Static Dress Announce Highly Anticipated Sophomore Album “Injury Episode”
Since their inception, UK based quartet Static Dress have been one of the most consistently incendiary names in modern alternative music. Creating visuals, graphic novels (with accompanying soundtracks) and video games that act as narrative connectors for a noirish lore running throughout their musical output, the band have subverted expectations of the traditional band blueprint at every turn, winning multiple awards and heading out on tours with the likes of Bring Me The Horizon, Underoath, Knocked Loose and more in the process.
Their debut album Rouge Carpet Disaster proved to be a watershed moment for contemporary post-hardcore; a rare debut that was as enticing as it was barbed, helping to ignite a new flame within the genre. Now, almost four years since their debut, Static Dress today announce their highly anticipated follow up LP, injury episode, to be released on Sumerian Records on 29th May 2026.
Announced to a select group of fans with a self-directed short film screened at an abandoned central London cinema last night, injury episode charts the silent growing pains of the period since their debut, using a continuation of Rouge Carpet Disaster’s lore as a surreal allegory for trauma, loss, and what emerged as the reality behind a lifelong fantasy.
Sonically as well as thematically, this is the most “human” Static Dress have sounded. The album is free from studio trickery and programming – often hammering out complex emotions in single takes to allow the intensity and exposed nerves of expression to cut through as if the listener is in the room with them. injury episode acts as a comment on the commodification of art; how algorithms and a “constantly-scrolling” culture have veered mainstream audiences away from challenging art towards instant gratification. injury episode combats this with a collection of tracks that are visceral in nature, yet undeniably infectious in their own right; eschewing typical song structure to force the listener to decode them for maximum impact.
The album also marks the first full length project that features musical contributions from each of the band’s members; Olli Appleyard (vocals), Vin Weight (Guitar), George Holding (Bass), and Sam Ogden (Drums). That collaborative effort is palpable in the recordings, with injury episode marking the most diverse collection of music that that band has ever created.
After unveiling the first taste of injury episode proper with February’s human props single, Static Dress today fully unleash the album’s raw power in the form of new track and video ‘Nostalgia Kills’, featuring former tour mates Underoath. An explosive cut of post-hardcore that acts as a true passing of the torch moment, Nostalgia Kills finds the scene legends re-engaging with a sound akin to 2006’s seminal Define The Great Line record and trading barbed words with Appleyard at the song’s climax for a track that goes for the jugular and doesn’t loosen its grip for the track’s 3 minutes 21 second runtime.
In essence, injury episode is one of global alternative music’s most mysterious and forward-thinking bands tearing down the veil and showing the world that in an era of homogenised studio sleight of hand, the most subversive thing you can do is present your truth in raw, unflinching and real fashion. There is, after all, nothing more imaginative and complex than undiluted human emotion.
Static Dress has built a unique, fantastical world across audio, visual and narrative building. When that world has become so enormous that it enveloped the band’s own personal lives, the natural evolution of that situation is to cross-pollinate real-life experiences with the cinematic, foreboding world of Static Dress. injury episode is the result
Pre-order/Pre-save the album HERE
Catch Static Dress in Australia this May supporting Loathe. Full details below.
LOATHE
AUSTRALIAN HEADLINE TOUR
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS STATIC DRESS
SATURDAY 9 MAY – MAGNET HOUSE, PERTH (18+)
MONDAY 11 MAY – THE GOV, ADELAIDE (LIC AA)
WEDNESDAY 13 MAY – FORUM, MELBOURNE (18+)
THURSDAY 14 MAY – METRO THEATRE, SYDNEY (LIC AA) (SOLD OUT)
FRIDAY 15 MAY – KING ST BANDROOM, NEWCASTLE (18+)
SATURDAY 16 MAY – THE TIVOLI, BRISBANE (LIC AA)
