UGLY: Arizona Doom/Sludge Outfit To Release Autograph Full-Length May 5th Via Satanik Royalty Records; New Track Streaming + Preorders Available

Arizona doom/sludge quartet UGLY will release their crushing new full-length, Autograph, via Satanik Royalty Records on May 5th, today unveiling the record’s artwork, first single, and preorders.

Taking conceptual queues from bands like Swans, Dystopia, and Noothgrush and adding musical complexity and depth to arrive at something disgusting all its own, UGLY is at once melodic, looming, and horrific. UGLY builds a tonal environment that is at times, angelic… just long enough to win your trust; then tries to kill you by dragging you to the depths with primal, flesh-upon-gear, rhythmic upheaval of any notion of good faith and wellbeing.

Recorded and mixed throughout 2021 by the band’s own Brandon Hayden (Endorphins Lost),

at The Sunroom in Prescott. Arizona and mastered by Greg Wilkinson (Brainoil, Deathgrave, Autopsy) in July 2022 at Earhammer in Oakland, California, Autograph serves as UGLY’s most refined, progressive, and abysmal contribution to date. Thematically, the record focuses on deep-seated illusions of vanity, acceptance, and fanatical egocentric ideology that blights human beings to the core. The music is the culmination of thoughts and feelings left out in all that cold and darkness too long. We all love a little self-sabotage, don’t we? Come get your daily dose of deprivation. Just turn on your stereo and listen for the answers…

In advance of the record’s release, today UGLY unleashes the record’s first single, “In My Pocket.

The band elaborates, “This song is about being indebted beyond your capacity to repay; financially, emotionally, intimately. It is about spiritual predators who hunt for the weak and wounded. It’s so easy for the deviant and the wicked to pay the debt on behalf of the needy if they know that the repayment will be indefinite… eternal. Shame will eat the needy and the interest for the lender is absolute. It’s hard to come clean when you’re knee deep in blood.”

Autograph by Ugly

Stream UGLY’s “In My Pocket” at THIS LOCATION.

UGLY’s Autograph will be released on limited LP, cassette, and digital formats. Find physical preorders at the Satanik Royalty webshop HERE. Find digital preorders at Bandcamp HERE.

Autograph Track Listing:

1. Autograph
2. Dirt
3. Challenging Ego/Challenging Pride
4. In My Pocket
5. Suckle

“Now you will be broken.”

This is the epitaph UGLY preaches with every ounce of boiling vitriol. The sounds are falling bombs and the words are the aftermath of a scorched, burned-out world unknown. Everything about their music comes from a painful place. Conceived in August of 2016, the group set out with one mission in mind: to make a sonic backdrop that reflects the current state of the world as they interpret it. The reality we cohabit is cruel, devious, and relentless and UGLY’s output inherently reflects the sentiment.

Early works such as 2017’s debut Butcher Demo (self-released) were rudimentary by design to focus the narrative on the message of our mutual day-in-day-out bitter contempt for one another with music often repetitious and mechanical to symbolize the every-person-every-day grind that wears us more and more into nothing. As time went on and more gigs helped to hone the motif, UGLY’s output progressed into moodier more melodic realms.

2018’s Wall EP (Bloody Scythe Records, Rotten To The Core Records) is the first instance of the inevitable dynamic shift. The songs found here are more of a journey through different aspects of emotion, both mystifying and brutal. These songs expand on our infinite capacity of self-imploding obduracy. Another year’s worth of multi state tours and time shaping the current theme and it was back to the studio again, this time with the mighty Greg Wilkinson at the controls in the prestigious Earhammer Studio in Oakland, California to record the debut full-length, 2019’s Betrayal (To Live A Lie Records). This capture is the sludge laden odyssey that finds UGLY at their most experimental and devastating. The songs are five pain filled journeys of grief, self-loathing, and savage fury focusing on the ways we betray our bodies, our loved ones, and our own destiny.

A very successful West Coast tour followed and as we crept into the darkness of the 2020 world wide lockdown, the sources of inspiration from new profound suffering never extinguished. By 2022, the world looked darker than ever. A song extending the feelings of current affairs called “Grateful” was recorded for a split 7” with Las Vegas hardcore power trio Life’s Torment (Panic Inc. Records, Deep Six Records, Wise Grinds Records, Running In Place Records). The band has found its home in that cross section of emotions that is simultaneously tender, visceral, calloused, and brooding.

UGLY:
Brandon Hayden – bass, vocals
Krysta Martinez – synth, vocals, loops, aux percussion
Chris Stevens – guitar
Ben Black – drums

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