There’s more new music from The Killers on the way, with their seventh album Pressure Machine due out this August.
Following on from their 2020 record Imploding The Mirage, The Killers’ new material was born out of the band’s inability to tour. For the first time since 2004, things properly slowed down. And for Brandon Flowers, it meant new songwriting inspiration could flourish.
“Everything came to this grinding halt,” he’s said in a press release. “It was the first time in a long time for me that I was faced with silence.”
“Out of that silence this record began to bloom, full of songs that would have otherwise been too quiet and drowned out by the noise of typical Killers records.”
It doesn’t mean that Pressure Machine will serve a severe about-turn for The Killers, though the songwriting and narrative is more narrowly focused on a specific place: Flowers’ hometown of Nephi, Utah. Describing Pressure Machine as a ‘character-study-driven’ album, The Killers have built their new music around memories and stories from Flowers’ upbringing.
“I discovered this grief that I hadn’t dealt with,” the songwriter admits.
“Many memories of my time in Nephi are tender. But the ones tied to fear or great sadness were emotionally charged. I’ve got more understanding now than when we started the band, and hopefully I was able to do justice to these songs and these lives in this little town that I grew up in.”
Just last month, The Killers came through with new music – serving up a whopping collaboration with Bruce Springsteen in ‘Dustland’.
Of the new track, Flowers says he used music to navigate feelings of grief and loss, namely surrounding his mother’s battle with cancer.
“It was an attempt to better understand my dad, who is sometimes a mystery to me. To grieve for my mother. To acknowledge their sacrifices and maybe even catch a glimpse of just how strong love needs to be to make it in this world.”
“It was my therapy. It was cathartic.”
Pressure Machine is due out on Friday, 13th August.
The Killers will be returning to tour Australia and New Zealand in 2022 but closer to home, they’ll be performing as part of Splendour XR next weekend (Sunday, 25th July).
