Away Team

Formed in Tokyo in 2014, Tropical Death swiftly threw themselves into the city's indie culture with a sound that combines the sharp rhythms and experimentation of post-hardcore bands like Fugazi and At The Drive-In with a melodic sensibility that recalls 1990s alternative bands like Built to Spill, creating party music for aliens and outsiders, with a dark, caustic edge.

The band members themselves pull together from scattered backgrounds that blur the borders between Asia and the West, making them, in a way, a permanent "Away Team" with no fixed home ground. This debut album takes that outsider feeling and connects it more broadly to the confusion of modern life - exploring the alienation and isolation many people feel and the crazy things they do to find a sense of belonging in a carnivalesque tour through doomsday cults, gym culture, tech-fetishism, social media overload and capitalism run wild. The band pull the listener along through these sketches of a world gone mad in a way that gives each song its own unique style, character and musical concept - echoing the ambitious variety of 1990s indie rock concept albums by bands like Modest Mouse and Archers of Loaf.

In addition to the band's two EPs, they have also contributed songs to compilations produced by their label Call And Response Records, as well as featuring prominently on the soundtrack to director Matthew Chozick's award-winning comedy short film Toshie the Nihilist. Away Team is the band's first full-length album and will be available digitally and as a 100-copy limited edition LP.