Outlander - Acts Of Harm (2024) Hi-Res

Outlanderhave been haunting stages around the UK and beyond for the best part of a decade, bringing their gloomy, caustic brand of shoegaze to support tours with genre heavyweights Bossk and Grivo and festivals like Dunk! and Arctangent.

Acts of Harm follows their 2021 EP 'Sundowning/Unconditional' and finds the band at their most introspective, sonically exploring the vast grey area between the languid slowcore of duster and codeine, the dream-like shoegaze of swervedriver and catherine wheel and the angular, glacial bombardment of kowloon walled city and true widow.

An intimate coming of age record of reconciliation with adulthood, 'Acts of Harm' finds beauty and despair in the mundane, and explores the cycles of decline that prop-up the fragile balance of normality in modern society. A singular body of work written mostly in isolation, pulled together piece by piece during the pandemic and recorded over two years by Neil Kennedy at The Ranch Production House in Southampton. The songs move at a funerealpace and take a sombre look at human themes, from the empty stare through the living room window of 'want no more', the communication breakdown of 'new motive power', the cathartic breaking point of 'lye waste' and the fraught quiet beyond.