Burn Your Own Church is a record ten years in the making. Happily, it’s worth the wait. Few bands manage to combine guitars and electronics as successfully as Black Strobe do here. First single Shining Bright Star is a stunning marriage of gut-butting bass guitar, droning synth and Arnaud’s menacing but melodic vocals. The opening track is called Brenn Di Ega Kjerke, Norwegian for ‘burn your own church’ and a nod to principal songwriter Arnaud’s fascination with the extreme sound of so-called black metal. Accordingly, it’s a crunchingly heavy song, pulsing synths colliding with guitars inspired by My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 album Loveless. It’s a darkly captivating formula repeated with great success on Blood Shot Eyes and You Should Be. The flip side to the band’s personality is Girl Next Door, as downbeat and spooky as a 4AM walk home. Perhaps most surprising moment is a high-octane electronic cover of I’m A Man by rock’n’roll icon Bo Diddly, which will be the second single. The sum of these parts is a jaw-dropping debut.

Burn Your Own Church may surprise anyone familiar with Black Strobe from early clubland hits such as Innerstrings and Me And Madonna. However, Arnaud sees nothing strange. “Especially if you think of Innerstrings and Me And Madonna, the album is a logical evolution,” he says. “Maybe people will be surprised because they think there’s not enough synth and too much guitar, but musically it’s a logical evolution. I like the idea that people will be surprised.”
Arnaud wanted to make a record that reflected the full range of his taste. “It’s the summing up of a long musical background,” he explains. “The idea at the beginning was to do an album you can listen to at home, not a dance record. I wanted to keep the dance side in Black Strobe, but not to produce everything with electronics; I wanted to use guitars as well. I wanted to have some freedom. When you’re doing dance music you’ve got to really follow the rules so the DJ can play it. But it’s not really free. You can’t do everything you want. This album is about breaking out of those rules and bringing something to the essence of Black Strobe that I can’t have when I’m doing dance music. Such as the blues. Or country. Or the roots of rock’n’roll. The hypnotic side of black metal bands. To have proper songs. Some slow songs, too. To have the kind of instrumentation they have in classical music. I wanted to write music I really liked and something that reflected the music I grew up with. The idea was freedom.”