Sigiriya Debut “Tribe of the Old Oak” from Second LP Darkness Died Today

Though they still have to work out which label will be handling it (paging Napalm Records…), UK heavy rockers Sigiriya will release their second album, Darkness Died Today, in 2014. For anyone who heard their 2011 The Church Within debut outing, Return to Earth (review here), this is unquestionably good news and makes an already high-anticipation New Year seem even better. The four-piece, which boasts bassist Paul Bidmead, guitarist Stuart O’Hara and drummer Darren Ivey — all formerly of underappreciated stoner rockers Acrimony — announced that they had joined forces with new vocalist Matt Williams (Tabularasa, Suns of Thunder) back in January, and Darkness Died Today was recorded just last month, the new material coming together over the course of this year before the songs were put to tape live.

In case you didn’t catch it, I’ll reiterate: The track you’re going to hear below, “Tribe of the Old Oak” — and fucking hell it’s catchy; listen twice in a row, then pause, then listen again — was recorded analog, live, just over a month ago. It is about as fresh as it can be. So much so that the file I was given to host had frequency info in the name. However far off we might be from the album release, this is brand new, and that being the case, I’m all the more thrilled and honored to be able to debut the track here.

If you did hear Return to Earth, you’ll probably get a sense of a different vibe on “Tribe of the Old Oak” than on some of what the debut had to offer. In discussing the song below, Ivey acknowledges this and says they were going for something different after parting ways with singer Dorian Walters (also ex-Acrimony) and bringing Williams into that spot. I don’t want to say they’re reverting to their old ways, but there are hints of psychedelia to “Tribe of the Old Oak” to go along with its unrepentantly infectious hook that bode remarkably well for what Darkness Died Today might show in the band’s progression. While looking forward to that, please enjoy Sigiriya‘s “Tribe of the Old Oak” on the player below:

Sigiriya, “Tribe of the Old Oak”

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Darren Ivey on “Tribe of the Old Oak”

Well really this is the album that nearly never was! After Dorian leaving the band for family reasons last summer and Stu nearly permanently losing the use of his thumb, things were looking a bit uncertain. After recruiting our new vocalist Matt ‘Pipes’ Williams things started to come together nicely. We ditched most of the material we had at that time because we wanted to start a fresh with a new singer and all contribute to writing rather than him just trying to copy what Dorian was doing on the stuff. This takes more time but was totally worth it in the end. I think this has allowed us to grow as a band and develop the sound to fit Matt’s unique style.

We recoded the album earlier this November (2013) at Sonic One with Tim Hamill who we recorded all our early Acrimony stuff with- in fact everything we ever did apart from Tumuli was with Tim, so this was a really comfortable and easy recording process with someone we knew well, and who knew us.  We recorded live together in a room onto analogue tape. The mixing was done by Andrew Schneider in New York and finally mastering with Richard Whittaker in London. We’ve been blessed to work with the three best possible guys along all stages of this process and can thank them all enough!

Album title is ‘Darkness died today’ and signifies our intention for this album to be about the positive heaviness. Album should be out early next year but we’ve yet to finalise on which label…..discussions ongoing…. It has eight songs and we’ve chosen to preview the shortest track that happens to sit right in the middle of the running order. This track is called ‘Tribe of the Old Oak’…..Hope you like it.

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