Does the endless deluge of bad news and AI garbage have you feeling down? Landowner's upcoming full-length, Assumption, just might be the antidote. Arriving February 27th via Exploding In Sound Records, the album is 35 minutes of abrasively clean, minimalist punk that uses mechanical precision to create deeply human music.

Landowner operates with a unique set of parameters: distortion-free guitars, an airtight rhythm section, and vocalist Dan Shaw's observations on the systems, mindsets, and dark absurdities that entangle and complicate our lives. The result is a truly one-of-a-kind band that's undeniably strange and unexpectedly catchy in equal measure. Lead single "Rival Males" encapsulates all of Landowner's appeal in just over 90s seconds. Shaw's dryly ominous delivery rings out over cuttingly clear guitars, primal punk drumming, and even a breakdown that will make you see red without a distortion pedal to be found.

Landowner's initial concept was a made-up genre called “weak d-beat”, meant to sound intentionally absurd “as if Antelope were reading the sheet music of Discharge," says Shaw. When the vocalist was joined by his current bandmates (guitarists Elliot Hughes and Jeff Gilmartin, bassist and backup vocalist Josh Owsley, and drummer Josh Daniel) in 2017, they translated these early experiments in restraint and caricatured hardcore as a live band. Assumption captures the vibrancy and intensity of those performances. Comparisons could be made to The Fall, Lungfish, or Uranium Club, but across their five albums, they make it clear: Landowner just sounds like Landowner.

The tension that's present in Landowner's taut, high-energy minimalism goes hand in hand with Shaw's lyricism, becoming an expression of the anxiety around the decline of Earth's life-giving capacity, the instinct to ensure the well-being of our children, and the deep fears that arise when these combine. Shaw's words often reflect on our relationship with the built and natural environment, perspective gained from his day job as a landscape architect designing public spaces. Now with fatherhood in the mix, his reflections have evolved with an added sense of connection and urgency. “As the album progresses, I am increasingly addressing my own assumptions, specifically the assumption that the world is doomed and my kids will experience increasing suffering," he explains. "I end up reminding myself that this view is indeed itself an assumption, or is at least simplistic, and I am not an all-knowing prophet. This insight has been deeply valuable to me, in learning to cope with personal-level crises and anxieties, or more global-scale worries. Things usually turn out differently than I assume, and that's a simple but deeply valuable thing to realize.”