Viet Cong’s self-titled debut album is hitting January 20th worldwide on Jagjaguwar (excluding Canada where it will be released via Flemish Eye) and the band have today premiered a second song “Silhouettes.” Matt Flegel from the band told Fader the song “deals with themes that are common and dear to me: disconnection, intoxication, lapse of memory, regret, and the ability to laugh something off.”

North American audiences can catch the band’s explosive live show soon as well with Viet Cong playing their album release show in New York later this month and then a full tour in March, all tour dates are listed below.

Viet Cong Tracklisting /

01. Newspaper Spoons
02. Pointless Experience
03. March Of Progress
04. Bunker Buster
05. Continental Shelf
06. Silhouettes
07. Death

Upcoming Tour Dates /

01.28.15 – Union Pool – Brooklyn, NY *
01.29.15 – Mercury Lounge – New York, NY **
01.30.15 – Bar Le Ritz PDB – Montreal, QC ^
01.31.15 – The Garrison – Toronto, ON
02.04.15 – Oslo – London, UK
02.05.15 – Deaf Institute – Manchester, UK
02.06.15 – Broadcast – Glasgow, UK
02.07.15 – Brudenell Social – Leeds, UK
02.08.15 – Green Door Store – Brighton, UK
02.09.15 – Point FMR – Paris, FR
02.10.15 – Paradiso – Amsterdam, NL
02.11.15 – West Germany – Berlin, DE
02.12.15 – Loppen – Copenhagen, DK
02.13.15 – Pokalen – Oslo, NO
02.14.15 – Mejeriet – Lund, SW
02.15.15 – Hafenklang – Hamburg, DE
02.16.15 – Rotown – Rotterdam, NL
02.17.15 – De Kreun – Kortrijk, BE
02.26.15 – Commonwealth – Calgary, AB #
02.27.15 – The Artery – Edmonton, AB
02.28.15 – Amigos Cantina – Saskatoon, SK #
03.03.15 – Mississippi Studios – Portland, OR
03.05.15 – Rickshaw Stop – San Francisco, CA
03.06.15 – Echo – Los Angeles, CA
03.07.15 – Soda Bar – San Diego, CA
03.08.15 – Valley Bar – Phoenix, AZ
03.11.15 – Record Bar – Kansas City, MO
03.12.15 – 7th Street Entry – Minneapolis, MN
03.14.15 – Dionysus Club at Oberlin College – Oberlin, OH
03.24.15 – Larimer Lounge – Denver, CO
03.25.15 – Kilby Court – Salt Lake City, UT
03.26.15 – Treefort Music Fest – Boise, ID
03.27.15 – Barboza – Seattle, WA
03.28.15 – Biltmore Cabaret – Vancouver, BC

* w/ Honey, PC Worship
** w What Moon Things
^ w/ PC Worship, Unblonde
# w/ Fist City, Burnt Shrines

Biography /

It takes less than sixty seconds of album opener “Newspaper Spoons” for you to decide that Viet Cong is a winter record. The album has barely begun, and the guitar doesn’t snarl until the end of that opening minute, but it still presents a palpable iciness in just a few short moments. It’s bitter. It stings. “Newspaper Spoons” moves from a punishing, almost militarized drumbeat to a melody that’s still menacing but also delicate, almost celestial.

Themes of deconstruction and disintegration, of hardening and crumbling seem to come from every direction. But time and again, they are rescued by something — a little bit of humor, a cathartic moment, even a basic human goof. In fact, as the members of Viet Cong worked through the songs that make up this record, they erred on the side of keeping those moments that save Viet Cong from being overly mechanized. “There have to be strange little goofups and stuff that’s sometimes intentional, sometimes not,” bassist and lead singer Matt Flegel explains. “I have a bleak sense of humor, too, so some lyrics might seem funny to me even though anyone else might think they’re desperately hopeless.”

Recorded in a barn-turned-studio in rural Ontario, the seven songs that make up Viet Cong were born largely on the road, when Flegel and band mates Mike Wallace, Scott Munro and Daniel Christiansen embarked on a 50-date tour that stretched virtually every limit imaginable. Close quarters hastened their exhaustion but also honed them as a group. With all four members traveling in one car, the mood conflated with the soundtrack, the soundtrack with the cities around them, and so forth. There was repetition, but it was all different. This combined with the grey, chilly emptiness of Calgary rendered a record with a viscerally rugged vibe, one that Flegel even describes as “shit earth.”

A lengthy, almost industrial march chugs along for a full three minutes before the floor gives out underneath it and gives way to a spare little riff and the album’s first real melody. “That’s the one where I thought ‘that’s what I want us to be doing. Finally,'” explains Flegel. “That was the sound that I had heard in my mind before we even got started.” Later still, that negative space gives way to a richer melody, and it’s here that Flegel sings “we build the buildings and they’re built to break,” a declaration that is in many ways this album’s thesis.

https://soundcloud.com/jagjaguwar/viet-cong-silhouettes-1/s-j111t