Titus Andronicus (ILLUSTRATION: Nicole Rifkin)

Esteemed East Coast Rock titans Titus Andronicus have announced the long-awaited release of their seventh studio album, The Will to Live, out via Merge Records this September. It was produced by Titus Andronicus singer-songwriter Patrick Stickles and award-winning Canadian producer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Godspeed You! Black Emperor) at the latter's Hotel2Tango Recording Studio in Montreal, The Will to Live is heralded by today's premiere of the stirring first single, "(I'm) Screwed," listen now at all streaming services. An official music video from director Ray Concepcion—which finds the band performing on a flatbed truck during The Independence Day Parade in the band's hometown of Glen Rock, New Jersey. Stickles elaborates, "in "(I'm) Screwed," we are introduced to the narrator of The Will to Live at the moment he realizes the walls are closing in. Be it real or imagined, he feels the pressure building on all sides, a feeling to which many of us can relate, I imagine. His faith and fortitude are tested like never before and the narrative of the album will reveal whether that pressure crushes him or produces a diamond."


Titus Andronicus will celebrate The Will to Live with the first leg of their 2022-23 world tour, beginning with The Will to Live record release show September 30th at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina. Across The Will to Live, Titus Andronicus invite listeners on a journey from fear to faith, from anger to acceptance, from grief to gratitude, all chasing the mythical ideal of Ultimate Rock. Drawing on Maximalist Rock epics from The Who's Who's Next to Def Leppard's Hysteria, the band have crafted their richest, densest, and hardest-hitting album to date, matching the sprawl and scope of their most celebrated work while, also, streamlining their ambitious attack to greater effect than ever before. "It may strike some as ironic we had to go to Canada to record our equivalent to [Bruce Springsteen's] Born In The USA," says Stickles, "but the pursuit of Ultimate Rock knows no borders." Titus Andronicus made their long-awaited COVID-marred return to the stage in November of 2021 to celebrate the anniversary of their landmark second album, 2010's The Monitor.


The sheer act of playing that beloved material before an ecstatic audience left Stickles determined to deliver an album that would reach for those same lofty heights, this time relying less on the reckless fire of youth, but more on the experience and perspective at which a band only arrives with a thousand shows under their belt. To reach this level of focus and clarity, Stickles had to stand on the nexus of triumph and tragedy. He credits a new-found domestic bliss and steadfast mental health regimen for his own recent stretch of personal stability, as well as the endurance of what has become the longest-running consistent line-up of Titus Andronicus—Liam Betson on guitar, R.J. Gordon on bass, and Chris Wilson on drums, all of whom featured on 2018's A Productive Cough and 2019's An Obelisk. On the crueler side of the coin, The Will to Live was created in large part as an attempt to process the untimely 2021 death of Matt "Money" Miller, the band's founding keyboardist and Stickles' closest cousin.

Titus Andronicus' The Will to Live expanded album cover (ILLUSTRATION: Nicole Rifkin)

The result proves a milestone for Titus Andronicus, an ambitious, forward-facing work, which stands tall on the nexus of triumph and tragedy, fueled by new-found focus and clarity, showcasing a uniquely gifted Rock "N" Roll band at the very peak of their creative powers. "Certain recent challenges, some unique to myself and some we have all shared, but, particularly, the passing of my dearest friend, have forced me to recognize not only the precious and fragile nature of life, but, also, the interconnectivity of all life," Stickles says. "Loved ones we have lost are really not lost at all, as they, and we still living, are all component pieces of a far larger continuous organism, which both precedes and succeeds our illusory individual selves, united through time by (you guessed it,) the will to live. Recognition of this self-evident truth demands that we extend the same empathy and compassion we would wish for ourselves outward to every living creature, even to those we would label our enemies, for we are all cells in the same body, sprung from a common womb, devoted to the common cause of survival."


"Naturally, though, our long-suffering narrator can only arrive at this conclusion through a painful and arduous odyssey through Hell itself—this is a Titus Andronicus record, after all." I can fully attest: Titus Andronicus are a well-oiled workhorse of an Ultimate Rock band. I got a chance to see them perform live with a friend pre-pandemic on their tour in support of An Obelisk (2019) at First Unitarian Church in Philly and they rocked it! It seemed, at the time, like An Obelisk was Titus Andronicus at their peak/final stage of transformation, but it appears as though that is, indeed, not the case. So, I'm definitely excited to hear what they have in store for us with The Will to Live! Titus Andronicus' The Will to Live is out 9/30 on Merge Records.

Titus Andronicus (CREDIT: Ray Concepcion)