Atlas

Atlas followed Deep Blue (2010) and was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Matt Hyde, who, according to the credits, also recorded, mixed and mastered it. Before it, the band had released Home Is for the Heartless, a DVD travelogue of tours that took them to places such as Colombia, China and India, and it reached platinum in Australia. Winston McCall explained that the title joins the past year's travelling to the figure of Atlas, the Titan of Greek myth who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, and that the lyrics are closely tied to exploration and discovery. The wider his horizons grew, he said, the more he saw of what was going wrong in the world, which is why the album holds more confrontational material than anything the band had written before. Mariah Green on cello and Alison Belle on violin play on the opening "Sparks" and on the title track, where Daniel Alexander adds piano; Bruce Mann plays trumpet on "Blue and the Grey", DJ Snagtoof adds turntables to "The Slow Surrender", and guest voices appear on four songs. Richard Baron arranged the strings, Dugan Cruz handled the vocal arrangements and assistant production, and Callum Preston did the layout and art direction around front and back cover photographs credited to NASA. The band was Winston McCall on vocals, Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick on guitars, Jia O'Connor on bass and Ben Gordon on drums. Resist Records announced the album on 12 September 2012 with a video for "Dark Days", giving 26 October as the Australian release date, and Epitaph Records announced 30 October for North America; "Old Ghost / New Regrets" was made public on 16 October. In the United States a deluxe CD and DVD edition added Home Is for the Heartless. Atlas entered the ARIA albums chart at No. 3 and was certified gold in January 2013, after selling more than 35,000 copies in Australia, and it entered the Billboard 200 at No. 32. A video for "Wild Eyes" followed in May 2013.