In Vain release Architects of Mayhem tomorrow, 5 November, through Fighter Records. It is their seventh album, eleven songs long and a few seconds under forty seven minutes.
The thing worth remembering about this campaign is how little of it has been shown. Three songs came out before the record, and they were the first three tracks in order, Spit on the Dead, Winds of Fire and Eyes of the Underdog. Everything from Jack Deliverance onwards has been kept back: Kingdom in the Sun, Fortune Teller, Queen of the Swarm, After the Storm, Nimue, Freedom Fighter and Coming Home.
That is eight of eleven arriving cold, which almost nobody does any more. The usual method is to scatter three singles across the record so a listener has heard a piece of the start, the middle and the end before buying anything. In Vain have instead given away the opening quarter and left the rest sealed.
It arrives on CD and digitally. The first song, Spit on the Dead, is also the shortest on the record at three minutes fifteen, which is one more decision that runs against the grain for a band of this kind.