Ordinarily when we do a track premiere, we’ll roll out what amounts to a teaser—you’ll get a four- or five-minute song which is maybe a tenth of the whole album. But when we bring you some fresh noise from Chicago’s doomy, atmospheric post-punk collective Anatomy of a Habit, you get a full-on 14-minute epic. “Your Pure Breath” is an immersive, meditative, slow-building storm, one of three tracks on the band’s upcoming independently released Even If It Takes a Lifetime, recorded with Sanford Parker. The band has been together in various incarnations since 2008 and the current lineup features guitarist Alex Latus, metal percussionist Isidro Reyes, drummer Skyler Rowe, vocalist Mark Solotroff, and bassist/lap steel guitarist Sam Wagster.
Even If It Takes A Lifetime is the Anatomy of a Habit’s third album, following the Relapse-released Ciphers + Axioms, and will be released December 10 on CD, cassette and digitally. A vinyl edition will follow at a later date. You can preorder/order it here.
Here’s what vocalist Solotroff had to say about “Your Pure Breath.”
“When the current lineup of Anatomy of Habit was gelling in late 2017 and early 2018, ‘Your Pure Breath’ was one of the first songs that we wrote together. I believe that we only played it live a couple of times, and as we were writing more and more songs, and because it proved to be a fairly problematic one for me to perform at the time, we let it sit until we were preparing to go into the studio. While we were recording it, the song unexpectedly took on a life of its own, and it grew in both length and strength. When I consider the lyrics it seems like one of the most straightforward songs that I’ve written for Anatomy of Habit, although I don’t know if someone encountering it for the first time would necessarily agree with me. While the general mood of the song is firmly planted in sullen ground, the plea for help at the end could be interpreted in a more uplifting manner. In my mind, at least, there’s a direct tie to the potentially optimistic heart of the album title. The atmosphere as the song finishes never fails to give me chills and I hope that some listeners experience the same thing.”
