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EMPEROR X
Unified Field(Bar/None Records)
Add date: 6.30.2026
Release date: 6.26.2026
Links:
Apple Music
Bandcamp
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Official Website
Spotify
Tidal
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Chad Matheny has been writing, recording and performing music as Emperor X since 1998, operating in the space in-between indie rock and emo folk/punk unlike any other current artist. He grew up in Jacksonville, FL and now resides just outside of Berlin. His new album, Unified Field, due June 26, 2026 on Bar/None, was written and recorded mostly in Ukraine, and it’s his crowning achievement.
On Unified Field, (a title that’s a loose David Lynch / TM reference), Matheny’s songs straddle the line between the personal and political, which makes sense because the majority of this album was written and recorded while he was in Ukraine, since the war began. Matheny has been a longtime advocate for Ukraine, visiting the region multiple times, touring there in 2023 and housing refugees at his home in Germany. He explains how this all came to be and what it was like trying to create art in the middle of a warzone:
“Towards the end of 2025, I saw a news report about a train in Ukraine on one of the lines I used often when I was there being bombed, and it made me so mad. I knew that I had to finish this album there with the people I had come to call friends over the years. Staying in Berlin would have been much easier logistically, but the term I used at the time was that it felt like an ‘aesthetic emergency’ that I finish Unified Field in Ukraine. I had a strong instinct that the record would come out better, and be more meaningful, if I did it with my friends who also lived their lives under fire. I would much rather spend money renting a studio space in Kremenchuk than Kreuzberg or Brooklyn, you know? They need our support, they have really beautiful spaces and talented folks who are stuck & unable to leave.”
“One night in Nov. 2025 as I arrived for a recording session in Kharkiv (Ukraine's second largest city), several Shahed drones hit nearby in a ten-minute wave of percussive impacts. Air defense knocked down most of them, but a few snuck through. One hit a nearby power station. Another hit an apartment tower about twenty blocks northeast. There were yellow flashes in the sky, and two deafening booms that I will never forget. Four people were killed.”
“Like the rest of the country, punk scenes in Ukraine have been devastated by the war. It is not unusual for DJs, visual artists, poets, musicians, and entire bands to serve in units on the front. Many die. Many more return with wounds, physical and psychological, from which they will never recover. Civilians far from the front are in danger from constant attacks like the small one I experienced. Scene kids bear it with the same dignity and fury that their countrymen are famous for.”
“But life continues. They still have shows, they still make records, they still go to work, they still meet at cafes, they still love and have babies and gossip and experience absurd situations to which wry laughter is the only rational response. For example: imagine the power goes out, you're in a windowless hostel fresh off of a bus, the hotel has no emergency generator, and you need to take a leak. You get your smartphone out, you turn on the flashlight, you aim as best you can, and hope the lights come back on so you can clean up the mess you can't see.” (see: “Pissing With The Flashlight On.”)
Photo Credit: Nat Campbell
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Bar/None
Official Website
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
Chad Matheny has been writing, recording and performing music as Emperor X since 1998, operating in the space in-between indie rock and emo folk/punk unlike any other current artist. He grew up in Jacksonville, FL and now resides just outside of Berlin. His new album, Unified Field, due June 26, 2026 on Bar/None, was written and recorded mostly in Ukraine, and it’s his crowning achievement.
On Unified Field, (a title that’s a loose David Lynch / TM reference), Matheny’s songs straddle the line between the personal and political, which makes sense because the majority of this album was written and recorded while he was in Ukraine, since the war began. Matheny has been a longtime advocate for Ukraine, visiting the region multiple times, touring there in 2023 and housing refugees at his home in Germany. He explains how this all came to be and what it was like trying to create art in the middle of a warzone:
“Towards the end of 2025, I saw a news report about a train in Ukraine on one of the lines I used often when I was there being bombed, and it made me so mad. I knew that I had to finish this album there with the people I had come to call friends over the years. Staying in Berlin would have been much easier logistically, but the term I used at the time was that it felt like an ‘aesthetic emergency’ that I finish Unified Field in Ukraine. I had a strong instinct that the record would come out better, and be more meaningful, if I did it with my friends who also lived their lives under fire. I would much rather spend money renting a studio space in Kremenchuk than Kreuzberg or Brooklyn, you know? They need our support, they have really beautiful spaces and talented folks who are stuck & unable to leave.”
“One night in Nov. 2025 as I arrived for a recording session in Kharkiv (Ukraine's second largest city), several Shahed drones hit nearby in a ten-minute wave of percussive impacts. Air defense knocked down most of them, but a few snuck through. One hit a nearby power station. Another hit an apartment tower about twenty blocks northeast. There were yellow flashes in the sky, and two deafening booms that I will never forget. Four people were killed.”
“Like the rest of the country, punk scenes in Ukraine have been devastated by the war. It is not unusual for DJs, visual artists, poets, musicians, and entire bands to serve in units on the front. Many die. Many more return with wounds, physical and psychological, from which they will never recover. Civilians far from the front are in danger from constant attacks like the small one I experienced. Scene kids bear it with the same dignity and fury that their countrymen are famous for.”
“But life continues. They still have shows, they still make records, they still go to work, they still meet at cafes, they still love and have babies and gossip and experience absurd situations to which wry laughter is the only rational response. For example: imagine the power goes out, you're in a windowless hostel fresh off of a bus, the hotel has no emergency generator, and you need to take a leak. You get your smartphone out, you turn on the flashlight, you aim as best you can, and hope the lights come back on so you can clean up the mess you can't see.” (see: “Pissing With The Flashlight On.”)
Photo Credit: Nat Campbell