NOSTALGIA DEATHSTAR RETURN WITH NEW ALBUM
Nostalgia Deathstar’s Sean Albiez and Martin James return with The Burnout Society, a new album of slow burning dark electronic exploration meets dream pop experimentalism.
The Burnout Society tackles a variety of themes, including societal breakdown, the global pandemic, the reinforcement of borders, anti-intellectualism, techno-feudalism and billionaire classes.
Spoken word opener ‘Limited Frames’ presents a discordant and abrasive beatless soundscape over which vocals offer a challenge to the limitations imposed by technological frameworks. Then there’s the dream pop guitars and electronic pulses of ‘Small Assumptions’ and ‘Easy Era’. The former a plea to humankind to demand more than the mediocre, while the latter rails against extreme managerialism and it its far-right rhetoric in support of the achievement economy.
‘End of Times’ is another twisted art pop production from Sean, while Martin offers his most personal lyrics yet through which he rejects blame culture and demands us to let go of emotional scapegoats and take control of our destinies. Again the message is for us to take personal responsibility.
‘The Narcissist’s Mirror’ is largely an instrumental track that builds through ringing guitars and building piano. ‘Sunstops’ presents the death world of necropolitics over slow pulsing beats and waves of electronic disturbance.
‘Melatonin’ concerns the commodification of sleep and associated mental health crises. Musically Sean creates one of his most poignant tracks to date with the counterpoint of propulsive beat and slow, chiming guitars. A similar mood continues on ‘The Days Have Worn Away’ through which Sean creates a disquieting piano melody for another personal lyric in which Martin details an ADHD crash as a campfire lament that sees no hope in tomorrow, but which could be sung as a round – like a nursery rhyme.
“Like the last album, these tracks were all impacted by global events which we felt we had to respond to,” Martin explains. “We keep being told that politics should be kept out of music, but all music is political. Not using your music to challenge is a political decision. We’re not prepared to say nothing and let evil in.”
Ultimately The Burnout Society is about individual responsibility. We may feel our voices won’t be heard and our actions remain unseen, we may feel like opposition is futile – but that is the ultimate aim of competitive authoritarianism… to break our will. So we have to continue to fight.
On previous album They Kill the Flame Nostalgia Deathstar asked, “is this the end of Western liberal democracy?”. The message delivered on the new release seems to be “ fight to the very end. No more time for questions. No one is coming to save us.”
The Burnout Society is released 1st May 2026 via State of Bass