In addition to gearing up for a collaborative album with The Body, Montreal post-metal greats BIG | BRAVE have just announced their own new album, VITAL, due April 23 via Southern Lord (with vinyl coming out July 9). A press release calls it the trio's most collaborative record so far, and the band says, "having cut our teeth in very different musical backgrounds respectively, our intuitions vary, which has an interesting effect on our individual approaches and ears. This album involves what it means navigating the outside world in a racialized body and what it does to the psyche as a whole while exploring individual worth within this reality."

The first single is the nine-minute "HALF BREED," which is as crushingly heavy and soaringly melodic as you'd hope from this band. It comes with a single-shot video of a man lying on the ground, being covered with dirt as the intense song progresses. "The action of shoveling dirt onto the person, also acts a way to discredit, shame and discriminate the individual," the band says. "With the victim (on screen), being painfully covered with dirt by the perpetrator (off screen), all we have to witness is the damage done and left behind. We are aware of what is happening, what has happened, but the source is kept anonymous and can easily be missed and overlooked."