MELBOURNE, Australia (Top40 Charts/ Kiddiepunk Records) - With the national and international release of their debut album Awake In Slumberland, 2008 is shaping up to be a busy year for Melbourne experimental punk band, The Time Of The Assassins.
The album is due for its full national release through Kiddiepunk Records on February 17 and will be available in both major and independent stores throughout Australia and New Zealand. It received its official international release on the first day of the New Year and has already attracted the attention of audiences and critics from around the world.
On the back of this release, The Time of The Assassins, are heading overseas on a tour of North America, Europe, the UK, beginning with the first date on April 22 in West Hollywood.
Awake In Slumberland was recorded in Chicago by Steve Albini and mastered by John Golden in California. The result is a hypnotic, genre-transgressing work of beauty, honesty and ferocity.
In recent press, the music of The Time Of The Assassins, has been described as a "potent slab of angular post-punk venom" (Rave Magazine, Brisbane) and it has been said that the band "combine punk with experimental rock and execute it in a breathtaking burst of raw power" (Beat Magazine, Melbourne).
Awake In Slumberland has already been described as "some of the most elegantly visceral, densely minimalist and violently beautiful music of recent years" (Nick Hudson, music critic for TransformOnline), with "mood swings and simmering rage" (Wilfred Brandt, twothousand.com), "it's a sensational debut album filled with intricate winding rock songs... This album's a total standout" (Michael Atkin, Blunt Magazine) and has received praise and interest, both nationally and internationally. The album combines the band's penchant for slow, repetitive trance music, like epic track 'The Return', the sprawling 'Mad A' and the instrumental 'The Double'. Throw into the mix the apocalyptic post-punk of 'Bones' and '70 Days & 70 Nights', with more experimental numbers like the tribal 'The Valley Of The Kings', the war-opera battle call 'Prayer' and the pounding electricity of 'Math', and Awake In Slumberland comes off more like a strange journey through a dark underworld than a modern rock record.
Awake In Slumberland is a landscape populated by ghosts, mythology, intoxication, madness, electricity and ultimately a dark beauty that permeates every note, building slowly to a frenzied climax and then releasing, leaving the listener in an altered, almost disorientated state. The Time of The Assassins' commitment to appealing to a deeper part of people's nature, and giving people something they can really take away with them, both live and recorded, has led them to develop a reputation as a band to be reckoned with.
