Amyl and the Sniffers are back with their first studio album in three years: Cartoon Darkness is due out on October 25th via B2B Records / Virgin Music Group. Today, along with the album’s announcement, the band unveiled the album’s latest single, “Chewing Gum.”
Recorded at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles earlier this year, Cartoon Darkness will be Amyl and the Sniffers’ third studio album, following 2021’s Comfort to Me. Thematically, it aims to convey some of the feelings associated with the modern world as political tensions brood.
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“Cartoon Darkness is about climate crisis, war, AI, tip-toeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they’re helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern-day god,” singer Amy Taylor explained in a statement. “It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information. We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness.”
Continuing, Taylor expressed her hope that Cartoon Darkness be seen as “driving headfirst into the unknown, into this looming sketch of the future that feels terrible but doesn’t even exist yet… I don’t want to meet the devil half-way and mourn what we have right now. The future is cartoon, the prescription is dark, but it’s novelty. It’s just a joke. It’s fun.”
The new single, “Chewing Gum,” arrives as the second track from Cartoon Darkness, following May’s “U Should Not Be Doing That” (which was named Heavy Song of the Week when it dropped). Speaking about the single, Taylor said, “The adversity of life is desire never fulfilled. Doing the dishes cleaning, but never the one eating the meal, so close but it’s never enough, and trying to celebrate the ignorance of youth despite it being robbed away, so choosing ignorance, choosing to be dumb and choosing love, despite everything, choosing bad decisions for love, for life, because it is short, or is it long?”
These inquiries led Taylor to a conclusion of sorts. “Surrendering to joy, surrendering to being a vision, in your own power, because making decisions based on emotion rather than logic is liberating, and despite the external inferno, you walk away unscathed, through flames, burnt but only superficially, unstopped, unaffected, unhuman. Life is work, life is not free, we can never work enough because the end goal doesn’t exist, so all we can do is choose to be wrong.” Watch the music video for “Chewing Gum” below.
After Cartoon Darkness arrives in October, Amyl and the Sniffers will hit the road for a European tour, taking them to London, Berlin, Paris, and other cities. Then, in July 2025, they’ll perform in London with Fontaines D.C. Get tickets here.
Cartoon Darkness Artwork:
Cartoon Darkness Tracklist:
01. Jerkin
02. Chewing Gum
03. Tiny Bikini
04. Big Dreams
05. It’s Mine
06. Motorbike Song
07. Doing in Me Head
08. Pigs
09. Bailing on Me
10. U Should Not Be Doing That
11. Do It Do It
12. Going Somewhere
13. Me and the Girls