Reclusive cult band Rudimentary Peni, notable for having fans across (and exerting a strong influence over) the deathrock and anarcho-punk genres, will release their first new 7″ in many, many years on May 29. The single will contain only one track, “Wilfred Owen the Chances,” which was previously available on only a small-run CD-single that accompanied singer Nick Blinko’s book The Haunted Head, published in limited edition in 2009 by David Tibet’s Coptic Cat imprint. “Wilfred Owen The Chances” is Rudimentary Peni’s most recent recorded material available to the public; a once-promised new EP, “The Great War,” has yet to materialize. The new vinyl 7″ single will feature new artwork from Rudimentary Peni singer and acclaimed outsider artist Nick Blinko.

London punk label La Vida Es Un Mus is releasing the new record in cooperation with Sealed Records. The song “Wilfred Owen The Chances” itself is essentially a sprechstimme-style recitation by Blinko of the World War I poem “The Chances” by British WWI soldier and poet Wilfred Owen. The growling, talk-singing recitation of the poem is set to a slow, minimalist, dirgey punk-guitar-and-drums backing song. In the 2010s British label Southern Records briefly announced a new Rudimentary Peni EP, “The Great War,” but to date that EP hasn’t been released. The “Wilfred Owen The Chances” track here (which can be streamed here below) might have served as a track from that new EP, as this song is indeed about the “Great War” (i.e. WWI). “Wilfred Owen the Chances” can be bought as a standalone mp3 from Sealed Records, too.

For those wishing to dig deeper into the backstory of this release, you can read the original 1916 Wilfred Owen poem “The Chances” here. (Owen was himself tragically killed near the end of World War I, in 1918.) The poem is essentially the lyrics of Rudimentary Peni’s song. Putting others’ poems to punk music marks a recent change of tack for Rudimentary Peni; the band’s last multi-song release, 2008’s excellent No More Pain EP, starts off with the track “Handful of Dust” whose lyrics are also cribbed from TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Usually, Rudimentary Peni’s trademark sardonic, bleak, and pun-heavy lyrics are penned directly by Nick Blinko and bassist Grant Matthews.

Rudimentary Peni have popped up now and again in goth and postpunk music consciousness over the past decade. The British trio received some attention from the modern goth scene in the 2010s when Chelsea Wolfe released her A Tribute to Rudimentary Peni EP in 2012, which featured Wolfe’s covers or re-workings of several Rudimentary Peni songs. “I recorded five covers, or interpretations, of Rudimentary Peni songs based on only reading the lyrics or only hearing the song once, so the covers are very loose,” Wolfe stated in an interview. “I love Rudimentary Peni‘s lyrics—very frantic and poetic.” In fact, the band have always exerted a fascination, if not viral influence, over the goth, and especially the deathrock, scenes since their doomy Death Church LP debuted in 1983.