ANATOMY OF HABIT's "Paired Sentinels" is out today, and ahead of its release the Chicago band handed the complete record over to Everything Is Noise, which premiered the full album stream in advance of release day.
The outlet framed the album as a step up on several fronts at once, calling it "dynamically rich and thematically pertinent" and singling out the longer pieces — "Conditions For Freedom" and the title track — for the weight they carry and the level of detail packed into them. For all the industrial harshness on display, the review noted, there is a surprising airiness running through the record, with the mass at times reaching a critical point past which even the sky isn't the limit.
"Paired Sentinels" follows 2021's "Even If It Takes A Lifetime" and 2023's "Black Openings", closing out what the band regards as its most prolific and unified stretch — and, by their own assessment, producing their most cohesive and most vulnerable album to date.
The record was written by the lineup of Mark Solotroff (vocals, analog synth), Alex Latus (guitar), Isidro Reyes (metal percussion), Skyler Rowe (drums) and Sam Wagster (bass and lap steel guitar) — a group whose interplay has been refined across years of collaboration into something close to equilibrium. That balance shapes the album's dynamic language: Latus's shifting guitar constructions, Reyes's metallic resonance and rhythmic abrasion, Rowe's precise and intuitive drumming, Wagster's grounding low end and spectral lap steel textures, and Solotroff's commanding baritone and synth atmospheres.
Across four tracks, the album works through repetition, memory, identity and the unstable structures that shape longing and loss. Solotroff's lyrics move between stark observation and internal monologue, tracing cycles of obsession, dislocation and renewal in language that is compressed, incantatory and ritualistic — an extension of the band's longstanding interest in psychological excavation and the friction between interior and exterior worlds. The compositions unfold with a sense of inevitability, balancing monolithic force against moments of genuine openness.
"Paired Sentinels" was recorded and mixed by Sanford Parker, the band's fourth collaboration with the producer, and mastered by Collin Jordan.
It is available on LP, CD, cassette and digital. The vinyl edition includes a bonus 7-inch featuring two instrumental tracks, "Sentinel (One)" and "Sentinel (Two)", assembled by Solotroff from practice space recordings — exclusive to the LP and not included with any other format.
"Paired Sentinels" track listing:
- Always Arriving
- Conditions For Freedom
- The Importance Of Risk
- Paired Sentinels
Formed in 2008, ANATOMY OF HABIT have spent close to two decades carving out a space at the intersection of post-punk, doom metal, early industrial, noise-rock and shoegaze — long-form, patient, and built to reward sustained listening.
Stream the album at Everything Is Noise, and order it via Bandcamp.