NYC Noise Icons LIVE SKULL Announce New Album ‘What Could Go Wrong?’
NYC post-punk/experimental noise icons LIVE SKULL are delighted to announce that their fourth studio album since reforming, What Could Go Wrong?, will be released on 13th November 2026 via Bronson Recordings.
To celebrate the news, the band are sharing lead single ‘Internal Combustion’ which is set for release on 10th September 2026.
Commenting on the new track, the band say: “Sometimes it feels like your head is exploding, sometimes your heart; time to pick up a guitar and write a song.”
What Could Go Wrong? is Live Skull’s fourth studio LP on Bronson Recordings since reforming in 2016, and the quartet couldn’t be more excited. While fervently exploring and evolving the post-punk sonic landscape, their new songs have edged away from inter-personal politics to center more on politics-at-large, especially the increasingly worrying move toward totalitarianism in their native US.
“We started the band to keep our sanity during Ronald Reagan’s first term, reformed when Trump was elected President, and now are releasing the new LP in response to (gasp!) his re-election!” say the band. “Elect a convicted felon: What Could Go Wrong?”
When asked what’s next by Mike Watt on the Watt from Pedro Show in 2023, front man Mark C. said he hoped to see Live Skull return to its roots and create the next LP old-school style, by free jamming, and that’s just what they did—recording everything and then extracting their favorite riffs and changes to use as the basis for the new tracks.
In keeping with a long tradition of featuring stellar female bass players, the band invited Colyn Hunt to anchor Live Skulls’ heavy grooves on the new record. The pairing of her dark and vibey phrasing with Rich Hutchins’ swinging percussive attack is mesmerizing. Sound familiar? A perfect backdrop for Mark C. and Dave Hollinghurst to bounce guitar riffs back and forth, shifting on the fly between noise, melody and, at times, outright chaos—Live Skull’s fever dreams reanimated.
In the downtime between records, Mark C. was performing a kind of unhinged rant/poetry at Notes From the Rock Underground, a monthly event at the notorious KGB bar in NYC’s East Village. He was cutting up and collaging found phrases with his own personal ramblings in the style of William Burroughs, trying to vent his pent-up political angst. The charged lines of text meshed perfectly with the new, amped up free jams Live Skull were rocking in the studio, and the nine tracks on What Could Go Wrong? coalesced.
Recorded and mixed by the band themselves at Deepsea—Mark C’s studio in Hoboken, NJ—the vintage factory building is Live Skull’s home base, where bands like Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth have also based studios. Reverberations of the early 20th century industrial landscape shine through in Live Skull’s very alive onslaught, reminiscent of the early grinding sound that grew out of Mark C.’s raw Noho loft space back in the day.
Further details, live dates, and new music TBA.