales. And manages to do it with a sense of levity!”
With a running time of just over forty-five minutes, Another Life bursts from its shell with the eponymous title track inspired primarily by Shelley’s aphorism on the rich becoming richer. ‘Hellion’ maintains this fast pace as it leads us through a double-edged narrative and into ‘Sands of Time’—the first of the three-part Rise of Narmer suite detailing the birth and demise of the first pharaoh. The fourth track, the angst-ridden and furiously riffed anti-tabloid ‘Black and White’ rips and shreds from the outset until reaching a frenetic climax.
The haunting ‘Forsaken’ tackles the guilt-ridden emotional turmoil suffered from losing a loved one through mental illness, while ‘Silence’ carries on this theme from the alternative point of view. The pharaoh’s tale continues with the anthemic ‘First One’ and its crowd-pleasing chorus. ‘Hunter Hunted’ provides a change of pace as we’re once again taken on a double-edged journey, this time through the mind of a hunter struggling to survive. With ‘Awakening’, the pharaonic trilogy is brought to a close in a blistering crescendo as the album closer, ‘To the Father, a Son’ bids a fond and loving final farewell from a son to their father after their passing.
“Those familiar with the TANTRUM sound will hopefully see that we’ve not only stuck closely to our roots but have also taken a more fluid approach with this album. Everything we are, everything we love about metal, and everything we’ve ever wanted to be as a band is all still there. All we’ve done is take it to greater heights.”
As well as the regular edition of the album, TANTRUM are releasing a hand-numbered, limited version entitled the “Narmer Edition”. Not only does it include exclusive artwork throughout—designed specifically for the release—and a set of exclusive themed stickers, but it also features the 18-and-a-half-minutes long trilogy, “The Rise of Narmer” as a standalone track with additional material. CLICK HERE TO BUY “ANOTHER LIFE”.
“We wanted to show TANTRUM fans that, despite the extended period of inactivity during lockdown and subsequent personnel-related speed bumps, we never lost sight of our plans to release an album of all-new material that would not only showcase the evolution within the band but make it known that we’re here to stay, and that we plan on shifting everything up a gear.”
