The legendary avant-garde/art rock ensemble Thinking Plague started a crowdfunding campaign, last year, to help finance their seventh studio album, temporarily titled Hope against Hope. The album was set to be released in September of 2016, but, as you may have noticed, it hasn’t.

However, if you were a funder of the project, you should by now have received an email from Kickstarter with a download link and code to get the first track from the album. The song is called ‘The Echoes of Their Cries’, and we can also notice a small change in the album title: now named Hoping against Hope. No information yet on if this is its final name or not. This single track was scheduled for April, but delays have made it impossible for the band to release it until now.

The single is pretty much exactly what you would expect from Thinking Plague: a six minute thirty piece with a very wide dynamic range that you experience like a piece of avant-garde art. It’s shocking, bewildering, varied, even with its quite minimalistic approach to instrumentation. It’s not barren by any means – there are two guitars, bass, reeds, piano, accordion, organ, drums and percussions, and vocals -, but compared to what the band has done in the past, it’s one of the most easily digestible. It certainly got me excited for the rest of their album!

It’s unfortunately too late to back the project now, but Hoping against Hope – or whatever title they decide to use in the end – will most probably be available on the band’s website. There’s no official release date for now.