Pioneering electro-punk duo Suicide will release American Supreme, their first album since 1992's Why Be Blue?, on Mute Records October 29th. Singer Alan Vega and keyboardist Martin Rev recorded and produced the set themselves over the past twelve months in New York City.

"We'd been talking about doing a new album for years," Vega says. "Everyone had been asking us when we were going to do it. We knew there was another one coming, but now I'm glad we waited as long as we did, because we could not have done it in the same way, even a year ago."

"Before September 11th," he continues, "we had started a new album after ten years of not doing anything, and then all of a sudden, after the attacks, we just couldn't do it the same way. I couldn't sing to the music in the same way. It's still Suicide. It's always going to be Suicide. But it's not like we say, 'Let's just do the same shit.' We still try to reach for newer things."

Vega and Rev first made their name on the fringe art scene that thrived on New York's Lower East Side in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Their first two albums -- both titled Suicide and released in 1977 and 1980, respectively -- foreshadowed pop's synth era. But their live show won the two their greatest renown; onstage, they combined the Stooges' bare-bones aggression with an arty, urban sensibility and antagonized their fellow scenesters into an often-abusive frenzy.

Suicide will take that live act on the road to support American Supreme this fall.

AUGUSTIN SEDGEWICK
(September 10, 2002)