black midi have announced their third album, Hellfire, which will be out July 15 via Rough Trade. “if Cavalcade was a drama, Hellfire is like an epic action film," says the band's Geordie Greep, while Cameron Picton adds, “There’s a lot of love and things like that on Hellfire. There’s a tender flipside to every song. The dark comes out strongly, there’s Hell and Satan and murder and unsavoury things, but every song has both light and dark.”
The first single from the album is the skronky and bombastic "Welcome to Hell," which tells the story of a soldier on a wild night of shore leave. “Almost everyone depicted is a kind of scumbag,” says Greep. “Almost everything I write is from a true thing, something I experienced and exaggerated and wrote down. I don’t believe in Hell, but all that old world folly is great for songs, I’ve always loved movies and anything else with a depiction of Hell. Dante’s Inferno. When Homer goes to Hell in the Simpsons. There’s a robot Hell in Futurama. Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jewish writer who portrays a Satan interfering in people’s lives. There’s loads!” You can watch the animated video for "Welcome to Hell" below.