The Armed, the art-damaged and often willfully mysterious hardcore collective out of Detroit, have signed to Sargent House for their new album ULTRAPOP. It’s coming out in April, and it features guest appearances from Queens Of The Stone Age guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen and longtime QOTSA associate Mark Lanegan among others. The Armed’s Dan Greene produced it with Chelsea Wolfe associate Ben Chisholm; Converge’s Kurt Ballou is credited as an executive producer.

Here’s Greene with some context on the ULTRAPOP concept:

Crafting vital art means presenting the audience with new and intriguing tensions—sonically, visually, conceptually. Over time and through use, those tensions become less novel and effective—and they become expectations. The concept of “subgenre” becomes almost the antithesis of vitality in art—itself a fetishization of expectation. ULTRAPOP seeks, in earnest, to create a truly new listener experience. It is an open rebellion against the culture of expectation in “heavy” music. It is a joyous, genderless, post-nihilist, anti-punk, razor-focused take on creating the most intense listener experience possible. It’s the harshest, most beautiful, most hideous thing we could make.

I don’t know if I would go that far — I’ve heard harsher — but lead single “ALL FUTURES” is a satisfying noise-pop blitzkrieg all the same. The new era involves the Armed stepping out of the shadows a bit and revealing their full lineup for the first time, and all eight(!) of them appear in a live-action performance video for the track. Watch below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “ULTRAPOP”
02 “ALL FUTURES”
03 “MASUNAGA VAPORS”
04 “A LIFE SO WONDERFUL”
05 “AN ITERATION”
06 “BIG SHELL”
07 “AVERAGE DEATH”
08 “FAITH IN MEDICATION”
09 “WHERE MAN KNOWS WANT”
10 “REAL FOLK BLUES”
11 “BAD SELECTION”
12 “THE MUSIC BECOMES A SKULL”