Rotterdam based five-piece Iguana Death Cult will release their new studio album Echo Palace on May 12th via American label Innovative Leisure. The band recorded the album at PAF! Studio in Rotterdam, and then had the self-produced album subsequently mixed by Joo-Joo Ashworth (Sasami, Dummy) at Studio 22 in Los Angeles and mastered by Dave Cooley (Tame Impala, Yves Tumor).
After the pandemic hit, and the people of the world suddenly grew wary and suspicious of one another, Iguana Death Cult, one of Europe’s most exciting rock exports, became more than just a band to its members—it became therapy. Taking place at frontman Jeroen Reek’s apartment in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, these gatherings slowly shifted from talking about this surreal chapter of their lives — the days of quiet streets and cramped buildings — to making music about it.
Echo Palace may be the Iguana Death Cult music that’s most overtly about the strange cause and effect of groupthink. Watching the pandemic paranoia and conspiracy theories steeping across their country, Reek wrote lyrics reflecting the scene in front of him: ‘Purple, veiny soccer mommies,’ he sings in a deep, foreboding voice on the song Echo Palace, ‘sharpening their guillotines.’ It’s a cut so infectious that it betrays the density of its lyrics, which were adapted from a poem Reek wrote about the repercussions of “shutting yourself off from everyone outside of your own ideology.”