Written by: Dave Cantrell

Born in 2015 in what one senses was a burst of urgency given the sound they’ve made ever since, TRAITRS return to the sprawling fray that is the current and endlessly roiling post-punk/darkwave scene that continues to expand across the world at a bold and dizzying pace with the soon-to-be-released Horses at the Abattoir full-length due mid-November on French label Freakwave. Among the most strongly consistent practitioners of the form as evidenced by a run of back-to-back-to-back albums released each year from 2016 to ’18 that went from strength to strength while in the process building a substantial fanbase, theirs is a mix of style and substance the character of which (or ‘brand’ in dry modern-day marketing parlance) tends to form something of an addictive bond to the dark hordes eager for exactly that fix, the very people, it should be said, who, like us here at SEM, are therefore very pleased to have a new TRAITRS album on the horizon after lo these three long years.

Coruscating yet indelibly melodic, neither throwback nor unmindful of the genre’s powerful roots, with an intelligence, drive, and an underlying pop suss that puts them in a league with the likes of She Past Away, Twin Tribes, ACTORS and others at that level, the band (Shawn Tucker and Sean-Patrick Nolan) exude the type of touch that not only warrants immediate – and excited – attention when it’s announced that something new is forthcoming but also, in so doing, especially right in this moment, brings another hit of needed light into a difficult year. Thus are we almost unreasonably pleased to be presenting this debut of “Mouth Poisons,” their latest video from the upcoming album, the audio of which will be available on the usual streaming platforms beginning September 17th.

In that curiously adept way they have of presenting an otherwise fraught, near desperate theme inside a sonic structure that manages, some damn how, to simultaneously uplift, the track, in both sound and vision, neatly exemplifies what the fuss has always been about when it came to TRAITRS. More than anything, however, watching/listening to “Mouth Poisons” has us already counting days between now and the album’s prospective release date. What’s been, despite everything else, one helluva good year out here in the post-punk trenches is soon to get immeasurably better. (pre-order Horses at the Abattoir here) [feature photo: Melina Crawford]