Hear a New Track From Suicide Frontman Alan Vega's Posthumous Album 'Insurrection'

Alan Vega, the late singer of the hugely influential New York synth-punk duo Suicide who died in 2016, has another posthumous album coming out. The newly announced Insurrection, which follows the 2021 release of Vega's lost '90s album Mutator, features previously unheard recordings from the late '90s that were assembled with the help of Vega's wife and collaborator Liz Lamere.

Today, we're getting to hear the track "Mercy." As fellow Vega collaborator Jared Artaud, who co-produced and mixed the record with Lamere, explained in a statement, "'Mercy’ reminds me of some of the talks I had with Alan about free jazz, when we would hang out and listen to Albert Ayler’s Spirits Rejoice and Pharoah Sanders' Black Unity albums together. It has this underlying jazz spirit in the track that is unlike anything I heard him do before. The track is sparse yet deep and poetic, and shows the minimalist spirit Alan had, where he could always make the most from the fewest elements possible."

"Mercy" comes with a music video directed by original Jesus and Mary Chain bassist Douglas Hart. "To underscore the powerful rhythms of the song, the video loops and repeats simple movements, like the repeated opening and closing of doors," Hart said. "The textures of the music are illustrated by using both black and white and heavy color-tinted images."

"Insurrection was created in the time period around 1997/98, after Mutator and prior to Vega’s 1999 release of 2007, and captures the intense energy of NYC in the ’90s, rife with crime, killing, hate, fascism, racism, and moral bankruptcy," Lamere wrote of the LP. "You can hear the tortured souls floating through this album. Post-Gulf War angst still enveloped Alan. He was having premonitions about a major terror attack in the US, well before 9/11. The upcoming birth of his son raised further awareness of the state of our world. All these emotions are mirrored in the sounds he magnetized. And true to Vega form, there remains hope and empowerment coursing through the tracks."

"In the almost three decades of going into the studio with Vega, we recorded significantly more material than the seven albums released," Lamere continued. "Vega’s intention was to experiment with sound which would become the canvas for the poetry that reflected his vision of the universe. Because the goal wasn’t to make albums, he had no timeline or constraints and would freely follow new paths uncovered along the way."

Artaud added, "Insurrection hits hard and shows the power and intensity of Alan Vega's visionary solo work. It feels like he was trying to break new ground. There's always a kind of magic that goes into working on Vega's music. I feel like he was tapped into some other dimension. One hand in the gutter and one hand in the stars.”

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Insurrection tracklist:

1. Sewer

2. Invasion

3. Crash

4. Cyanide Soul

5. Murder One

6. Fireballer Fever

7. Genocide

8. Chains

9. Jet Lord

10. Mercy

11. Fireballer Spirit

Insurrection is out 5/31 on In The Red. Pre-order it here.