8/19/25 ADDS
CURRENT
UPCOMING
RECENT
LIVE
ABOUT
LATHE OF HEAVEN
Aurora(Sacred Bones Records)
Add date: 8.26.2025
Release date: 8.29.2025
Links:
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Instagram
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
Lathe of Heaven return with their second full-length album Aurora, a bold expansion of their sonic and thematic palette that unfolds like a series of vivid, emotional vignettes.
Rather than following a singular tone or mood, Aurora unfolds like a collection of short stories, each track offering a different lens into the band’s evolving sound and deeply reflective lyricism. Incorporating influences from mid 80s British and Finnish post-punk, combined with subtle nuances from 90s and contemporary underground pop, Aurora is an iteration of Lathe of Heaven’s sound previously unexplored, one that offers a delicate balance of their punk roots with captivating new-wave and 80s post-punk aesthetics. Recorded with Ben Greenberg at Circular Ruin and mastered by Brad Boatright, the album sonically is inspired by The Cure’s melodic rock, Musta Paraati’s gothic post-punk synth and intense drumming, and A Flock of Seagulls’ art pop vocals and guitar riffs.
Lyrically, Aurora doesn’t shy away from heavy themes. Envisioned as a collection of sci-fi short stories, it is deeply influenced and lyrically driven by themes of anti-colonialism, diversity, and equality. These stories are inspired by Ursula K. le Guin, Octavia Butler, Greg Egan, and Peter Watts’ novels, leading listeners to mythical, bold, and somewhat unnerving realities. Lathe of Heaven hope Aurora elicits a vast spectrum of emotions, and inspires deeper reflection on the state of our reality and humanity.
Born from improvisation, refined through rigorous thought, and stitched together with raw emotion, the album opener “Exodus” narrates the experience of transferring consciousness into a new, perfect body. Reimagining Theseus’ Ship Paradox, a thought experiment about an ancient ship that is slowly replaced with new parts until none of its original pieces are left, the track trails off leaving us with a Greg Egan quote - “Begin again in blameless flesh.” The title track “Aurora” turns its gaze towards love at the end of the world. Inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “If I Forget Thee, O Earth…”, it is set in a dystopian future where Earth is long abandoned due to nuclear fallout, and explores themes of loss, love, and devotion. “Oblivion” delves into the phenomenon of semantic satiation - say a word enough times and it begins to lose its meaning. Elsewhere, "Portrait of a Scorched-Earth" stands as a direct act of resistance. One of the most emotionally raw songs on the album, it breaks from the band's usual lyrical abstraction as an unflinching reckoning with the horrors of modern warfare and displacement, rooted in the lived tragedy of Gaza. It is both personal and political, and refuses the silence demanded by complicity. Each track continues peeling back the layers. The disorientation of mental illness in “Kaleidoscope,” the desperate ritual of memory in “Just Beyond the Reach of Light,” and the silent mechanisms of power dissected in “Matrix of Control” and “Automation Bias,” these are songs as concerned with cybernetic feedback loops and algorithmic governance as they are with the erosion of human autonomy. “Catatonia” and “Infinity’s Kiss” plunge into subconscious territory, fusing dream logic with quantum mechanics and foreboding unease. Inspired by the name of the alien ship in a sci-fi novel by Peter Watts, “Rorschach” closes the record with a vision of personal apocalypse.
While sonically rooted in post-punk, gothic rock, and darkwave, the record refuses easy categorization. It is literary without being pretentious, political without preaching, and emotional without flinching. Every song holds a piece of a shattered mirror and what emerges is a prismatic, wounded beauty, staring back with a thousand faces. Set to be released August 29th, 2025, Aurora stakes its claim; "tremble without fear into dreamless oblivion." You are invited.
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
Lathe of Heaven return with their second full-length album Aurora, a bold expansion of their sonic and thematic palette that unfolds like a series of vivid, emotional vignettes.
Rather than following a singular tone or mood, Aurora unfolds like a collection of short stories, each track offering a different lens into the band’s evolving sound and deeply reflective lyricism. Incorporating influences from mid 80s British and Finnish post-punk, combined with subtle nuances from 90s and contemporary underground pop, Aurora is an iteration of Lathe of Heaven’s sound previously unexplored, one that offers a delicate balance of their punk roots with captivating new-wave and 80s post-punk aesthetics. Recorded with Ben Greenberg at Circular Ruin and mastered by Brad Boatright, the album sonically is inspired by The Cure’s melodic rock, Musta Paraati’s gothic post-punk synth and intense drumming, and A Flock of Seagulls’ art pop vocals and guitar riffs.
Lyrically, Aurora doesn’t shy away from heavy themes. Envisioned as a collection of sci-fi short stories, it is deeply influenced and lyrically driven by themes of anti-colonialism, diversity, and equality. These stories are inspired by Ursula K. le Guin, Octavia Butler, Greg Egan, and Peter Watts’ novels, leading listeners to mythical, bold, and somewhat unnerving realities. Lathe of Heaven hope Aurora elicits a vast spectrum of emotions, and inspires deeper reflection on the state of our reality and humanity.
Born from improvisation, refined through rigorous thought, and stitched together with raw emotion, the album opener “Exodus” narrates the experience of transferring consciousness into a new, perfect body. Reimagining Theseus’ Ship Paradox, a thought experiment about an ancient ship that is slowly replaced with new parts until none of its original pieces are left, the track trails off leaving us with a Greg Egan quote - “Begin again in blameless flesh.” The title track “Aurora” turns its gaze towards love at the end of the world. Inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “If I Forget Thee, O Earth…”, it is set in a dystopian future where Earth is long abandoned due to nuclear fallout, and explores themes of loss, love, and devotion. “Oblivion” delves into the phenomenon of semantic satiation - say a word enough times and it begins to lose its meaning. Elsewhere, "Portrait of a Scorched-Earth" stands as a direct act of resistance. One of the most emotionally raw songs on the album, it breaks from the band's usual lyrical abstraction as an unflinching reckoning with the horrors of modern warfare and displacement, rooted in the lived tragedy of Gaza. It is both personal and political, and refuses the silence demanded by complicity. Each track continues peeling back the layers. The disorientation of mental illness in “Kaleidoscope,” the desperate ritual of memory in “Just Beyond the Reach of Light,” and the silent mechanisms of power dissected in “Matrix of Control” and “Automation Bias,” these are songs as concerned with cybernetic feedback loops and algorithmic governance as they are with the erosion of human autonomy. “Catatonia” and “Infinity’s Kiss” plunge into subconscious territory, fusing dream logic with quantum mechanics and foreboding unease. Inspired by the name of the alien ship in a sci-fi novel by Peter Watts, “Rorschach” closes the record with a vision of personal apocalypse.
While sonically rooted in post-punk, gothic rock, and darkwave, the record refuses easy categorization. It is literary without being pretentious, political without preaching, and emotional without flinching. Every song holds a piece of a shattered mirror and what emerges is a prismatic, wounded beauty, staring back with a thousand faces. Set to be released August 29th, 2025, Aurora stakes its claim; "tremble without fear into dreamless oblivion." You are invited.