Omnipotent Youth Society's New Album is Out Tonight

After years of rumors and speculation, Omnipotent Youth Society have announced that they will finally release a full-length follow up to their eponymous 2010 album. That record’s tales of lower-tier city life set to infectious rock riffs mixed with warm trumpet and sax lines suddenly catapulted them to fame after more than a decade together, and their significant fanbase has been waiting for a second LP ever since.

Entitled Inside the Cable Temple, the new 8-track album is due to hit streaming platform NetEase from midnight tonight, in what is one of the most-anticipated indie-rock releases in years.

The band, formed in the northern city industrial of Shijiazhuang in Hebei province in the late 1990s, have regularly headlined major festivals in China over the last decade, but it’s never been entirely clear how much time they were spending in the studio. A new album has been hinted at at various points over the past ten years — including in an April Fool’s post from their WeChat account earlier in 2020 — but a record has not been forthcoming. Until now.

The Chinese title 冀西南林路行 is perhaps more closely translated as A Walk in the Woods of Southwestern Hebei, also the name of a song that the band have been performing in public since 2015. That track and its title suggest the group won’t be veering too far from their signature focus on poetic lyrics about life in one of China’s less-glamorous areas.

The band’s first album was recently restored to Spotify after briefly being removed, though it’s unclear what — if any — international release plans are in place for this new record.

For more Chinese music highlights, hit "Read more" at the bottom of this post for our 2020 round-up.

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