Northwestern post-grunge outfit Kutless are celebrating their 20th anniversary as a band with the release of their new EP ‘Twenty‘, which features reimagined and re-recorded versions of some of their early 2000s hits from their debut self-titled album. Among the tracks revisited for the EP are the fan-favorites “Your Touch“, “Run“, and “Tonight“, which have been updated with a more modern sound and crisp production elements, bringing them into the current era of hard rock music. The EP was recorded with and produced by Josiah Prince of Disciple, whose sleek production and signature wall of guitars breathe new life into some of the band’s most beloved radio hits for the modern age.
“We’ve been through a lot over the last 20 years,” Primary songwriters Jon Micah Sumrall and James Mead shared about the band’s anniversary,
“We’ve grown, we’ve learned, there have been hard times, there have been fun times. Every step of the way as we revisited these songs, it brought back a lot of memories. Our fans want two things from us. One, they want us to treat their beloved songs with respect. And two, they want to be surprised in a pleasant way. It was exciting to face that challenge, to give these songs a long enough leash that we could change parts, add new parts and really focus on the fact that we’ve grown over the past 20 years. I was 21 years old when that first record came out, and James was 19, now we have all this experience. We’re much better musicians, much more seasoned. We wanted to bring that experience and skill to these new renditions.”
Being their first full release since 2017, the ‘Twenty‘ EP is just the first taste of what’s to come in the future for Kutless. The band has been hard at work on a new project in the studio, which they have teased on social media to be their heaviest work to date. This will also be one of the first rock-centric projects the band has put out in several records, as they shifted towards a more contemporary sound in the early 2010s. Kutless has also announced that they will be launching a podcast, which features stories from their years on the road. Some of the stories discussed are also represented on the EP’s artwork, which features a collage of photos from the past 20 years of the group’s existence. On top of new Kutless material, guitarist Nate Parrish has also started a solo independent punk project, from which he dropped his second full-length album ‘Soul Surgery‘ earlier this year. Nate also performed in last year’s online music festival Contagionfest, which had a surprise guest feature from Thomas Freckleton of Silent Planet on bass.
Kutless‘ new EP ‘Twenty‘ is available now on all streaming services, listen to the EP below.
