I’ll always remember working on Indifferent Engine’s Speculative Fiction album as the time I moved house… TWICE. At the very start of the PR campaign for this record I had to move back in with my parents for a couple of months (with lots of two hours drives in a car filled with boxes), and then as the campaign was drawing to a close and release date neared, I found my new place back in Manchester, so I had to move again (more long drives in my car filled with boxes). For this reason it was a particularly strenuous PR campaign, but I was still so delighted to be working with this band, releasing their debut full length on the mighty Church Road Records, a label I’ve admired since the start.
Indifferent Engine are a wild bunch. The quintet-sometimes-a-quartet (not to be mistaken as a quartet-sometimes-a-quintet) are very ambitious and passionate, sounding like the torch bearers of At The Drive-In colliding with the kind of glossy synths and obscure samples you might hear on a Warp Records compilation. Not only did the band have an album in the works, but the quintet also build their own pedals, tape delays, and a fully functioning pixel-art retro inspired video game as an extra promotional item. You know, just because. There’s many layers to this Cambridgeshire band, and the album they have produced is absolutely phenomenal, visceral, chaotic, and yet beautifully controlled and nuanced. I’m glad I was able to help share it upon the music media masses. Not long after the release of the record, Indifferent Engine played a triumphant ArcTanGent Festival debut set, armed with a wall of static CRT monitors. I’m very excited to see just where this band can go next.
ACCOLADES
“One of the sets of the weekend. The gang deliver bleeding-edge post-hardcore in the vein of At The Drive-In. Goosebumps raised.”
~ Kerrang!
“Blending emotional post-hardcore with progressive metal and moments of ambience, this is an enthralling statement of intent.”
~ 8/10 Metal Hammer #401
“Given the right breaks, this album could potentially have the same respect as Relationship Of Command in future years. An excellent debut.”
~ Echoes & Dust
FROM THE PRESS KIT
An Indifferent Engine live performance is a spectacle to behold, covering the stage and venue floor-space with an army of old boxy TV monitors, their static screens illuminating like technological ghosts. Vocalist and founding member Adam Paul will stumble and flail about the stage and crowd, screaming his heart out, often collapsing into tears amidst a wall of colourful, beautiful punk noise and woven spoken word samples. Indifferent Engine’s modus operandi is to subvert all expectations of what a rock show can be – leaving concertgoers amazed and alienated in equal measure. Indifferent Engine are always the odd ones out on every bill they play. Yet in contrast, their forthcoming debut album is remarkably cohesive, boldly versatile and fantastically gripping, brimming with pounding riffs, hooky melodicism and brilliant textures.
Though Indifferent Engine have cooked up fire on their debut, conceiving the album in the studio took the band to the knife edge, nearly tearing them apart. They originally desired to work with producer Tom Hill to record their 2021 EP Canis, but were unable to because of pandemic restrictions. Fortunately they were able to team up with Hill to capture this beast at his London studio The Bookhouse. The pressure of the initial recording sessions led to rising tensions within the band and reached breaking point; “every one of us quit the band in some way at some time and there was a lot of emotional breakdown”. But determination led them to book a second session, where they prepared meticulously, rehearsing relentlessly and fine-tuning every detail and texture in their sound. Finally they found their groove, recording the songs live to tape, “warts and all”, pushing the intensity of their playing right to the edge and drawing from the confidence and ferocity of their enigmatic live shows. You can hear this spilling into the frantic energy of ‘Crashing Into A Hillside In The Dead Of Night’, and especially the drawn out brooding tension of centrepiece ‘Bitcrush’.
Released on May 30th 2025 on Vinyl, CD and Digital via Church Road Records.
PR TRAIL 