Avatar Debut New Look in ‘Silence in the Age of Apes’ Video, Unveil ‘Hunter Gatherer’ Album

Avatar have set Hunter Gatherer as the title of their next album, which comes two years after the release of Avatar Country. With the new record comes a new theme and image, as revealed in the music video for the first new song, "Silence in the Age of Apes."

Gone are the ornate, royal trench coats Avatar adopted for their last record and in their place are leather overalls and red tops, invoking a blue-collar vibe that should align well with the theme surrounding the album's title.

Musically, "Silence in the Age of Apes" is pretty thrashy, always fixated on a sense of groove whether it's quick-hitting, sharp and choppy riffs or pendulum-swinging breakdowns over which maestro Johannes Eckerström presides with his snarling, guttural roar.

At the end of 2019, Loudwire dropped by the studio where Avatar and producer Jay Ruston were at work on Hunter Gatherer. One of the songs we previewed was "Silence in the Age of Apes," which was inspired by the Yuval Noah Harari book Sapiens.

"We want to solve things, but we need to solve it fast and no matter what happens we won’t be able to go back to something to fix it," said Eckerström of the song's concept, elaborating, "That’s just not how things work. So it feels like we have to put all of the money on red and go all in. We just need to head to the future as soon as possible because our salvation is something that is in the realm of science fiction today. Thoughts like that have influenced a lot of the writing for the album."

Always the deep thinker, the singer also told us, "We’re just building our universe around all this technology, which is so fucked up but at the same time so necessary to do in order to keep up with as ethical creatures. It’s a really tricky equation, but somewhere there lies the only solution I’m guaranteed to believe in, because we’re not going back to the Stone Age. It’s complicated because in our nature, biologically, we haven’t been farmers or industrial creatures in the information age long enough for it to really affect our DNA. We are hunter-gatherers still trying to come to terms with everything we’ve built around us."

Watch the video for "Silence in the Age of Apes" below.

Hunter Gatherer, Avatar's eighth full length album, will be released on Aug. 7 on eOne. Pre-order the album here and view the album art and track listing beneath the music video.

Avatar, "Silence in the Age of Apes" Music Video

Avatar, Hunter Gatherer Album Art + Track Listing

01. "Silence in the Age of Apes"
02. "Colossus"
03. "A Secret Door"
04. "God of Sick Dreams"
05. "Scream Until You Wake"
06. "Child"
07. "Justice"
08. "Gun"
09. "When All but Force Has Failed"
10. "Wormhole"

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