I didn’t even get the chance to review the last one yet! Burnt Counters, which is out April 12, is kind of like Slow Draw‘s proper follow-up to 2025’s The People’s Department of Governmental Check and Balances (review here), is not the first release from Mark Kitchens‘ solo-project on 2026. Last month, Kitchens dropped the sub-10-minute Is it Death Metal or Sadness?, which was both a tongue-in-cheek experiment and a hard-hitting look at the way music and the mundane interract.

Burnt Counters seems to be going for something more drone-based and expressive, and fair enough. The palette for Slow Draw has been broad since the project’s outset, so I would still expect plenty persistence of weird, and so much the better.

The PR wire has it like this:

New ambient/noise album from Slow Draw (Mark Kitchens of Stone Machine Electric), “Burnt Counters”, out April 12th; lead single “Roadblock” out March 13th

Ambient soundscapes, lightly steeped in exploratory psych and the meditative drawn-out cadence of drone

Mark Kitchens’ (one third of Stone Machine Electric) long-running solo project Slow Draw deals in patient and often unsettling drone, ambient, and psychedelia. Following 2025’s album The People’s Department of Governmental Checks & Balances and its penchant for heavy, distorted nightmare fuel, Kitchen returns with new album Burnt Counters. Dark and poignant in new ways, “Burnt Counters” carves out a very personal corner of Slow Draw’s discography.

IN THE BAND’S OWN WORDS:

“This recording of this album started in the summer of 2024, after I had the experience of a pulmonary embolism followed by a pneumothorax. Some of these songs are about that and reinforced my thoughts on certain topics. Most of this album was recorded in 2024, but it lagged into 2025 and wrapped up in January of 2026.

“I bounced back and forth on whether to give it a full band sound, or to make it sound how it might if I performed it live by myself. As you’ll hear, I went with the full band sound. It is a studio album, so if and when I play any of these live, it will be a different experience.

“Burnt Counters is a more personal album than others. My father passed away in November 2025, commemorated in Walk in the Woods with Dad. My wife, Lynda, provided lyrics for As I Stare. Roadblock is specifically about my health experiences in 2024. If I had ignored my body, I may not be here now.”

Slow Draw – Burnt Counters
Album out April 12th
Self-released (CD, Digital)
Hurst, Texas

Tracklist:
1. Entrances & Exits (5:18)
2. Crush (4:18)
3. Totems (8:05)
4. As I Stare (2:40)
5. Roadblock (5:03)
6. Escape (6:13)
7. Walk in the Woods with Dad (4:22)
8. Burnt Counters (5:12)

Slow Draw is: Mark Kitchens

https://slowdraw.net/
https://slowdraw.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/slowdrawmusic
https://www.facebook.com/slowdrawband

Slow Draw, Is it Death Metal or Sadness? (2026)