Upcoming Releases

Spartan Records and Criteria are excited to announce the Friday, May 22 release of SEIZE!, the forthcoming studio album from the Omaha indie-rock staple featuring Stephen Pedersen (ex-Cursive). The follow-up to 2020’s Years, SEIZE! is a sonically and thematically heavy record shaped by loss, endings, and the growing urgency to capture life while it’s still unfolding. The album reflects on a period of profound personal and professional change: relationships dissolving, chapters closing, and attention turning toward the fragile beauty of the present. 

Recorded over seven winter days at ARC Studios in Omaha with producer Matt Bayles and mastered by Ed Brooks at Resonant Mastering, SEIZE! channels what Pedersen calls “pristinely heavy rock,” drawing from the symphonic guitars of Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream era, the pulse and syncopation of Battles, and the tension of Quicksand. Pedersen had the following to share about the album: "These songs feel like alchemy under pressure — love as the undertow, empathy as survival, and seizing the moment as it seizes you.”

SEIZE! as in seize the day, and seize as in halt, collapse, and end. This is not a comeback record. It is a document of where a life is right now, rendered in sound. 

Seize! track listing:

1. Be the Spark
2. Carbon Copy Now
3. You Maketh Me
4. Embrace The Strange
5. I am the End
6. Heavy Return
7. Running out of...
8. I am the Son
9. Wait a Minute
10. Lean Out
11. Works in Progress
12. Seize!