I’m very excited about this one, and you should be too.

It’s been a few years since I happened across A Novelist while trawling the depths of Bandcamp and had my mind blown by Portraits. The duo’s mixture of unconventional songwriting and ability to tastefully perform extremely technical music is something you don’t hear from many bands on the scene, even from the big names, and I’ve been hungering for more ever since. Now, with Folie, A Novelist seeks to take their sound to further heights. Says the band about the album:

“We had fallen in love with the intensity and technical prowess that was so fresh and at times mesmerizing to us with the bands that we were into when we were having our sort of coming of age on our instruments. With Folie, it is obvious that we still share that same affection for extreme music but also make an earnest effort at really incorporating songwriting and dynamics.”

Compare what you hear on “Learning Paralysis” from anything on the debut and you’ll see how serious they are about this. Their technical aptitude is on full display here, from the blistering leads to the cascade of blastbeats and double-bass to the spidery riff in the middle, but the song itself flows like nothing that’s come before it. It’s laser-focused on creating a tense, hazy atmosphere, and it goes about it via speed and power rather than the floaty chords and distant leads of many of their peers. “Learning Paralysis” feels like a wholly different beast, both from the rest of the progressive music scene and from the band’s past work.

Folie comes out on February 8th, and preorders will be available sometime in the next few weeks through Bandcamp. In the meantime, be sure to hit up A Novelist on Facebook with some sweet Toilet lovin’.