"My idea of a pop tune!" Kavus Torabi launches new solo album with video for Snake Humanis

Kavus Torabi
(Image credit: Press)

The Utopia StrongGong and Knifeworld frontman Kavus Torabi has shared a video for his brand new single Snake Humanis, which. you can watch below.

The typically airy and psychedelic offering is taken from. The Banishing, Torabi's upcoming solo album which will be released through his Believer's Roast label on May 3.

"I found the two cycling chords that make up the verses and the song seemed to write itself from there," Torabi explains. "Snake Humanis is my idea of a pop tune, it sounds like springtime to my ears and I can feel the sunshine on my face every time I sing it. I suppose it’s about siblings falling out, snakes that we are."

The new album, which Torabi recorded during lockdown, reflects a particularly turbulent time in the musician's life, which ultimately saw his leave living in London and move down to Somerset.

"The original intent had been to make a record that was not as obviously personal and autobiographical as the first. I wanted to make a positive, uplifting album," he says. "The following two years saw what I can only describe as a descent into psychosis. My relationship with my family broke down and became completely dysfunctional and it became necessary for me to leave our home and ultimately London, where I had lived for the previous thirty years.

“As I started to attempt to document and make sense of what had happened, I wanted to call the album Now I'm The Antichrist, much to the consternation of almost everyone I told about it. As I got towards the end of the recording, however, I settled on The Banishing which, while referring to my banishing from London really describes how I thought of the process of making it which, in magical terms, was a banishing ritual."

You can see the new album artwork and tracklisting below.

Pre-order The Banishing.

Kavus Torabi

(Image credit: Believer's Roast)

Kavus Torabi: The Banishing
1. The Horizontal Man
2. Snake Humanis
3. Heart The Same
4. A Thousand Blazing Chariots
5. The Sweetest Dream
6. Push The Faders
7. Mountains Of Glass
8. Untethered

Jerry Ewing

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.