The Portland instrumental crew Grails have announced a new album, Anches En Maat, their first in six years following 2017’s Chalice Hymnal. For the first time since 2008’s Doomsdayer’s Holiday, all the members of Grails recorded together in the same studio. Today, they’re sharing the album’s lead single “Sad & Illegal.”

“After a band has existed for 20 years, there are things you’ve always wanted to try on the back burner that you’ve never had the room to approach,” the band’s Emil Amos said in a statement. “We all have a bizarre lust to try and not sound like ourselves at times… which is usually the first and last thing you fail at. But with ‘Sad & Illegal’ maybe Grails got a little closer to getting outside ourselves.”

Amos continued:

There are emotions represented in film music that just aren’t things one experiences in a normal day. Like the immense suspicion baked into music from a repelling scene in a diamond heist film… the way the hi-hat simmers, the filthy fretless bass and an out of tune piano that skitters around the beat. This is the dimension where Sad & Illegal was born in… out of a sense-memory we never got to experience, but that film music told us was real.

Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Sad & Illegal”
02 “Viktor’s Night Map”
03 “Sisters Of Bilitis”
04 “Pool Of Gems”
05 “Evening Song”
06 “Black Rain”
07 “Anches En Maat”

Anches En Maat is out 9/22 via Temporary Residence. Pre-order it here.