Brit metal heroes earthtone9 announce first album in 11 years and release new single

earthtone9 have announced their return, with their first album in 11 years, In Resonance Nexus, due on June 21. Dropping a new single alongside the news, the enormous Oceanic Drift, the British metal icons describe the album as, "The absolute distillation of what we do."

“For me, this album is about persistence in heart and knowing that you can pursue stuff and do it to a high standard at any point in time,” says singer Karl Middleton. “It’s more vital and urgent. This feels like a definitive statement.”

Recorded with producer Lewis Johns (Employed To Serve, Svalbard, Pupil Slicer), the band say that In Resonance Nexus' essence comes from almost rebuilding the band following their second hiatus, and reconnecting with the elements that made their first trio of albums before their first split in 2002 (1998's Lo-def(inition) Discord, 1999's Off Kilter Enhancement and 2000's arc'tan'gent) so special and important.

“In Resonance Nexus, as a title, is saying that we’ve found the core and the essence of the band again,” says Karl. “We were digging deep to find common musical ground, and between Joe [Roberts] and Owen [Packard, guitars], and it really felt like that there was a resonance there. It feels like we've landed on a really legitimate, 21st century version of the band. We were asking, ‘Why are we doing this?’ and having a very authentic answer.”

Listen to the first track, Oceanic Drift, below:

“I was thinking about the Joker movie, and the idea of him being the unreliable witness. So it just seemed like a really funny opening line, ‘What you see is what you get,’ because that's never been the case,” says Karl. “Also, the idea of oceanic drift is, in geological time, an incredibly slow process. That’s partially a reflection on how our last record was over a decade ago, the record before that was 12 years before that, so it's just these incredibly slow moving things.”

In Resonance Nexus is released on June 21 via Candlelight