Heavy experimental rock act SUGAR HORSE will release their third album Not A Sound In Heaven on 10th April 2026 via Fat Dracula Records.
Today the band released the second single from the album titled Ex-Human Shield, to stream from on all good digital service providers via this link: https://linktr.ee/sugarhorse
Head over to our friends from Veil of Sound to check out the music video premiere of the song: https://veilofsound.com/2026/03/12/Song_Premiere_Sugar_Horse.html
Veil of Sound on the new track: "It is heavy, crunchy, industrial but it is also melodic and, in parts, clean. The vigorous beats are combined with crisp guitar lines and when the song opens up to a wide, clean melodic middle part, the video also shows up wide open space spaces. To be clear – if that track is an indicator of how good the upcoming record Not a Sound in Heaven will be, then, my oh my, we are in for a heck of treat!"
The band tells about the new single: "Britain is a country defined - and governed - by corruption. Our leaders are bought and paid for by corporations both homegrown and foreign.
Every few years we have the privilege of deciding which particular favour of corruption we want to vote for. Will it be the openly racist corrupt guy or the one the hides it a bit better? Will it be the one who wants perpetual war or the one who will simply go to war reluctantly.
Regardless of how they seem to display themselves, they all seem to end up actioning the same life destroying policies, targeted at our society’s most downtrodden.
Ex-Human Shield is about that corruption. It’s about the perpetual cycle of Liberal Democracy and how it only ever seems to benefit those who already have everything anyway.
They’d sell us all just to keep the machine running."
Listen + watch: Sugar Horse - Ex-Human Shield
How do you capture the machinations of the geo-political industrial war machine—and all the horrors that go with it—in the studio, without seeming trite or crass? That’s the question that Sugar Horse have posed themselves on their forthcoming third album Not A Sound In Heaven, and they must surely be one of the only bands in existence capable of delivering on just that premise with both musical substance and cutting philosophical insight.
"Ever since I was born I can remember visions of war, famine, and death being beamed directly into my living room via the magic of television,” says Tubb of the record. "These visions were accompanied by newsreader narratives designed to either humanise or dehumanise the people involved. We humanise our government’s allies and dehumanise their enemies. This is taken as common sense, or even wisdom to some degree. People watch the news and accept it as fact, simple and true."
"As a person gets older they move in one of three different directions with this acceptance of reality; They embrace what they’re being told, they fall into a kind of trust free nihilism or they learn that there are deeper narratives at play."
Not A Sound In Heaven is an aged acceptance of the latter. An acceptance of sitting at the centre of a global empire of both military and economic dimensions. An acceptance that the stories we’re told as a nation, or what’s generally in the zeitgeist, isn’t necessarily reality itself.
"How does a person cope with the weight—and, frankly, the guilt—of a society that perpetuates such distinct inequalities? A society that thinks a bit of killing abroad is fine, as long as it improves the lives of people at home. You can see why so many choose to embrace it. Hell, nihilism seems pretty sensible. Once a person decides upon pursuing a degree of truth however, things get a bit depressing. Beyond depressing…maddening."
"This album explores this kind of breezy, frivolous subject matter in a manner that will no doubt be uplifting to the listener and massively financially rewarding for the artist."
New album Not A Sound In Heaven will be available 10th April 2026 via Fat Dracula Records.
Stream the new single Ex-Human Shield here: https://linktr.ee/sugarhorse
Pre-order the new album Not A Sound In Heaven on physical formats here: https://fatdracularecords.myshopify.com/