IF you've got your finger on the musical pulse of the UK scene, you'd have noticed our very own Asylums are gearing up to release their new studio album this week, getting shout outs on BBC 6 Music radio and national favourite music magazines including NME and Kerrang!

Alien Human Emotions comes out on Cool Thing Records this Friday, July 6.

Amongst all the hype and ahead of a forthcoming tour, the local lads have managed to book in a couple of shows on their home-turf. One is an in-store at South Records, Queens Road, Southend, this Friday at 1pm, where they will play an acoustic set.

The same evening they will headline seafront music venue Chinnerys, at 7:30pm.

Tickets are £7.70 available from seetickets.com

Luke Branch, front man of the Southend band, says: "This album is the culmination of 24 months graft. We have a show at Chinnerys and South to celebrate on the day of release, followed by a run of in-stores the following week at Rough Trade."

The album tackles themes of bitter sex and soured relationships "which swirl over bleak analyses of a disintegrating social and political landscape".

With subject matter like that, it is no surprise then, that the band say "frustrated rage writhes below the surface on every track and occasionally bursts through with a shocking intensity".

The band have been receiving great support from media across the board, from BBC Radio 1 to The Independent.

They say they aren’t waiting for millennial redemption to find them, they’re making their own - "straight out of Essex and running at full throttle!"

They add they've taken the challenge of the so-called difficult second album and used it as a jump ramp to a higher plane.

They’ve always been about massive, thrashing melodic anthems but this is, they say, quite simply, "the massivist!"

Asylums has grown in the last two years, and say they are now certainly older and "potentially wiser".

"A project that started out as a fizzing ball of un-focused youthful energy (albeit one with great tunes) has morphed into something altogether darker and more intense" they say. "It's a slug of ice-cold Jagermeister coming after the two pints of lager and a vodka Red Bull of the debut."

Twelve tracks on the new album will keep you busy.

To keep track of their live dates visit facebook.com/asylumsuk