Metal - The Beths

The Beths - the Auckland based quartet of vocalist Elizabeth Stokes, guitarist Jonathan Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair, and drummer Tristan Deck - announce signing to LA based record label ANTI- and release the new single/video, “Metal.” “Metal” is the first taste of new music from the band since the release of 2023’s Expert In A Dying Field (Deluxe), the expanded version of their #1 2022 album. 

Today’s single “Metal” was born out of a time of rigorous touring, mental health struggles, and several diagnoses for Stokes. “In some ways ‘Metal’ is a song about being alive and existing in a human body,” she explains. “That is something I have been acutely aware of in the last few years, where I have been on what one might call a ‘health journey’. For parts of the last few years, I kind of felt like my body was a vehicle that had carried me pretty well thus far but was breaking down, something I had little to no control over. All of the steps in the Rube Goldberg machine of life are so unlikely, and yet here we are in it. I have a hunger and a curiosity for learning about the world around me, and for learning about myself. And despite all the ways that my body feels like a broken machine, I still marvel at the complexity of such a machine.”

“I can hold that knowledge in one hand, and yet with the other hand I can point to my reflection and just be like ‘you are shit’. Or ‘ugly’. Or ‘worthless’. I can reliably respond to any suggestion that I might be able to achieve any small thing with ‘no’. And these are variations of the ‘short word’ referenced in the song.”

Sonically, the track sees The Beths fully embracing jangle rock. Stokes says, “There was a propulsion to the acoustic strumming pattern on the original demo. Tristan’s drums meet that feeling so perfectly, the feeling of a train pushing up the tracks. Jonathan got to play his Burns 12 string guitar as sparkly as he wanted, and Ben as usual can’t be contained to the lower register. I think we ended up with an arrangement that embodies the frenetic intricacy of an engine in action. There’s a lot going on, until there isn’t.”