Multi-platinum Canadian rock icons Alexisonfire have announced the March 19 release of their new album Bleed It via Dine Alone Records.
Never an easy band to pigeonhole, the Ontario five-piece of George Pettit, Dallas Green, Wade MacNeil, Chris Steele and Jordan Hastings have always incorporated a diverse array of influences. Yet Bleed It, their second album since reuniting in 2015, is their most adventurous record yet. While there’s no shortage of the band’s trademark ferocity, the album is distinguished by rich dynamic shifts, spacious arrangements and industrial-tinged electronica.
Today they offer a peek into the LP by way of lead-single “Push the River”, which propels the band’s blueprint forward, combining skyscraping guitar riffs and galvanising vocals with an undercurrent of whirring beats. Of the track the band say, “‘Push The River’ is an anthem for the restless mind. It is about surrendering to the bedlam of one’s own thoughts and finding peace in the chaos of the everyday task that is living and loving”. Watch the video directed by Vanessa Heins below.
This new chapter follows a landmark 2026 for Alexisonfire, who celebrated the 20th anniversary of their platinum-selling, chart-topping album Crisis with two sold-out nights at Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre, selling over 32,000 tickets. The band also co-headlined arena shows with Billy Talent at London’s OVO Wembley Arena and Montreal’s Bell Centre, performed Crisis in full at the UK’s Outbreak Fest and returned to Vans Warped Tour. Next up, it’s Australia’s turn to celebrate the beloved record when Alexisonfire touch down for Good Things Festival in December.
Alexisonfire weren’t necessarily expecting to make an album that sounded like Bleed It, but they view this sonic evolution as a logical progression from their last album, 2022’s Otherness. “We’ve always been interested in pushing the band in a lot of different directions, and our influences are all over the place,” says MacNeil. “And because we’ve been a band for so long at this point, we’re capable of pulling it off.”
Bleed It started in an unusual way for Alexisonfire: with the band getting together at Revolution Recording in Toronto with no songs pre-written. 16 months of open-ended demo sessions lent themselves to a different way of writing music. Instead of bringing guitar riffs into the studio, Green put together “simple instrumental moods”, like drum loops or a melody-less electronic piece, that the band could play along to in the studio.
As the sessions unfolded, Alexisonfire found themselves gaining creative momentum. Working with producer Kevin Ratterman (My Morning Jacket, Jim James), who also plays drums for the Louisville post-rock band Elliott, they continued to explore more ideas at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas, a legendary studio in the middle of a pecan orchard not far from the Mexican border. “We really liked the demos. But Kevin allowed the songs to bloom and become this new thing,” Pettit says. “It’s obviously a very diverse record but he found a cohesive way to make them blend together.”
That sense of openness and collaboration also informed the way Alexisonfire approached Bleed It’s lyrics. “Instead of treating it like a segmented thing where ‘I do this, and you do that,’ we are all one,” Green says. “All five of us make this band. So why not treat the songwriting this way?”
“Lyrically, that’s me exploring the general existentialist dilemma of being faced by the mystery of life, and being faced by brutality, but still choosing to partake in the world around you,” Pettit says. “And then you start to see love as this really remarkable thing that exists in defiance of a seemingly brutal and uncaring world. Love is this anomaly of evolution.”
MacNeil concludes “We ended up making the record we didn’t set out to make in any capacity, which ended up being the best conceivable thing we could have done.”
ALEXISONFIRE – BLEED IT
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