King Yosef announces new full-length album Spire of Fear, to be released August 15th via Bleakhouse.
Pre-order Spire of Fear, here:
Stream the official music video for the album's first single, "Molting Fear," here:
Initially earning acclaim as a hip-hop producer, Portland, Oregon-based auteur Tayves Yosef Pelletier has been self-releasing music under the King Yosef name since 2017. Having worked with some of the most notorious rappers of the 2010s, he founded the King Yosef solo project as a space in which to explore his other musical obsessions. As King Yosef, Pelletier has been gradually perfecting a searing brand of industrialized hardcore that marries electronic and metallic elements in stunning fashion and seeks catharsis through deeply personal lyrics.
The passion and intensity have been on display since from the very start, expressed through a slew of self-released music, including a collaborative album with Youth Code and the 2023 breakthrough, An Underlying Hum, which Revolver Magazine championed as "a scathing onslaught of heavy hardcore chugs a la Code Orange and wire-sparking industrial-metal fuckery."
But, within the past two years, a transition has occurred; the intensity has ramped up sharply. Without a manager or booking agent, Pelletier transformed King Yosef from a bedroom project into a formidable live act, dominating stages across the globe. In the wake of An Underlying Hum's release, King Yosef completed North American tours with Converge and HEALTH and ventured to Australia, Japan, Europe and the UK. Playing the coveted Roadburn in 2024, King Yosef received these words from the festival's organizers: "A dizzying yet coherent amalgam of sticky beats, chilling interludes and scathing vitriol... As a festival, we like to push boundaries and embrace heavy music in all its forms. We see a kindred spirit in King Yosef."
"The role of King Yosef in my life transformed," states Pelletier, "from a place I went when I was waiting for production projects to release, to becoming my main source of creative fulfillment." Now, in the summer of 2025, Spire of Fear marks the next chapter. Spire of Fear is the album that shows King Yosef to have progressed, from a mere project, to a full-fledged, full-time commitment.
Written, produced, and performed by Pelletier, Spire of Fear was recorded and mixed at the legendary GodCity Studio with longtime King Yosef collaborators Kurt Ballou and Zach Weeks. The album was mastered by Alan Douches.
The album's first single "Molting Fear" is a mosh anthem that goes straight for the throat, delivering titanic bursts of metallic hardcore laced with squelching electronics. Like a great fighter, "Molting Fear" shifts gears unpredictably, disorienting as it pummels. An underlying tone of pure dread is the unifier.
“The idea of this song was to try to push the King Yosef thing as far as I possibly could, without any guitars," Pelletier reveals. "There’s no traditional instrumentation on this, other than drums. I wanted to make something where it got bigger in a shorter span of time than anything I’ve done before. It was about blurring the lines of 'what is this instrument, what is that sound,' and taking it to a very terrifying place.”
The song's official music video, directed by George Douglas Peterson, was shot on location inside a monolithic, abandoned nuclear power plant near Kurt Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen, Washington.
Throughout Spire of Fear, the belligerence of tracks like "Molting Fear" is balanced by murky balladry, evoking the chronically gloomy landscapes of Pelletier's native Oregon. Comprising King Yosef's most gentle and most lethal work to date, the album synthesizes Pelletier's wide array of influences, a list that includes artists ranging from Godflesh and Nails, to Portishead, Aphex Twin, and The Stone Roses.
Where An Underlying Hum was about the past – a deep dive into Pelletier's own childhood trauma, inspired by his time spent in therapy – Spire of Fear addresses the present and future. "After An Underlying Hum, I answered a lot of my own questions and then had to look forward and figure out what navigating the rest of my life was about," he says. "Turns out, it's about showing up, being accountable and not turning away from the things that I fear, because the implications of turning away are far worse than the fear."
Where An Underlying Hum dug into Pelletier's own personal story, Spire of Fear looks beyond the self, toward broader human experience: "Zooming out of the context of your own life, you realize that things have gone on before you and will go on after. So as long as you can face something head on and move through it, you’re probably going to be alright and the path shows itself from there."
The selflessness of Spire of Fear is reflected in Pelletier's real-life actions of the past two years. Through tireless work, Pelletier has risen to become a central figure of the Portland, Oregon scene, building a community of musicians and artists around his label, Bleakhouse, and his annual festival, Bleakfest. He refers to Spire of Fear as "a community-based record."
"Spire of Fear is influenced by Portland, because I am inspired by my friends," he states. "Between the time you spend together hanging out, going to each other’s shows or being at the studio when each of us record, it sort of all bleeds together into this amazing thing that creates a sound for where we are at. Portland’s DIY scene is consistently growing and transforming into the best version of itself I have seen since moving here 10 years ago."
Tracklist:
1) Feoil
2) Molting Fear
3) Glimmer
4) Vi Coactus
5) Lichen
6) Doomtown
7) Wither
8) Blue Morning
9) Walter
10) Spire of Fear
11) Everything's Point of Origin
All music and lyrics by Tayves Yosef Pelletier
Produced by Tayves Yosef Pelletier
Engineered by Kurt Ballou and Zach Weeks
Mixed by Kurt Ballou
Mastered by Alan Douches
Tayves Yosef Pelletier - vocals, guitar, programming
Kameron Tyler - live drums
Ryan Osterman - guest vocals on "Glimmer"
The Bleakhouse Choir - backing vocals on "Doomtown"
Photos by Harper King