Bloc Party have announced the details of their forthcoming full -length HYMNS, due for release on January 29th, via Infectious Music / BMG / Vagrant Records in standard CD and digital formats, as well as deluxe CD, deluxe digital and limited edition double vinyl formats featuring four extra songs. Bloc Party recently premiered the album’s opening song “The Love Within.”

HYMNS is a rebirth for Bloc Party. After 16 years as a band, countless tours, and four studio albums, Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack are taking it back to where it all began.

“Bloc Party started with just Kele and I, and we used to write the songs together, and we found other people and grew from that. It feels like that’s happened again,” says Russell. They started writing together, just the two of them, in 2014, and were joined at various stages by the two new members who have made Bloc Party a four-piece again: bassist Justin Harris, whom the band met in his previous guise as part of the Portland indie rock band Menomena, and drummer Louise Bartle, a 21-year-old that the pair discovered on YouTube, and who “blew us away. It’s good to have someone bringing that energy of doing it for the first time. It’s made us all excited about going forward.”

“It’s still a very live record,” says Russell. “Everything has been played, though it doesn’t necessarily sound like that. We take a lot of influence from electronic music, for example, and then try to bring that into a completely different environment.” Kele is astounded at the results. “What Russell is doing now is completely blowing my mind. He’s using the guitar as an instrument of white noise, as well as a melodic tool. I’m super-excited about getting this music in front of people.”

HYMNS deluxe edition tracklisting

01. The Love Within
02. Only He Can Heal Me
03. So Real
04. The Good News
05. Fortress
06. Different Drugs
07. Into The Earth
08. My True Name
09. Virtue
10. Exes
11. Living Lux
12. Eden (deluxe edition bonus track)
13. Paradiso (deluxe edition bonus track)
14. New Blood (deluxe edition bonus track)
15. Evening Song (deluxe edition bonus track)

09 November O2 ABC, Glasgow, UK
23 November Hostess Club Weekender, Studio Coast, Tokyo, JP
27 November Paradiso, Amsterdam, NL
28 November Live Music Hall, Koln, DE
29 November Astra Kulturhaus, Berlin, DE
01 December Alhambra, Paris, FR
02 December Cirque Royal, Brussels, BL
03 December Albert Hall, Manchester, UK
04 December St John at Hackney, London, UK
30 December Falls Festival, Lorne, AU
30 December Falls Festival, Marion Bay, AU
01 January Falls Festival, Byron Bay, AU
05 January Forum Theatre, Melbourne, AU
07 January Enmore Theatre, Sydney, AU
10 January Southbound Festival, Perth, AU