Loma Prieta – “Circular Saw”

Brian Kanagaki

Loma Prieta – “Circular Saw”

Brian Kanagaki

Next month, the Bay Area band Loma Prieta, cult heroes in the screamo and post-hardcore world, will return with Last, their first new LP in eight years. You should be excited about that one. The most recent single “Glare” is a sprawling six-minute epic, and it’s fucking awesome. “Sunlight,” which the band dropped last year, is also really good. Today, Loma Prieta have shared another new song, and while it’s not quite as spine-tingling as “Glare,” it could still mess you up.

“Circular Saw” starts out as a woozy, dreamy tangle of guitars before suddenly surging into something much more frenzied and frantic. The lyrics are all about money, a strange and abstract concept that destroys people’s lives all the time: “Your friends die, they don’t give a fuck/ It makes me sick/ Someone’s got to pay for all of this.” Here’s what the band says about it:

“Circular Saw” was written during summer of 2020, a time of deep fear and uncertainty; at the time, writing new music was meant as an escape from thinking about the state of the world. Interestingly, the song reflects the internal chaos we were trying to calm with writing new music at that time. Listening back, it’s clear there was no way to ignore the mental toll of what was transpiring around us in that moment. It is a clear example of the effects of severe anxiety — serene and low-energy one minute, raging anger the next.

Check it out below.

Last is out 6/30 on Deathwish, Inc.

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