Nearly a decade in the vault, TOTEM, Pygmy Lush’s long-lost album, finally sees daylight on July 11th, 2025, via Persistent Vision Records. Recorded in 2016 at GodCity Studio with Converge’s Kurt Ballou, TOTEM is an unfiltered document of a band at the height of its creative powers. Though it has been shelved for years, the record pulses with a vitality which feels current.
A sprawling, genre-defying statement, TOTEM fuses noise rock, hardcore, punk, and haunting quietude into something singular and spellbinding.
Pygmy Lush guitarist Mike Taylor describes the new single, It Wasn't a Compliment (Martial Law Blues), as "a noise rock grunge laden punk ripper by a bunch of punkers who were on a steady diet of Sebadoh, Born Against and Nirvana in 1994."
Formed in the mid-2000s as an evolution of cult screamo greats Pageninetynine, Pygmy Lush has always operated on the fringes, shapeshifting between chaos and beauty. After years of silence, are making a much notable return with TOTEM, and also by making recent appearances at festivals, and their reemergence does not go unnoticed.
ZR