If ! were ever going to live up the Nosferatu D2 mantra of every band you love letting you down eventually, it seemed as if now would be that point.  After three spectacular albums, the band has undergone a fundamental shift in it’s lineup for fourth album Hello Sadness, with three of the seven members of the band departing and being replaced.  As such, I’ve been a little bit wary about the direction the band would take from this point, so I’m greatly relieved by just how good first single By Your Hand has turned out to be.

Continuing the path into more personal territory that stood out on the last record, the band describe Hello Sadness as “ten songs of love, loss and heartbreak nail-gunned to a back-drop of broken, tangled bodies, creeping, dead-eyed animals, suffocating, looming shadows and World Cup exits. It is an honest, bare bones documentation of breaking up and trying not to break up in the process.”  By Your Hand is the opener, and given that by the time we reached the end of the first verse we’re already hearing about girls vomiting on Gareth’s rental tux, I suspect this is just the tip of a rather painful iceberg.

Hello Sadness will be released on November 14.  The band are offering an advance bundle including the album, a demo CD, a DVD and a t-shirt for £25, or £20 if you’ve got Heat Rash.  Pretty good deal I’d say.  You can get it through their web store.  This was taken rather badly by Avalanche Records.

MP3 Los Campesinos! – By Your Hand

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