After a year of writing and recording, Vant has returned with the first single from his third album, titled In The Dark Times. The track was previewed on BBC Introducing in Vant’s native North East, and received its debut airwave coverage on Radio X. Pushing personal boundaries, the artist wrote, recorded and produced the track by himself, saying: “in response to the pandemic I challenged myself to write, perform and produce an album entirely on my own. This meant picking up some very basic drum skills.”
In The Dark Times is melancholic, with raw, slow-paced drums and guitars that intertwine with eerie background noise. This more subdued direction doesn’t bear much resemblance to Vant’s riff-centric introduction, Dumb Blood, nor his most recent more experimental album Conceived In The Sky. Instead, it falls somewhere in the middle, showcasing the artist’s versatility. Of his latest release, he stated “in many ways, this is my most personal record to date.”
The lyrics could’ve easily been a commentary on the last year, but for avid poetry enthusiasts, they might sound familiar: 'in the dark times, will there still be singing / yes there will be singing, about the dark times'. On social media, it was revealed that the track uses a lyrical interpolation of a 1938 poem of the same name by Bertolt Brecht.
Instruments were harmed in the making of the accompanying music video, which is set in the midst of a gritty urban landscape. Vant stars as an ominous masked figure, switching between a series of guises before torching his guitar in an act of rage. In The Dark Times is out now via Dumb Blood Records.