ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM, ‘AMERICAN STANDARD’ COMING AUGUST 23 VIA SACRED BONES. ANNOUNCE NYC RELEASE SHOW + WEST COAST TOUR.

Uniform announce their new album ‘American Standard’, coming August 23 via Sacred Bones. The first single ‘This Is Not A Prayer’ is a driving force of a song, propelled by the dual drums of Michael Sharp and Michael Blume. The album is surely Uniform‘s most cohesive and intimate work to date, tackling themes of self-destruction and with a particular focus on vocalist Michael Berdan‘s bulimia nervosa – reader discretion is advised when looking at the biography below. About the album and the first single Berdan comments:

“Although our new record is best experienced as one cohesive piece, it isn’t exactly ‘Dopesmoker’. The songs on ‘American Standard’ feed into an overarching narrative with the goal of retaining their own individual identities. Existing in the netherworld between Public Image Ltd. and Butthole Surfers, ‘This Is Not A Prayer’ best exemplifies the bludgeoning percussive interplay between dual drummers Michael Sharp and Michael Blume. Similar to bands like Swans or even Meshuggah, the guitar, bass, and vocals on this track act in complete service to what’s happening on the kits. The song is as purely rhythmic as we’ve ever dared to attempt, and we hope that these beats will take you where you need to go. Drums should serve as lead instruments in extreme music more often, but I digress… thematically, song touches on the internal paradox that I’ve experienced while in the throes of an eating disorder. It’s about how the best I’ve ever felt about my physical appearance came when the people I love have told me that I look sick. Rather than taking their concerns to heart, I internalized these sentiments as proof that I was on the right track. I was not.”
Trigger warning: This biography contains descriptions of eating disorders such as bulimia.
Uniform wants to find what’s underneath. And what’s underneath the underneath. And what’s under that.

‘American Standard’ Tracklisting:

1 – American Standard
2 – This Is Not A Prayer
3 – Clemency
4 – Permanent Embrace

Uniform Live Dates:

Aug 30: New York City, NY – Bowery Ballroom (Record Release Show) !
Sep 03: Landers, CA – Giant Rock
Sep 04: Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon #
Sep 05: San Francisco, CA – Thee Parkside #
Sep 06: Eugene, OR – John Henry’s #
Sep 07: Seattle, WA – Black Lodge #
Sep 08: Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios #
Sep 09: Vancouver, BC – The Pearl #
Sep 10: Tacoma, WA – Elks Temple #

! w/ Poison Ruin and LEYA
# w/ World Peace

Photo by Joshua Zucker-Pluda & Sean Stout

‘American Standard’ begins with a shock. A voice, a room, a face in a mirror. In the mirror stares a visage, doubled and staring back. Each line comes back to him: reflected and refracted in the unsympathetic glass. Forget for a moment that Berdan has been destroying his throat in Uniform for over a decade. Forget his highly stylised delivery on the band’s acclaimed collaborative work (alongside experimental doom titans The Body and Japanese heavy rock powerhouse Boris). Forget the entire tradition of abrasive vocals in aggressive music. Look for what’s underneath the songs, the form, and the style. With every movement of ‘American Standard’, Uniform peels off a new layer and tells the story inside of the one that came before it. The lyrics sink down into the core of the innermost self, the small human being crushed in the grip of sickness. Berdan identifies here with the inner illness rather than the reality that lies outside of his warped psyche. His bandmates join him, applying a majestic droning vise of doom that moves beyond Swans worship and becomes both mechanical and omniscient. As the rhythms continually pulverize, Uniform gives themselves over to the grinding gears of an uncaring universe.