Atsuko Chiba Shares ‘Torn’ from Their Upcoming Self-Titled Album
It is rare to see a band willingly strip away the very thing that made them famous. For Montreal’s Atsuko Chiba, that meant putting aside the aggressive, distorted guitars they had leaned on for years.
Their new self-titled album, arriving April 24, 2026, on Mothland, is an exercise in patience and restraint. It’s less about volume and more about the space between the notes. This is music that breathes. The five-piece collective consisting of Anthony Piazza, David Palumbo, Eric Schafhauser, Karim Lakhdar, and Kevin McDonald took a hands-on approach by sharing all engineering and production duties. They often entered the studio with no set plan, recording free jams with no specific outcome in mind.
This process allowed to dictate the direction of the music rather than the band forcing their will upon it. By setting strict limitations, like cutting out certain instruments during sessions, they found new palettes using auxiliary percussion, samplers, and synthesizers. The fifth track on the record, ‘Torn,’ captures this new vulnerability perfectly. When they talk about the single, the band describes a narrative that feels painfully relatable for anyone who has ever felt like they were faking their way through life.
Atsuko Chiba on the new single: “‘Torn’ explores the struggle with anxiety through the lens of overconfidence, transforming imposter syndrome from a state of paralysis into propulsion. By constructing a false reality, the protagonist earns the trust of those around him through promises he can not keep. He embarks on a quest to control the world around him, while gradually losing himself in the deception of others, and his own. Eventually, he stares into the mirror and no longer recognizes the person looking back. Over time, he becomes a composite of the characters and narratives he has invented, dissolving into his own fiction. The game becomes indistinguishable from reality, breeding a deep and growing unease. Panic attacks and episodes of depersonalization follow, each one pushing him further, eroding sleep, stretching time, tightening the tension in his chest. At the edge of a cliff, unsure how long he has been awake, he searches for release as the pressure becomes unbearable. This release is marked by the shift at the end of the song. What happens next remains unresolved: does he jump, or does an old photograph, himself beside his father, surface from his wallet, pulling him back toward the memory of who he once was? We don’t know.”
It’s a record that prioritizes the communal desire to move away from comfortable patterns for the sake of creative longevity. Pre-order the album via Bandcamp.
Headline photo: Atsuko Chiba (Credit: Anthony Piazza)
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