| Photo: Steve Gullick |
Sick Joy have announced the release of their new single ‘Video Game’, offering the latest glimpse into their forthcoming second album More Forever, due out on 30th January 2026. Produced by the acclaimed Alain Johannes (Queens Of The Stone Age, Chris Cornell, Them Crooked Vultures, Mark Lanegan), the album sees the Brighton-based band pushing into darker and more inward-looking territory. More Forever captures a sense of emotional unrest and release, balancing intensity with vulnerability as it reflects the disorder, release, and paradoxes of modern life. Speaking about the new single ‘Video Game‘, vocalist and guitarist Mykl Barton shares, “It’s a recount of watching another version of myself die. It’s grief. It’s spite. It’s a persistence. It’s moving forward whilst looking back. It’s telling all the secrets I’ve been keeping from myself to the world. It’s whatever the fuck you want it to be.” |
In a world increasingly defined by chaos, Sick Joy sharpen their vision through distortion.
The Brighton-based outlet, born from Newcastle’s underground and carried by the raw intensity of singer and multi-instrumentalist Mykl Barton, has always thrived in contrasts: beauty vs. ruin, euphoria vs. despair. More Forever, the new album that’s due out on 30th January 2026 sees Sick Joy push that duality further than ever before.
Recorded in isolation at a remote Spanish studio with Alain Johannes (Queens of the Stone Age, Mark Lanegan, Chris Cornell) before being mixed by Josh “Hoagie” Harrison (Royal Blood, The Cure) and mastered by Katie Tavini, the album twists Sick Joy’s alt-rock DNA into something darker, sharper, and more expansive. Industrial edges cut through widescreen choruses, bruising drums collide with jagged synths, and lyrics confront systemic damage, grief, love and survival with unflinching honesty.
Since their emergence, Sick Joy have become one of the UK’s most vital rock acts — touring with legends like Pixies and Pearl Jam, sharing bills with Dinosaur Pile-Up and Deaf Havana, and igniting festival crowds from Reading & Leeds to 2000 Trees. Their debut album cemented their reputation as a band unafraid to bare teeth and heart in equal measure.
More Forever doesn’t just continue that story – it blows it wide open. Heavier, hungrier, and more human than ever, Sick Joy are stepping forward with their most ambitious statement yet.
