KEG

London-based collective KEG are delighted to reveal that their highly anticipated debut album will be released next year, coming 2025 via Alcopop! Records with further details TBA.

To celebrate the news, the band are streaming lead single ‘Sate The Worm’ released 18th September 2024 on all good digital service providers.

Commenting on the single, the band said: “The worm is a parasitic life force which lives deep within one's bonce. Sating it may result in revealing your deepest secrets to a colleague in a misjudged attempt at bonding. The memories which you must shout away in the street, those niggling feelings of insecurity, feed this lowly glugger.”

KEG will be appearing at this year’s Mutation Festival, Brighton on 9th November, and support rising sensation Nuha Ruby Ra at Southbank Centre, London on 21st November with tickets on sale now (see below for listings).

Their forthcoming debut album represents the culmination of Keg's initial forays into life, and as such leaps all over—from the melodic to the demented with all the enthusiasm of a very lively bean salad. Sharp angling guitarwork that would be at home both on a Fugazi or a Wilco record. Cascading synths and drums, pepperings of trombone and lyrics which invite you into a baffled man's brain full of joy and anxiety.

Contrary to the previous releases the album takes its time, allowing Keg to showcase the orchestral leanings of the band, melding textures and battering-ram rhythms, whilst all the time managing to hone their carefully manipulated balance of chaos and order. 

Recorded between the studio and home, Keg have refined their DIY approach this time around, producing the record themselves with engineering help from Pozi’s Toby Burroughs and mixed by Connor Simpkins.

Offsetting the braggadocious shredding and bombastic instrumentation the lyrics on the album take a much less cocksure approach—beckoning you into a yearning for suburban living, slightly embarrassing admissions of inadequacy, the feeling of creative failure freeing the imagination, taking pleasure in the mundanity of an unsure mind, bathing for freedom, and just a couple simple love songs.

Lead single ‘Sate The Worm’ follows on from standalone single ‘Michael Phelps’ released earlier this year—an unlikely ode to American former competitive swimmer and most-decorated Olympian of all time, Michael Phelps.

Erupting from a frenzied passion for the ‘song’, Keg toe a fine line between the angular throb of contemporary post-rock sensibilities and a timeless necessity for harmony and meticulous songwriting. Taking hints and tips from their forebears Minutemen, Fugazi and Radio 4 the band intend to confound genre, but mainly stick to the rock area. 

Armed with 7 musicians, Keg create a frantic chaotic energy. Barbed guitars, wonky synth lines, peppered with trombone, and a glimpse into a confused man's brain. The band rarely rest easy on one approach, equally happy to explore a college rock sound as a hardcore one. It's this indecision which leads Keg to continue to push their sound further, delving into ambient landscapes and melodic songwriting. 

Forming in Brighton in 2019, the band went on to release two critically acclaimed EPs Assembly (2021) and Girders (2022), with standalone singles ‘Quip Quash’ (2023) and ‘Michael Phelps’ (2024) also helping them garner attention from Loud and Quiet, DIY, CLASH, NME, DORK, So Young and support from BBC 6music and Radio X.

They return with their anxiously awaited debut album in 2025.