Joseph D. Rowland of Pallbearer and Hosianna Mantra and Daron Beck of Pinkish Black have teamed up for Information_Age, a synthwave project whose debut self-titled EP is coming next month. Today they’ve released the lead single, “We Were Alive,” an ’80s-style dance track with a haunting aura.

Rowland said of the track:

I’ve been an italo disco enthusiast for many years, and had always wanted to take my own stab at creating some with a dark and gritty psychedelic edge, and having Daron along with me in this project totally completed the vision.

So much of the lyrical content contained in this album deals in societal collapse from greed and lack of empathy, feelings of loss of sanity due to isolation, and an onslaught of disinformation corrupting our very being. All of it was written between late 2018 thru early 2019. It was completely surreal watching so much of what Daron and I had been ruminating on unfold in real time, well after the recordings had been committed to tape, so to speak.

Beck added:

When Joe approached me to sing for some new music he was writing, I was very excited and totally surprised by what he had in mind. Both being fans of electronic music and the two of us coming from much “heavier” music backgrounds, this has given us a vehicle to do some things that we’ve both wanted to do for some time. For me personally, what we’re doing invokes a lot of music that made me want to be a musician in the first place and lyrically, these songs meanings have changed and evolved over the last year. We weren’t planning on writing anthems for a worldwide catastrophe, but over time that is what they have become.

Listen to “We Were Alive” below.

Information_Age is out 7/23.