Real Lies - We Will Annihilate Our Enemies

The album is the start of a new chapter for Real Lies, whose misfortunes have conversely cemented their status as one of the UK’s most enduring electronic acts. A six-figure record deal vetoed at the last minute, plunging them into years of existential inertia. A world tour with Pet Shop Boys that never happened because their dancers needed too much time to get changed between songs. A global pandemic that broke out just as they were revving up to release their second album. The album is about taking the hand of someone you love intensely and running headlong into the chaos and noise and grinding forces that dominate modern life. It follows gilded 2024 collaborations with Mall Grab, Kettama and Drain Gang’s YEAR0001 label. Lyricist, Kevin Lee Kharas, and producer, Patrick King, created the record in their studio, hidden away under a railway bridge somewhere in London’s Zone 3. Three pictures stared down at them from the walls throughout, including an image of a young Sasha Shulgin in the relief print style of Che Guevara t-shirts sold at Camden Market, and a photo of an orbiter fairground ride in flight, taken sometime in the early 2000s. Kharas’ lyrical inspiration comes when he steps away from the tsunami of data flooding his consciousness and paces London’s rain-soaked streets late at night. “I wanted the songs on WWAOE to confront modern reality head-on, unflinching,” he explains. “I didn’t want to whine about a lost past. I didn’t want nostalgia. I wanted to learn to love the modern world, with all its horrors and futility.”