Label: Midlake Records / Believe
Rating: ★★★★★ 9/10
After four years of silence, The Antlers have re-emerged with Blight, their most conceptually focused and sonically daring record since Hospice. Where that 2009 masterpiece turned inward—examining grief, trauma, and the fragility of love—Blight turns outward, confronting the planet’s slow decay and our complicity in it.
On Blight, frontman Peter Silberman channels his signature introspection into something more expansive—a poetic reckoning with environmental collapse, human excess, and the uneasy beauty that persists amidst ruin. Recorded in his home studio in upstate New York, the album’s tone is both intimate and apocalyptic, like the soundtrack to a dream about the end of the world that somehow leaves you hopeful.
Lead single “Carnage” sets the tone with a tense slow-burn that erupts into a chaotic crescendo—equal parts catharsis and collapse. The follow-up “Something in the Air” hums with existential dread, its orchestral “jump-scare” underscoring Silberman’s fear that something unspeakable looms just beyond comprehension. The title track, “Blight,” is the album’s beating heart: an eerie meditation on consumption, likening humanity to “ravenous moths” drawn to the artificial light of convenience and greed.
Despite the darkness, Blight is far from despairing. The arrangements are lush and alive—acoustic textures melt into throbbing synths, songs morph midstream, and Silberman’s voice glows with weary compassion. It’s a record of contradictions: organic yet mechanical, mournful yet life-affirming.
As Silberman told NPR, Blight asks “Who will look after what we leave behind?”—a question that lingers long after the last note fades. It’s not a sermon, but a mirror; not a requiem, but a reckoning.
“Will we be forgiven should there come a great flood to drown out our decisions?” Silberman asks in the record’s haunting penultimate track, “A Great Flood.” The silence that follows feels like the album’s most powerful answer.
Listen / Watch
🎥 Watch “Blight” Official Lyric Video
🎥 Watch “Carnage” Official Video
🎥 Watch “Something in the Air” Visualizer
Live Shows
🗓 Album Release Performance
Oct 22 – New York, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge 🎟 Tickets + Tour Info
Critical Praise for Blight
“The best thing they’ve done since Hospice.” — NPR
“Everything you’ve ever loved about The Antlers: cinematic, ineffable, transcendent.” — Paste
“Powerful and exquisitely crafted.” — Record Collector (4/5)