TV Priest Confront the Repetition of History on ‘The Mud Never Dries’

TV Priest have returned with their first new music since 2022’s My Other People. ‘The Mud Never Dries’ — out now — pushes the London band’s sound toward starker, more digital ground.

The track opens with a breakbeat blast before collapsing into bleak post-punk. Vocalist Charlie Drinkwater calls it “the most abrasive thing we’ve made, a collision of drum and bass, post-punk, electronic data samples and spoken word that doesn’t settle into any one shape.”

Lyrically, the single treats history as sediment — layers of repeated mistakes, personal and political, that accumulate until you’re walking on ground you no longer recognise. Drinkwater explains: “Nothing dries. Nothing finishes. We keep stepping in it.”

The accompanying video, directed by Charles Gall and shot in a single afternoon, mirrors that cyclical logic. It’s a brief, uncompromising return from a band that hasn’t softened with time.