"On this album, Algiers wants it all: righteousness and humility, dignity and disgust, hurting and joy, cynicism and hope... Algiers lashes out at injustice, exults in its sonic mastery and insists on the life forces of solidarity and physical impact. But it refuses to promise any consolation" - New York Times reviews the fourth album by the Atlanta, Georgia band. The Line of Best Fit looks into the poetry and its meaning - "the record is largely knit together by a series of spoken-word passages and recordings, splitting the distance between poetry, confessionals, and sermons." Stereogum heard an album of the week - "The music is provocative, but it’s pleasurable, too. In 'Shook', I hear some of the grand catharsis of rap and punk and MC5-style bomb-throwing garage-rock. Parts of 'Shook 'feel freaked-out and terrified, and parts of it feel triumphant. Sometimes, those are the same parts". The Quietus believes both the band, and this record are deeply unique: "Here, they sound like a band.. utterly revitalised, and now only reaching their peak, through a record loaded with collaborations that are never perfunctory or box-ticking exercise, but joyous and celebratory... 'Shook' is a record that exudes zeal, sweat and effort – heart, mind and body music of the highest order".

Algiers are about to release their new album 'SHOOK' next week, with Backwash being one of the featured artists. The Quietus took the opportunity and invited them to interview one another about metal, rap, gospel, cage fighting, cocktails and more. An amusing read.

"American capitalism was built on slavery and the historical bloodlust persists today in the form of Covid-19 health inequalities, gentrification, mass incarceration, violent policing, colonial conquest and worker impoverishment" - Atlanta band Algiers says in an opinion in the Quietus, about monuments being torn down these days in the U.S., and symbolism behind them. "There is, therefore, not an either/or choice between dismantling public symbols of control and pursuing the tangible demands to bring justice for victims; abolish the police; dismantle anti-black political, financial, health and education institutions; and end the miserable condition that exists for Black and other oppressed people on this Earth".

The third album by the Atlanta quartet was released last week, and critics like it a lot: "The music is as electrifying, unpredictable and chaotic as ever" - the Guardian said, adding how the band enriched their gothic gospel funk with the "right balance of doomy melodrama, metallic Motown and floor-pounding post-punk". AllMusic says the album is "so emotionally charged, it leaves the listener breathless and exhausted, as well as compelled and excited", and Music OMH wrote that "'There Is No Year' reveals subtleties amidst the powerful energy with each play".

“If you’re hopeful without pessimism it’s quite naive, and if you’re just pessimistic, it’s fucking cynical” Ryan Mahan, bassist in Algiers, says about band's new album 'There Is No Year' (out today). This idea permeates the album sonically, as frontman Franklin Fisher explains - “there’s a larger theme of sound that’s revisited throughout the record. Sound as something that is redemptive and threatening and soothing and everything in between”.

Algiers have a new album coming out next week, last songs before that release is dubby trip hop 'We Can't Be Found'; Wolf Parade have a new disco song 'Julia Take Your Man Home', with Spencer Krug singing about "some other, worse version of myself"; Agnes Obel sings beautifully about struggles with falling asleep in […]

“The specter of dispossession is haunting us all. Everywhere the imperial world represses the ghoulish histories that sustain our pasts, presents and futures", Algiers' bassist and keyboardist Ryan Mahan says about band's new single 'Dispossession' (watch below). Lyrics on this song and their new record ‘There is No Year’, Mahan says, are "like a neo-Southern […]

The project takes in various bits of text, sound, visuals and external links, and centres around an audiovisual piece titled 'Can the Sub Bass Speak?' (watch below), a "free jazz inflected collage", and it includes sounds from Algiers' Franklin James Fisher, as well as Skerik on saxophone and D'Vonne Lewis on drums. Press release explains […]