Fontaines DC have announced their fifth studio album Dopamine Chamber, which will come out via XL Recordings on October 16.
The James Ford-produced LP is the follow-up to the band's platinum-certified 2024 LP Romance (325,810 sales, OCC).
Lead single Marianne, which was inspired in part by the Netflix series Ripley, was released today, while the album's wider themes include artificial intelligence, environmental collapse and political violence "riding the same algorithms as memes, jokes and celebrity culture".
Frontman Grian Chatten spent time in Venice, Vienna and Sicily in search of lyrical inspiration for the record.
“The album itself is a dopamine chamber,” said Chatten. “You step inside and we test these different mind- or mood-altering pieces of music on you.
“I think Romance was maybe 60% human and 40% corrupted by automation, and a loss of feeling,” says Chatten“This one feels more like 60% corrupted – the mask is wearing the face a little more. I felt it would be more powerful to leave the hope out and reflect the ugliness honestly. This one needed to feel more like a catastrophic warning.
“There’s a poignant sense of us being on the brink of some other kind of form of humanity, or non-humanity.”
Our albums have always questioned a sense of place... On this record, the question became: where do you escape to?”
Conor Deegan, Fontaines DC
Dopamine Chamber was made with Ford between London, the English countryside and Palermo, where Chatten recorded vocals in a makeshift booth built from mattresses and cushions.
“Our albums have always questioned a sense of place,” said bassist Conor Deegan. “First Dublin, then being away from Dublin, and then trying to find the romance elsewhere. On this record, the question became: where do you escape to?”
Fontaines DC's back catalogue comprises 2019's Dogrel (139,700 sales), 2020's A Hero’s Death (92,071) and 2022's UK No.1 Skinty Fia (190,707 sales).
For Dopamine Chamber, guitarist Conor Curley said the aim was to break from the band’s own reference points. “I was trying to find stuff that pointed into the future,” he said.
Meanwhile, following shows across Europe this month, Fontaines DC will headline Reading & Leeds and Electric Picnic festivals over the August Bank Holiday weekend.
In July last year, the band played their biggest headline show to date with a sold-out 45,000-capacity Finsbury Park gig in London.
PHOTO: Elizaveta Porodina
