Southern California post-hardcore outliers Spark Of Life have announced plans to release a new album, ‘Plagued By The Human Condition’, in early 2025.

The LP finds the band once again collaborating with friend Fred Armisen, who plays drums on a cover of ‘Never Say Never’ by ’90s cult favorite That Dog. The LP’s first single ‘No One Hates Me More Than Me’ will be released on November 22 via influential indie label New Age Records. Song stays true to the band’s tradition of long, sardonic song titles, while delivering a heavy-hitting, mid-’90s Bay Area post-hardcore vibe with powerful guitars and melodic breakdowns. Singer Steve Jennings says, “This song, much like the record, is about loss, regret and the pain it inevitably causes in its wake. But it is also about finding hope in that loss and coming out the other side with a positive and grateful perspective.” The songs from album are raw, anthemic, and painful all in the same instance. They also miraculously sound like a band being reborn. This is certainly not the way that Jennings, Piscitello and their bandmates imagined this particular group’s history—or hell, even their own personal lives—would have turned out when they started playing in a suburban So Cal garage all those years ago. But these days, you will also find no one more grateful to see their creative spark rekindled than the five of them. They say you have your entire life to write your first record, and only months to complete your second. But for Spark Of Life, the malleable post-hardcore band that formed in the suburbs of Los Angeles almost 25 years ago, this life has been anything but predictable.

In the end, it’s not how the songs on new LP sound as much as the emotional weight that they carry that shows the real progression band has gone through since its humble beginnings a quarter century ago. The lens that Jennings’ lyrics are so often put through on the album—all adult pain and middle-aged reflection display just how much hardcore can hit later in one’s life. At the album’s absolute crest, Jennings exhales a series of revelations in the face of a devastating separation. “I lost it all” he screams, not sounding like he is pointing a finger but actually wiping a tear from his eye. “But I won’t give up.” On ‘Plagued By The Human Condition’, the members of group, particularly Piscitello, who has always had an ability to turn a diverse array of influences into his own, push the band’s sonic boundaries even further—as evidenced by the searing ‘Note To Self’ which starts with a tender, twinkling guitar line before it absolutely explodes. Meanwhile, ‘In Pursuit Of’ turns an instantly memorable heartland rock riff into a devastatingly sung admission of regret and loss. ‘Will I Break You Down’ Jennings asks over the song’s increasingly catchy intro, sincerity dripping from his voice, “or will I just break down?”.