"Music isn’t just about fun: it can be about creating remarkable soundworlds of baroque pop fantasias, and this band are outstanding at those" - the Observer looks into the new Black Country, New Road album 'Ants from Up There'. Ian Cohen hears an emo album because "they spend every second reminding us of why we let ourselves get swept up in these beautifully doomed fantasies to begin with". Music OMH says it "sounds as though Black Country, New Road are less concerned with making a statement, more willing to let their songs unravel slowly instead of uncoiling with jack-in-the-box furore".

Black Country, New Road frontman and co-founder Isaac Wood is leaving the band, sharing this as a reason: “Together we have been writing songs and then performing them, which at times has been an incredible doing, but more now everything happens that I am feeling not so great and it means from now I won’t be a member of the group anymore". Black Country, New Road are canceling their upcoming North American tour. The band, however, is not breaking up and is due to release their new album 'Ants From Up There' this Friday, February 4.

Black Country, New Road take a turn on 'Snow Globes' to some classic post-rock-like crescendo drama; J.I.D demonstrates some great flow on ‘Surround Sound’; Sevdaliza announces her new EP with trippy love song ‘High Alone’; Nilüfer Yanya slides through tension on ‘Midnight Sun’; and one that has passed under the radar - Ruth Radelet’s cover of Elliott Smith’s ‘Twilight’.

'Bread Song' by Black Country, New Road is a slow-burning, mighty transoid psych song; Robert Plant and Alison Krauss conquer with beauty and style with 'It Don't Bother Me', a Bert Jansch cover.

Atmosphere shares a space-rap song ‘Barcade’ with a posthumous verse from MF Doom; Black Country, New Road manage to get chaotic and groovy in the same song - 'Chaos Space Marine’; just some pretty folk-rock by Scout Larue Willis on ‘Love Without Possession’; Stammering share s math-prog song ‘No, Yeah’.

Critics from all over the spectrum are speaking highly about 'For The First Time', the debut album by the British septet Black Country, New Road. Clash Music places the band "in a paradox where so-called high and low art intersect", calling the album "a product of its time", promising "it will unsettle and confuse you". The Line of Best Fit appreciates the intensity of the band - "ferocious and endlessly intelligent, highly considered and wildly improvised, eked out with bristling tension". The Quietus likes how they sound - "it’s rare that a band this noisy, an album where chaos reigns, is recorded with this much clarity. There are so many different musical ideas, and none of them get lost along the way". Stereogum chose this debut for their Album of the Week, describing it as "a document of restless creativity and incisive minds processing an era of too much mediation and stimulation".

“Although joking about does play into the thing we are comfortable with musically we don’t intentionally make things funny... Unlike film, you can get away with being funny by accident in music” - Black Country, New Road tell the Quietus about the "funny" parts in their music. tQ describes them as "a gang of affable, witty, fun loving people" with a special bond between them - "we also don’t really care about how we look to the audience; the big connection for us is between ourselves". Their hyped-up debut album 'For the First Time' comes out this week on Ninja Tune.

NME made a list of 100 new artists, "set to take over 2020 and the next decade". Some are already known, like the eclectic 100 gecs, spoken word indie band Black Country, New Road, soul singer Celeste, Billie Eilish's brother Finneas, Ariana Grande writer Victoria Monét, and some less so. Check em all out here.

Guardian has an interesting article about bands that don’t employ a singer so much as someone who declaims their words, Do Nothing, Black Country, New Road, Talk Show, Dry Cleaning, etc. The London paper talked to these bands; Talk Show’s Harrison Swann said it’s "really visceral and the most real thing you can get. You can’t shy away […]

NME was at the Visions festival where they found that the new breed of British guitar bands prioritise intensity and weirdness. Scalping "blends techno, blackened punk and noise in a refreshing, boundary-crossing direction", Black Country, New Road play rip-roaring punk, Orville Peck is a kind of masked cowboy-cum-Elvis impersonator, Squid - "punk but not without […]

London-based 6-piece Black Country, New Road has a new single out (digitally), a powerful noise-rock song 'Sunglasses' with plenty of sax (watch below). On September 6 whey will issue 500 copies of single on 7'', each copy with different Polaroid images on each cover taken by the band; it comes out on Blank Editions.