Iguana Death Cult to release new studio album Echo Palace

Rotterdam based five-piece Iguana Death Cult will release their new studio album Echo Palace on May 12th via American label Innovative Leisure. The band recorded the album at PAF! Studio in Rotterdam, and then had the self-produced album subsequently mixed by Joo-Joo Ashworth (Sasami, Dummy) at Studio 22 in Los Angeles and mastered by Dave Cooley (Tame Impala, Yves Tumor). The new single Sensory Overload is out now.

After the pandemic hit, and the people of the world suddenly grew wary and suspicious of one another, Iguana Death Cult, one of Europe’s most exciting rock exports, became more than just a band to its members—it became therapy. Taking place at frontman Jeroen Reek’s apartment in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, these gatherings slowly shifted from talking about this surreal chapter of their lives — the days of quiet streets and cramped buildings — to making music about it.

Echo Palace may be the Iguana Death Cult music that’s most overtly about the strange cause and effect of groupthink. Watching the pandemic paranoia and conspiracy theories steeping across their country, Reek wrote lyrics reflecting the scene in front of him: 'Purple, veiny soccer mommies,' he sings in a deep, foreboding voice on the song Echo Palace, 'sharpening their guillotines.' It’s a cut so infectious that it betrays the density of its lyrics, which were adapted from a poem Reek wrote about the repercussions of “shutting yourself off from everyone outside of your own ideology."

Sensory Overload is the first single coming from the album: Jeroen Reek explains: “Scrolling up and down my feed, I literally feel like I’m traveling back and forth through space and time sometimes: since down is up and up is down and reality is starting to feel like a joke - which is making me very, very anxious. We wrote quite the jittery tune to compliment the manic lyrics which are more or less heavily distorted flutters of consciousness. To emphasize this, we asked saxophone legend Benjamin Herman to channel his inner James Chance and blow this song to pieces." Watch the video below.

The sounds they started to make tapped into the band’s acerbic bite established on their first two LPs, 2017’s The First Stirrings of Hideous Insect Life and 2019’s Nude Casino, Echo Palace is an appropriately worldly album from a group breaking past the confines of its home country. That’s not to say that Iguana Death Cult aren’t proudly Dutch; the group takes from the trademark hard work ethic of their Rotterdam base and applies it to their approach with music. Armed with the talents of Tobias Opschoor on guitar/vocals, Justin Boer on bass, Arjen van Opstal on drums and tapping the keys work Jimmy de Kok for the first time on album, the band took their trademark melodic garage-rock style and expanded it out to make it vibier and looser, with each member contributing ideas to develop the sound palette in full. The album is a big swing, stretching Iguana Death Cult beyond its garage rock origins and taking them to a new realm.

Iguana Death Cult will make an appearance at this year's SXSW in Austin, Texas.

From May on the band will be touring around Europe:

06-5 :: Rotown, Rotterdam [releaseshow]

12-5 :: Merlyn, Nijmegen

13-5 :: Bridge festival - Altstadt, Eindhoven

19-5 :: Pier 15, Breda

20-5 :: EKKO, Utrecht

26-5 :: Vera, Groningen

27-5 :: Skatecafe, Amsterdam

10-6 :: Trix, Antwerpen