Alien Metal

Alien Metal was announced on 8 July 2026, alongside the release of the lead single "Level 5" and its music video starring Vince Colosimo.^[2]

The day prior, the band added a show to their tour, a rave show at Under the K Bridge Park in Brooklyn, New York.^[3]

In 2023 the band released The Silver Cord, an electronic album that was followed by an increasing emphasis on introducing electronic material into their live shows through the use of a modular synth rig named "Nathan". Alien Metal was written over these years as the band grew increasingly familiar with electronic music, with Stu Mackenzie noting that the band scrapped multiple hours of demos over that time—more than any prior album. "Entire albums, entire universes that were formulated, created, recorded, deleted and started again."^[4] The band spent a week in mid-2025 recording for the album between their tours in spring/summer and rave tour in fall, the latter of which where they played only electronic material. The band's drummer Michael Cavanagh also credited Joey Walker's solo career as "Bullant" as a large help with learning how to work with electronic instruments.^[5]

Mackenzie continued to experiment with electronic music, releasing a solo album Mango Sticky Rice through the band's Bootlegger program in December 2025, consisting of an hour and a half of ambient generative music. In summer 2026 he played a handful of solo shows with his synth rig at a cafe in Melbourne.

The album's primary themes came to be in a one-hour improvisational session with the band in the key of F♯.^[6]