Overmono don't do sequels. Their 2023 debut "Good Lies" turned festival-tent bangers into Mercury Prize nominees; the obvious move for album two would have been more of the same, bigger rooms, cleaner drops. Instead Tom and Ed Russell spent the follow-up trying to break their own gear.
What did they actually do to make this record?
"Pure Devotion" is built on deliberately degraded tools: tracks re-amped through damaged speakers, tape run hot enough to warp, chains that push a clean signal until it frays. That's not a gimmick description, it's the production method the brothers have talked up around the album, and you can hear it on lead single "Lockup": a low end that sounds like it's coming through a blown cone, chords that stay tender even as the low end gets ugly. The video, shot by longtime collaborator Rollo Jackson, matches the tone: grainy, tense, more claustrophobic than a duo this big usually bothers to look.
Who else is on the record?
Eleven tracks, four credited collaborators: poet John Joseph Holt gets a spoken feature on "Knight In Shining Prada," Kindora turns up twice (a solo cut and a three-way with Rock Floyd on closer-adjacent "Ballad"), Ruthven joins for "Gem Lingo," and Rock Floyd rounds out that closing feature. It's a tighter, more vocal-forward cast than "Good Lies" leaned on, and it lets Overmono chase the tender side of the record without losing the low end that made them festival headliners in the first place.
The sonic language on "Pure Devotion" pairs pummelling beats and chest-rattling basslines with beautifully tender chords, a deliberate juxtaposition rather than a compromise.
Why announce it at Labyrinth?
The timing wasn't an accident. Overmono dropped the album news the same week they played a sold-out Labyrinth open-air set at London's Old Royal Naval College, one of the more architecturally loaded rooms on the UK outdoor circuit. For a duo whose whole pitch is scale (huge rigs, huge rooms, a sound designed to hit hardest outdoors) pairing the announcement with a sold-out show does more than any press release: it's proof the audience that made "Good Lies" a festival staple is still there, ready to follow them into a rougher, weirder second record.
