The second full-length studio album from San Diego’s self proclaimed “Sasscore” outfit expands on the darker elements that weave together the band’s DNA. Produced by Knocked Loose guitarist Isaac Hale, “The Romance Of Affliction” stands as the quintessential SeeYouSpaceCowboy record. It’s violent and vicious, harrowing but oddly comforting, bleak yet beautiful. It’s a complex and compelling mix of genres that defies categorisation and which truly places the band in a world of their own.

Lyrically it examines struggling with adversity while trying to find beauty within that fight and the hope of triumph. It’s the sound of total collapse, of darkness closing in, of trying to escape – through drugs, through death, through whatever means necessary – from the horrors of existence. Two weeks after the band finished recording, frontwoman Connie Sgarbossa nearly died from a drug overdose. It was, she admits, a kind of physical manifestation of everything the album’s 13 songs are about.