Lathe Of Heaven Are “Bound By Naked Skies” On New Album

NYC’s Lathe Of Heaven have released their debut album, Bound By Naked Skies, via Sacred Bones Records. With little more under their belt than a relentless string of live performances, and a twice pressed & subsequently sold out self-titled demo, Lathe Of Heaven have proved themselves to be a potent and cohesive element amidst the torrent of hardcore punk and synth driven pop currently proliferating throughout the US underground. Formed in 2021, the band features members of noteworthy Brooklyn based projects such as People’s Temple, Porvenir Oscuro, Pawns, Android and Hustler. Though this roster of past and alternate musical endeavors exposes a diverse range of genre and skill sets, Lathe Of Heaven can only be understood as a departure from such influences, exploring a sound entirely of its own.

With careful consideration, this eleven track album blends elements of British New Wave and Finnish Post Punk into a nuanced juxtaposition of 80’s sonic mania. Incorporating themes of classic and contemporary Science-Fiction, Bound By Naked Skies indebts itself as much to its literary influences as it does to the music that informs its unique and deliberate sound. Paying powerful homage to the uncanny worlds of authors Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, Ken Liu and Ursula Le Guin, whose novel the band is named after, as well as themes of cosmology, simulation, mental illness and ontology that weave implicitly throughout the arch of the record, providing a sense of insight into the minds of those plagued by the ambiguous nature of humankind’s terrifying and not-so-distant future.