Empty Century is both the title of a gripping new single and the forthcoming album by Vancouver-based band Aversions, set for release on August 23rd, 2025. The track also opens the album, and serves as a visceral introduction to the band’s gritty yet melodic spin on post punk.
Aversions is a Canadian noise rock/punk band which have rightfully earned a lot of acclaim in the underground circuits through their earlier releases, bringing together threads of post punk, post hardcore, and darkness into their own voice. Empty Century bares the new album's teeth, being all fierce and conceptually rich.
Lead singer Sam Coll unfolds: "This is a song that has been kicking around in our personal archive for a while. I originally wrote it in 2019/20 for mothballed solo project, where it was more of an electro-goth banger. Adapted for the band, it works well as a straight ahead rock song, where the existing bass line still takes centre stage, and what were previously keyboard parts are given a different urgency on guitar. We did add back some synth layers in the studio to elevate the song’s ethereal shimmer.
"The song’s lyrics have come together in spurts over the years. The chorus features the line “I have become the weapon,” which harkens back to an anecdote overheard in the early days of the pandemic: a young woman describing how, paradoxically, the unwillingness of strangers to be near each other had, for the first time, made her feel safe walking the streets alone."
Uncannily, the chorus was finalized shortly before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump during the final days of the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign. Part of its lyrics seem to eerily anticipate the political violence that followed, and as a whole it imagines a disruption of the entrenched systems.
ZR