“It’s the same as it ever was,” Disco Doom sing on the opening – and title – track of their brand new album Mt Surreal but it’s a lyric that never quite rings true. While there’s definitely a path from these eight new songs to the hearts and minds of those waiting to hear them, it’s never linear, never as straightforward as just putting one foot in front of the other. Disco Doom is, as always, led by the band’s core of Anita Rufer and Gabriele De Mario, and the pair began working on a new album back in 2018, with the final version we hear today worked on from 2019 until late 2021, the story taking many twists and turns along the way.

Releasing music together for some twenty years, such longevity has earned the band a legendary status in Switzerland, as well as a reputation for making incredibly forward-thinking rock music. Since the release of 2014’s “Numerals”, the Zurich-based band have toured the EU/UK with both Built To Spill and The Breeders, had their music featured in the end credits of HBO’s Animals, and have also released a critically acclaimed album under their J&L Defer alter-ego.

True to its name, Mt. Surreal is truly that a strange and peculiar journey that’ll wrap you up deep inside its intoxicating world, where lyrics leap out at odd moments, where a hook grabs just when the whole thing threatens to combust. “Mt. Surreal is a feeling we can’t describe properly and one that’s constantly changing. It is a longing for what we can not yet describe,” the band say of the new album.