In the jade-cultivating climes of online rock journalism, the angle of “band has new album,” is about as interesting as watching Instagram reels of your brother-in-law’s recent bathroom remodel.
But when a band decides to follow up their last album from over 26 years ago? That’s high on testicular fortitude and as dumb as fidget spinners. Then you learn that said band is the Jesus Lizard – and everything in your pathetic cultural dystopia suddenly falls away and the air smells like Heaven…

Rack, the seventh studio album from this legendary underground-rock fulcrum, comes out into the world on September 13 via Ipecac Recordings. Produced by Paul Allen at Audio Eagle, Rack holds 11 tracks of brisk guitar rock you haven’t heard since… the last time the Jesus Lizard took over a stage in your town. Now, over two decades since their last record together, the Jesus Lizard—vocalist David Yow, guitarist Duane Denison, bassist David Wm. Sims and drummer Mac McNeilly—have returned with a record teeming with the kind of madness needed to beat down today’s AOR mediocrity and piss-perfect pop drivel alike.

“None of us really stopped playing,” guitarist Duane Denison shares, “but we stopped making the Jesus Lizardalbums. And I think [the time apart] gave us a chance to have a lot of ideas and energy, that’s just sort of backed up—and now it's coming out.”

Since their inception in Chicago ca. 1987, the Jesus Lizard has thrilled audiences all over the planet with their idiosyncratic “noise rock.” That term is rendered in quotes because, let’s face it, it’s not necessarily applicable. The impeccable rocket-thrust rhythm section of Sims and McNeilly was the perfect launchpad for Denison’s jagged yet clean-toned riffing and Yow’s mercurial vocalizations manifesting as everything from panicked citizen, reality escapee or wounded sea mammal. This exciting synergy took on all comers: The bands the Lizard opened for often looked like they phoned their sets in, when the reality was that they were struggling to do a single pull-up on the bar the delegation would set nightly. The Jesus Lizard’s fury carried on through six studio albums, two live recordings and a brace of singles and EPs. Yet none of the cultural emissaries of the last few generations came close to matching the quartet’s sweat equity (literal, psychic).