In the organizer's words:

NAKED LUCH
To All And Everyone I Love

"I founded this band and I'll bury it when I feel like it," Naked Lunch mastermind, songwriter and singer Oliver Welter once said. Obviously he doesn't feel like it yet. So it should come as no surprise that twelve years after their last, critically acclaimed album "All Is Fever" (2013), this band, thought by many to be dead, is opening another chapter in its eventful history with the new album "Lights And A Slight Taste Of Death" . And not only with style- and trend-setting albums such as "Songs For The Exhausted" (2004) or "This Atom Heart Of Ours" (2007), for which they also received an Amadeus Award in their Austrian homeland, but also with countless high-energy live performances under their belts.

And now, after new line-ups and reshuffles within the band, this, one might almost say, outrageous record, which, as with every Naked Lunch release, seems to be about everything once again. Even the title carries light and death - in small portions - with it, signaling: here, once again, the "human condition" is measured and measured without reservation using the means of (pop) music. The whole madness, the view and the journey of the songwriter and singer Welter with these songs go deep, lead far, not least into himself - and from there far out again.

"For many, too many years, I must have asked myself every day whether I should even keep this band alive. Whether there are still people out there who would be happy with a new record. And whether I am still prepared to give up something of my own eternal inner turmoil, the eternal, unstable oscillation between bright light and the exact opposite.

The urgent embrace for everything and everyone that is dear to me, as documented in "To All And Everyone I Love", or the sheer destruction of myself, asdescribed as ruthlessly as possible in the miniature "Fuck My Senses" .

Another real form of destruction of my body during this time was an asshole cancer that held me captive, especially psychologically, for over 24 months before finally releasing me (at least temporarily) and making me fit to work and socialize again. On the other hand, and almost parallel to the illness, the birth of my third child was an absolutely wonderful thing that washed away all the bad things as much as possible. The fact that I have erased (at least) two completed albums in the last five years, let's say, without replacement, is a gift ..." (Oliver Welter)

The almost fateful encounter with musician and producer Wolfgang Lehmann ("the best and most talented musician of all", according to Welter) inspired Welter to finish arranging and producing the various layouts of the songs on Lights And A Slight Taste Of Death in his studio and finally to have them mixed by Lehmann. All this, of course, with the help of eternal companions Alex Jezdinsky (drums) and Boris Hauf (keys/sax).

Lights And A Slight Taste Of Death is a 14-song tour de force; it is both demanding and hard, as well as tender and embracing. It's an intimate navel-gazing, bracketed by big ballads like the beguilingly beautiful songs Come Into My Arms or Love Don't Love Him Anymore, the big, exuberant, sky-rocketing pop anthems To All And Everyone I Love, We Could Be Beautiful or Going Underground, as well as completely unexpected expressive outbursts like a saxophone free jazz solo in the doomed If This Is The Last Song You Can Hear .

"Lights And A Slight Taste Of Death" thus takes its place as a consistent continuation in the continuity of the qualitatively so densely woven Naked Lunch discography. This is how it should be and nothing else.

we could be beautiful
meaningless but so beautiful
enormous and probably wonderful

we could shine a light and then move on

(We Could Be Beautiful)