{"id":99277,"date":"2025-06-10T16:28:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T15:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alreadyheard.com\/staging\/?p=99277"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:00:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T19:00:28","slug":"la-dispute-environmental-catastrophe-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alreadyheard.com\/staging\/la-dispute-environmental-catastrophe-film\/","title":{"rendered":"La Dispute Preview New Album with ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, conceptual post-hardcore\/emo band La Dispute<\/b> shared details of their new album, ‘No One Was Driving the Car’<\/i><\/a>. Set for release through Epitaph Records<\/strong> on September 5th, its concept unfolds in five acts. Today, they’ve released its second act in the form of ‘Environmental Catastrophe Film’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The lengthy track is meticulously detailed with an emotionally devastating climax. Its brooding, delicate build captures\u00a0La Dispute<\/strong>‘s compelling storytelling ability across its eight minutes.\u00a0Vocalist Jordan Dreyer describes \u2018Environmental Catastrophe Film\u2019<\/em> as the thematic heart of the album. The three-part track uses personal memory, city history, and religious reflection to explore identity, loss, and the passage of time.<\/p>\n

“The second act\u2014more or less the thematic centre of the record\u2014is a single song split into three parts. it begins with a boy beside a creek-bed in a wooded area near home, holding a snapping turtle above the flowing water, before tracing its winding path to the river around which the city was first built, and through a brief history of the city itself\u2014its settlement, the creation of the christian reformed church, and the furniture industry that dominated its early economic growth.<\/em><\/p>\n

“from there we return to the boy beside the creek. he sees his own lack of control in the flailing creature he holds, then again at church, listening to a sermon delivered on the calvinist doctrines of predestination, man\u2019s innate and total depravity, and the irresistible grace of his family\u2019s god. at the end of it, he returns for the first time in adulthood to that same church, at the funeral of an old friend dead by suicide, from which the conversation shifts back to the creek as metaphor for life and time, and to what we ultimately maintain the least control over in life: that we can change neither the fact it moves nor the direction it ceaselessly does.<\/em><\/p>\n

“in the final section, the city\u2019s history of the furniture manufacturing returns as additional metaphor, presenting us as un-hewn wood, locked within the lathe of time and against its blade turned, to carve away with each rotation fragments of self en route to new forms\u2014perhaps useful, perhaps beautiful, perhaps not. and as the layers shaved away fall to ground, they are swept up at day\u2019s end and thrown inside the furnace: to burn and be breathed in as smoke, felt as heat, and to return one day as rain from the atmosphere in which they\u2019ve dissipated. what\u2019s left on the lathe is given purpose\u2014placed as slats in chair backs or as table legs\u2014and from this image the focus narrows again: to life with another\u2014where, ultimately, the narrator finds his own comfort against the tumult\u2014via the furniture moved and used by them from one shared home to another, and the person with whom he\u2019s shared them.”<\/em><\/p>\n

On the touring front,\u00a0La Dispute<\/strong>\u00a0will make a brief return to the UK in July. They\u2019ll be playing a one-off headline show in Leeds before performing two sets at the\u00a02000trees Festival<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

July
\n10th Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
\n11th The Forest stage \u2013 2000 Trees Festival, Cheltenham
\n12th The Axiom stage \u2013 2000 Trees Festival, Cheltenham<\/p>\n