Annihilist

Pelagic Records issues Annihilist on 2 October 2026, on CD in a digisleeve under the label's own SKU PEL338CD, and bills it as the third studio album by Hippotraktor — a five-piece the label traces to Mechelen in Belgium, and one that gets filed under progressive metal, post-metal and sludge without sitting still in any of them. Two of the seven tracks went out ahead of it as singles, A Different Now on 27 May 2026 and Oblivion Walker on 11 August 2026, and each has an official music video on Pelagic's own YouTube channel; on the album the first of those closes the record and I Breathe. I Am. opens it. Chiaran Verheyden, who writes the material on guitar, describes a different working method this time: for the first two albums he passed the band only instrumentals he had already finished, whereas here he handed over pieces that were still incomplete and kept the demo stage deliberately loose, which brought the other four in at an earlier point. The singer Stefan De Graef sets the lyrics as the next stretch in the story of the unnamed character who ran through Meridian and Stasis, a man who has now worked out that he is being made to live over and over against his will and who turns on whatever is imposing that on him. The rest of the band is Jakob Fiszer on bass, Lander De Nyn on drums and Kristof Du Jardin on guitar and vocals. Meridian appeared in October 2021 and Stasis in June 2024, both on Pelagic. No separate Japanese edition has been set up — Apple's Japanese storefront lists the same 2 October release — so that is the street date in Japan as well.