A beautifully defiant title – the one this Baltimore quartet chose for their latest album: Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive! Just like that, with an exclamation mark, as if demanding an escape from this hell on Earth. A heaven that is increasingly less ours by right. It therefore makes perfect sense that on their sixth studio album – if we exclude the successful collaboration with veteran Arnold Dreyblatt captured on Extended Field for the FRKWYS series – and once again on RVNG Intl., we find their music at its most unabashedly beautiful. A continuous blossoming of the band’s minimalist seeds, which, to the usual line-up of drums, guitar, bass, electronics and saxophone, now adds even more wind instruments and, for the first time, vocals. Tracks that align with the band’s already established and inexhaustible trajectory, enchanted by the words and melody of a late 11th-century hymn, which are cut into rhythmic accents reminiscent of Steve Reich’s Tehilim. Minimalism that spans a vast historical and geographical expanse: it takes complex rhythmic equations and weaves them into a hypnotic tapestry, which owes as much to Can as it does to the shared inspiration found in the polyrhythms and melodies of West Africa; it applies La Monte Young’s ‘just intonation’ to angular guitar and saxophone melodies that repeat against a groovy bass pulse and electronic textures. It is not quite, or merely, rock, nor strictly funk, but finds its place amongst these and other forms of music that use repetition as a means to ecstasy.

Coming from Porto, Cat Soup are an instrumental rock quintet who strike a balance between technical precision and raw energy. Yet they retain a captivating affinity with heavy rock. Their debut album, you only 180, released in 2024, reaffirms the band’s power on stage, with explosive performances at venues and festivals from the north to the south of the country.
With new compositions that challenge orthodox form and structure, Cat Soup are paving the way for a new creative phase, with their sights already set on their third album, due in 2026.