“I’ve been wondering where your ache breathes, in mazes you design?”
Metropolis Records has announced the signing of Swiss quartet Lone Assembly, whose debut album, Knots & Chains, was released in Europe in late February.
Formed by vocalist Raphaël Bressler, guitarist Glenn Le Meur, bassist Jim Bodeman and drummer Romain Segu, Lone Assembly draw from new wave, synth-pop and post-punk, pairing forceful rhythms and expansive guitars with Bressler’s low, commanding vocal delivery.
Knots & Chains is a stunning collection of poetry, exploring connection, struggle, resilience and the bonds that can offer support while also becoming sources of restriction. Its songs address personal relationships, internal pressure and the influence that physical environments exert over those who inhabit them. Although much of Knots & Chains deals with pain, alienation and emotional constraint, the album also leaves room for hope, courage and recovery. Its movement from enclosed spaces toward uncertain freedom gives the record the shape of a gradual release, even when that freedom remains fragile.
“The album takes shape like a cycle, moving from suffocation to openness, from closed spaces to greater, albeit fragile, breathing space,” explains vocalist Raphaël Bressler.
That transition is particularly clear on the single In The Open, where the search for air and space becomes a response to the album’s recurring sense of confinement. The song follows a person caught in a private cycle of pain, disorientation, and retreat, while longing for some open air beyond it. A remembered date bears the pressure of unresolved grief. At the brink of collapse, calling another person becomes a tentative route back toward freedom and relief.
Watch the video, directed by Manon Stutz, below:
Musically, the record carries the austere atmosphere associated with the Factory Records era, presented through modern production and a larger pop framework comparable to Editors, Pink Turns Blue and The Horrors – even a little INXS. Le Meur’s guitars stretch across the record’s dense foundations, while Bodeman and Segu provide a heavy, urgent rhythm section beneath Bressler’s baritone.
Control forms one of the album’s central themes, appearing as something imposed by others, internalised by the self, or embedded within the spaces people occupy. You’re Pulling At The Same Strings examines the power one person can hold over another, with its lyrics searching for the hidden wound behind destructive behaviour and the emotional maze built around it. Other songs turn that scrutiny inward. The Pain Keeper and My Life’s Solid consider the private restrictions people place upon themselves, where endurance can harden into another form of confinement. “The City Works Like This,” meanwhile, presents the city as an active force capable of absorbing, rejecting, and reshaping its inhabitants, until the surrounding streets begin to exert a will of their own.
Lone Assembly first attracted wider attention with their 2024 EP, That Never Happened, written in tribute to a lost loved one. During the making of the EP, the project developed beyond a group of friends playing together and became a shared space for grief, closeness and healing. Those foundations continue throughout Knots & Chains, expanding the band’s focus from personal loss toward the relationships, habits and surroundings that govern everyday life.
Knots & Chains is out now. Further details regarding Lone Assembly’s first releases through Metropolis Records are expected to be announced. The LP and CD formats will be made available in North America on September 18th, 2026.
Listen to it now below and order the album here.
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The post Swiss Quartet Lone Assembly Sign to Metropolis Records — Listen to Debut Album “Knots & Chains” and Watch Video for “In the Open” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
