Canadian chart-toppers and Platinum-sellers Alexisonfire have returned with Push The River, the lead single from their hotly anticipated sixth album Bleed It.
The Ottawa five-piece, one of the leading lights of the 00s screamo revolution, have debuted their first track in four years ahead of the album’s release on March 19 via Dine Alone Records. Pre-orders are now live, and the artwork and tracklisting are below.
The Push The River music video, directed by Vanessa Heins, is also below.
The band comment: “Push The River is an anthem for the restless mind. It is about surrendering to the bedlam of one’s own thoughts and finding peace in the chaos of the everyday task that is living and loving.”
Co-guitarist/vocalist Wade MacNeill hints that Bleed It will be a genre-blurring effort: “We’ve always been interested in pushing the band in a lot of different directions, and our influences are all over the place. And because we've been a band for so long at this point, we're capable of pulling it off.”
Lead singer George Pettit adds that the lyrics explore “the general existentialist dilemma of being faced by the mystery of life, and being faced by brutality, but still choosing to partake in the world around you”.
“And then you start to see love as this really remarkable thing that exists in defiance of a seemingly brutal and uncaring world,” he continues. “Love is this anomaly of evolution.”
Produced by Kevin Ratterman (My Morning Jacket), Bleed It contains 14 tracks including the song Dogs Of Chernobyl, which Alexis debuted on tour earlier this year, at the RBC Amphitheatre in Toronto in August.
The new album announcement comes after Alexis spent much of the summer touring to celebrate 20 years of their album Crisis, which put them on top of the Canadian charts for the first time in their careers. Hammer attended their show at Wembley Arena in London in June and wrote that “the self-described ‘only band ever’ have once again proved why no one else matters”.
The band’s last album, 2022’s Otherness, came out to positive reviews and reached No.4 on the Canadian album charts. It was their first album since 2009’s Old Crows / Young Cardinals, and their first following a hiatus from 2011 to 2015.
Alexis will kick off a co-headline tour of North America with Poison The Well the week after Bleed It’s release, starting at the South Side Ballroom in Dallas on March 25. See the full list of dates and get tickets via the band’s website.
Alexisonfire – Bleed It:
- Within Within Within
- Push The River
- What's Left To Know But Love
- Dogs Of Chernobyl
- Small Eternity
- Forever Free
- Congregation
- Spider’s Dream
- My Blood Is Yours
- Holy Mother
- Tread Lightly, Child
- Milk
- Iron Flowers For Suzie
- Crushing Black
