Angels & Airwaves have shared a bewitching new single titled ‘Spellbound’.
Landing as the fourth taste of the band’s upcoming ‘Lifeforms’ album, ‘Spellbound’ is markedly more emotive than anything Angels & Airwaves have teased of the record thus far. Musically dark and progressive, the track simmers with arpeggiated keyboards and silky, reverb-soaked guitars, Tom DeLonge’s bruised and impassioned vocal performance just barely taking the spotlight.
The track arrives alongside a film clip that shows off the frontman’s love for unconventional technique. As is common for the band’s visuals, DeLonge directed it himself, this time employing a process called ‘laser banding’ to project a cube of lasers that he and his bandmates perform inside.
Check out the film clip for ‘Spellbound’ below:
‘Lifeforms’ – Angels & Airwaves’ sixth full-length effort, and first in seven years following 2014’s ‘The Dream Walker’ – is locked in for release on September 24 via Rise. In addition to ‘Spellbound’, the band have so far shared the tracks ‘Euphoria’, ‘Restless Souls’ and ‘Losing My Mind’.
Though everything released from the record so far implies a dancey, synthpop-esque sound, DeLonge told NME back in July that Angels & Airwaves would “go more raw and punk, with more guitars” on ‘Lifeforms’.
“Computers have made everything so easy, which is fun when you’re dancing with your friends at a bar,” he said, “but sometimes you want something to hit you the way punk bands hit us when we were younger.”
Following the new album’s release, Angels & Airwaves are set to kick off a 27-date North American headline tour, starting and ending in California between the last week of September and the first week of November. They’ll follow the run with 12 shows split between the UK, France and Germany in March of 2022. Tickets are available from the band’s website.
DeLonge has also kept busy by working on his debut feature film, Monsters Of California, due for release later in 2021. Speaking to NME, he cited the work of John Hughes as an influence, also describing it as what would happen “if Spielberg went back and made an R-rated indie paranormal film”.
More recently, DeLonge referred to his ex Blink-182 bandmate Mark Hoppus as a “real life superhero” in an update on the latter’s cancer treatments, which Hoppus revealed last week he had finally wrapped up.
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