Sacramento, California’s The Seafloor Cinema have announced their brand new self-titled studio album “The Seafloor Cinema”, out on December 1st, 2023, via Pure Noise Records.
On the new album, the band said: “This record really feels like ‘us’. It’s as crazy, technical, pretty, soft, and heavy as we wanted it to be. We left the studio with Beau Burchell (Saosin) feeling like we really captured a record that described us as musicians, as people, and as friends. Beau Burchell really helped guide us in a direction that helped us capture the sounds in our head. He made sure our personalities were seen and heard within the music he captured”.
To celebrate the announcement the band have released two new singles off the upcoming album “If This Were a Film” (feat. Onlyfriend) and “The Lesson (.44 Magnum)” [feat. Aaron Pauley from Of Mice And Men). Watch the video for “If This Were a Film” below.
On “If This Were a Film” the band said: “This was the first song written for the record. It was written basically right after recording the last album and has been around for a bit. But where it really changed is when we asked Onlyfriend to feature on it. Two days after we asked him to feature on it, he went through some pretty rough life changes, and ones we as a band can resonate with heavily. He told us it was probably going to be the last thing he ever did as Onlyfriend, but after doing the feature sparked his passion again. ‘If This Were a Film’ and how it came to be is incredibly special to us now. Not only is the song energetic and super catchy, but it also means a lot to us internally”.
Speaking about the second single, “The Lesson (.44 Magnum)” the band added: “The Lesson was an experiment with just how polarizing we could make a song. It goes on an adventure from Drum and Bass parts to straight up metal, touching on lots of elements in between. The song was definitely one of the more ambitious songs on the record but once we received Aarons vocal parts it was solidified as one of our absolute favorites. This song is about facing your own mortality, feeling lost in it but finding comfort within it”.
Pre-order & pre-save “The Seafloor Cinema” here.
Tracklist:
1. Mercury in Gatorade
2. If This Were A Film (feat. Onlyfriend)
3. Geese Attack!!!
4. Crop Top Sorority
5. Oaklands Finest Glass Beaches
6. Dolly Parton Vs. The Government
7. The Lesson (.44 Magnum) [feat. Aaron Pauley]
8. Take Drugs! Kill a Bear!
9. Jacob Cracks the Liberty Bell
10. The Sun in Reverse
11. Deeth Star Valley
12. Paper Planes Burning in Paris
There’s very little The Seafloor Cinema haven’t tried in their seven years as a band, swirling hypnotic math-rock, pulsing EDM, soaring pop choruses and sparkly Midwest emo together into a turbo-charged, buoyant sound that embodies the modern playlist generation. But on their self-titled third album, the Sacramento-based trio try a new role on for size: one more than ever before, unapologetically themselves.
“Our only real goal for this record was to make something that truly encompassed us as songwriters and as people”, vocalist Justin Murry says. “On our last album, we tried to bring out the pop side of our band a little bit more, and we definitely succeeded at that. This time, we wanted to see how far down each road we could take it: as poppy as possible, yeah, but also as heavy and technical and eccentric as possible”.
Funded by a jaw-dropping $20,000 Kickstarter campaign, The Seafloor Cinema’s Pure Noise debut, 2021’s “In Cinemascope with Stereophonic Sound”, established the band – Murry, guitarist Seth Lawrenson and drummer Timothy Aldama – as a force to be reckoned with in the underground, but The Seafloor Cinema finds them upping their game in even more enthralling, epic ways, shattering the ceiling of what’s possible with their skyscraping musical Jenga tower.
First single “If This Were a Film”, hailed by Lawrenson as “a throwback song that also sounds nothing like that’s come before it”, explodes with a kinetic prog-rock urgency and elastic hook, while “The Lesson (.44 Magnum)”, featuring Of Mice & Men vocalist Aaron Pauley, crescendos with new wave synths and skittering electronics before swerving into a caustic hardcore breakdown. It’s the sound of a race act who can do it all with ease, capable of harnessing the visceral emotion of Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute Without The ‘E’” and the dextrous musicality of Coheed and Cambria’s “A Favor House Atlantic” (two songs they perfected traveling as part of the Emo Night tour) as they empty the playbook into an ultra-sleek, hyper-modern sound sure to push the genre – well, genres – forward.
Working with Saosin guitarist Beau Burchell (Senses Fail, Underoath) for the first time, the band brought some three dozen ideas to the studio, mining both their love of Swancore, uptempo indie rock, Japanese pop music and speed metal and the personal soul-searching that has colored their last few years as individuals.
