SØWT at Stattpark Olga 2025-09-18T19:00:00
Blighted band SØWT returns with dynamic album -Is This The Hard Part?- Following a year of serious highs (like being asked to tour Europe with Seattle grunge legends Mudhoney) and punishing lows (the tragic immolation of the band’s legendary home base ’t Stroomhuis), Eindhoven-based noise -rock band SØWT will release their third album, “Is This The Hard Part?” in May 2025 in “DIY collaboration” with Dutch alternative labels Subroutine and Bagdaddy Records. SØWT released their successful 2023 sophomore album “Kids Hurting Kids” on vinyl to both critical and local acclaim. In fact, even before their tour with Mudhoney in 2024 the record was due to be repressed thanks to popular demand. But of course, it wouldn’t be SØWT if the pressing plant didn’t immediately go bankrupt, if the master for their record didn’t disappear, and if their longtime rehearsal space (with all of their instruments inside) didn’t then burn down… Fortunately for us all, SØWT is a band that has learned to thrive under adversity. This new record reveals a group that is by no means choosing the safe and familiar path or finding solace in self-pity. Rather, these 11
new songs revel in experimentation and possibility. With Martijn Claessens on drums, Jessie van Eiken on gui- tar, Koen Verhees on another guitar and Danielle Warners on bass the band ventures into new textures and ap- proaches while maintaining their well-established knack for gut-wrenching songwriting and heavy noise-rock
inspired riffs. Never has a record so indebted to a particular decade (the 1990s, natch) sounded so contempo- rary and so timeless. “We made a pop record,” insists the band humbly – though if this is in any way a “pop re- cord,” it is only in that these songs are bound to live on long on repeat in your head.