Bloc Party release new single ‘Traps’ and announce sixth album ‘Alpha Games’
Bloc Party will release 'Alpha Games', the follow-up to their 2016 album, 'Hymns', on April 29 2022
By Grace Almond
Bloc Party have returned with the latest single, ‘Traps’, announcing their new album ‘Alpha Games’.
New single ‘Traps’ is a fearless, loud and urgent cut, which harks back to their 2005 debut album ‘Silent Alarm’. With smatterings of post-punk and sharp, precise percussion, their new single ‘Traps’ feels comfortingly reminiscent of Bloc Party’s earlier days as a band. Listen to the track below:
‘Traps’ is the second song on their upcoming sixth studio album ‘Alpha Games’, which will be their first album release since ‘Hymns’ in 2016. In a statement, frontman Kele Okereke described the band’s decision behind choosing ‘Traps’ as the album’s first release:
“From the moment we wrote ‘Traps,’ we knew it had to be the first thing people heard from this album; playing it in soundchecks on our last tour before it was finished and hearing how it sounded in those big rooms and outdoors.”
Previous album ‘Hymns’ received strong reviews, with The Guardian referring to it as a “brave and successful reinvention”. Following the album’s release, the band embarked on their Silent Alarm Live tour, which saw them play their debut in full.
Upcoming album ‘Alpha Games’ was teased back in January 2020 by Okereke online, after announcing the rescheduling of his tour to support the release of his ‘2042’ album, released in 2019. Okereke recently released his follow-up, ‘The Waves Pt. 1’, in May this year.
‘Alpha Games’ is slated for release on April 29, 2022. A full track list can be found below:
- ‘Day Drinker’
- ‘Traps’
- ‘You Should Know The Truth’
- ‘Callum Is A Snake’
- ‘Rough Justice’
- ‘The Girls Are Fighting’
- ‘Of Things Yet To Come’
- ‘Sex Magik’
- ‘By Any Means Necessary’
- ‘In Situ’
- ‘If We Get Caught’
- ‘The Peace Offering’