Insect Ark, the Berlin-based duo featuring Dana Schechter (Swans) and Tim Wyskida (Khanate), have shared a second track from the pair’s forthcoming album, Raw Blood Singing (Debemur Morti Productions), out June 7, 2024, with today’s release of “The Frozen Lake.”

“’The Frozen Lake’ is a sort of sick romantic fairy tale,” Schechter explains. “It takes place during winter, hidden far in the forest. The song is in essence a murder ballad: the heartsick protagonist, spurned by her lover, spins a sordid tale of his sacrifice by her hand. It doesn’t end well for him, but from this release, they are both set free.”

Wyskida shares how the seven-and-a-half-minute track came to be: “When Dana and I started working on songs for the new album, she played me recordings of various ideas. These days, I rarely hear a riff that gets my juices flowing. Dana had a great lap steel guitar riff. I had a separate idea, using fast cymbal bell patterns with bass drum hits, which sound like distant seismic events. I’ve always liked pieces of music that shift suddenly and drastically between inconspicuously related environments. In ‘The Frozen Lake,’ divergent environments collide.”

Over the eight songs that make up Raw Blood Singing, Insect Ark weaves a lush, bleak, vast and expansive landscape as they move from whispers of synth to a monstrous wall-of-sound via Schechter’s blistering lap steel playing, diabolical bass-work and the mammoth, searing power of Wyskida’s drums.