Bacchae are breaking up

DC post-punks Bacchae are calling it a day. “After 8 years together, we’ve decided not to continue as a band,” they write. “Many thanks to everyone that has checked out our music, came to a show, released our records, booked us shows, grabbed merch, etc. Y’all showed Bacchae so much love throughout the years and we hope the music lives on 💕 Leftover merch is up on our Bandcamp and all releases are available on the streaming platform of your choice. Bacchae 2016-2024🕊️”

Bacchae’s most recent album was this year’s Next Time, which you can stream below. In our review, we wrote, “While some artists choose to release music on Fourth of July Week for celebratory reasons, I’d wager that Bacchae picked this week because they either 1) don’t care, or 2) overtly wanted to release an anti-capitalist, dystopian post-punk record the same week that everyone around them is celebrating America. Bacchae hail from our nation’s capital, and they spend a lot of Next Time lashing out against the oppressive societal norms that stem from powerful people in that very city. They also address more introspective topics, and they sing about all of it in a way that comes straight from the heart. It’s in the lyrics, but even more so, it’s in the way that singer/keyboardist Katie McD emotes and the way that her voice truly soars–you can’t fake that kind of emotion. It’s Bacchae’s second consecutive album produced by Jawbox’s J. Robbins, and it finds them dishing out twitchy post-punk with the punk edge of the DC/Dischord scene that people like J. Robbins helped shape. Next Time pairs really well with the new Ekko Astral album, another 2024 album from a sociopolitically conscious DC band putting the punk in post-punk, and what’s really remarkable about both of these records is how much fresh new energy they bring to their genre and scene. Next Time scratches a similar itch as Rip It Up and Start Again-era post-punk, Dischord punk, and newer torch-carriers like Priests and Downtown Boys, but Bacchae never sound exactly like any of those things. They’ve got a personality that’s all their own.”