After a brief embargo period, the video for Secret Road Part II, taken from Empty Orchestra, the forthcoming debut album by Wakefield’s ADORE // REPEL, is now available.

ADORE // REPEL are a four-piece from Wakefield, West Yorkshire; a fiercely independent band with their own record label, who are currently building their own studio, who operate without a booking agent or manager, and embrace everything that has always been so healthy about the DIY ethic.

Of course, many bands follow a similar path. The difference perhaps with ADORE // REPEL is that, without resorting to the machinations of the music industry, in 2016 they self-booked and played two full UK tours, along the way selling every bit of merchandise they took with them; performed sell out shows in Iceland for a second time; played the Reading and Leeds Festivals; made the BBC Introducing Top Ten Sessions list; and operated a successful Crowd Funding campaign. Now, they are preparing for the release of their debut album, EMPTY ORCHESTRA.

Recorded at the renowned Nave Studios in Leeds and released on their own Shoveitupyourcult Records, EMPTY ORCHESTRA reveals a band brimming with intensity, beauty and ferocity. The path of building songs from minimal, haunting and repetitive beginnings into massive and euphoric slabs of controlled noise may have been trodden before but, on EMPTY ORCHESTRA, every song, every thrilling moment of intent, every ecstatic finale, sounds only like ADORE // REPEL. There may be reference points that listeners can allude to but, to our knowledge, nobody is making music quite like this.

From the opening INTRO, a lullaby of calm before the storm, through MONTHS AGO and STICKS IN THE CROW, where the guitars have the sharpness of razor wire, EMPTY ORCHESTRA begins with a strength that you’d be forgiven for thinking cannot be maintained. The ensuing JIM HELWIG allays those fears with its unnerving and beautiful melody and, in particular, its tumultuous drums which rain down upon the song like thunderbolts; while the following and enigmatic // – part of which is recorded backwards – evokes the classic Stone Roses signature. It’s a testament to the band’s ambition that they are currently working out how to play this live.

SECRET ROAD PART II, for which a video has been made, portrays the band’s immaculate ability at building tension, the song dropping away after a couple of minutes and employing just the right amount of silence, before emerging to force its way to an epic crescendo and ultimately fading into silence. After such a breathtaking moment, INTERLUDE appears and provides just that, before ORCA arrives with, unusually, an initial vocal ferocity that ebbs towards a guitar ending of stunning clarity. The closing title track encompasses all that is great and good about ADORE // REPEL musically, with a passion and tension that provides a fitting finale.