The Welsh electronic duo return with a tactile, unruly second album that pushes their club sound into stranger and more physical territory.
Overmono have never been particularly interested in making electronic music that feels overly polished. On Pure Devotion, the Welsh brothers Tom and Ed Russell take that instinct several steps further, turning the studio itself into an instrument.
Released on 7 August 2026 through XL Recordings, Pure Devotion is the duo’s second album, following 2023’s Good Lies. Across 11 tracks, Overmono combine the heavyweight bass pressure and euphoric rush of their live sets with an unusually hands-on approach to sound design.
And if the album’s title suggests something serene, the music has other ideas.
Where the machines get messy
The central idea behind Pure Devotion is physicality. Rather than simply reaching for pristine digital sounds, Overmono have been deliberately abusing, reshaping and re-recording their equipment.
The pair have described running tape over magnets, pushing sounds through old speakers and experimenting with ageing effects hardware. One particularly eccentric experiment involved baking a cymbal covered in coffee grounds, crisps and vinegar — an idea attributed to producer Sylvia Massy.
It sounds ridiculous on paper. In the context of Overmono, however, it makes perfect sense. Their music has always thrived on the tension between machine precision and human messiness: rigid rhythms collide with warped samples, emotional vocals and sounds that seem to be on the verge of breaking apart.
That philosophy is all over Pure Devotion.
From Lockup to the deeper cuts
The album opens with “Lockup”, a track that immediately establishes the record’s tougher, more kinetic side. The single reworks Birmingham post-punk group Fast Relief’s “What A Waste” into a driving four-to-the-floor track, giving Overmono another opportunity to blur the boundaries between rave, punk and electronic music.
From there, the record moves through a surprisingly compact collection of ideas. “Knight In Shining Prada” features John Joseph Holt, while Kindora appears on “Even Angels Ghost” and alongside Rock Floyd on “Ballad”. Ruthven also contributes to “Gem Lingo (ovr now)”.
The tracklist reads almost like a snapshot of Overmono’s increasingly broad musical world: club weapons sit alongside more spacious, melodic moments, while vocal collaborations add colour without pulling the album away from its electronic core.
The songs are also strikingly concise, with the individual tracks mostly landing between roughly two-and-a-half and four-and-a-half minutes. That gives the album a brisk, constantly moving feel rather than the extended runtime of a traditional techno record.
The live show is still the beating heart
Perhaps the most important thing about Pure Devotion is that it feels connected to what Overmono have become onstage.
Since Good Lies, Tom and Ed Russell have spent considerable time developing their live performances, including touring internationally, appearing at Glastonbury and recording a Boiler Room set in Manchester. Their new material has therefore been developing alongside a live identity that has become increasingly central to the project.
That helps explain why Pure Devotion seems designed less as a collection of isolated studio experiments and more as fuel for a room full of people.
The contrast is crucial. Overmono can make something feel enormous without making it sound unnecessarily complicated. A bassline hits hard, a vocal slips into focus, a melody briefly appears through the smoke — and suddenly a track that might look deceptively simple on paper becomes enormous when played through a proper sound system.
A bigger, stranger Overmono
What makes Pure Devotion interesting is that the duo haven't simply tried to make a bigger version of Good Lies. Instead, they have doubled down on the imperfections that made their music distinctive in the first place.
The result is an album built around a very Overmono idea: take something familiar, damage it slightly, push it through something inappropriate, and see what happens.
There are still the huge beats and chest-rattling low end, but the surfaces feel more tactile. The electronic machinery is audible in the music rather than hidden behind it. Even the album artwork — featuring the Doberman image created by long-time collaborator Rollo Jackson — reflects that combination of menace and elegance.
With Pure Devotion, Overmono sound increasingly comfortable occupying their own space: somewhere between rave nostalgia, experimental production and unabashed emotional release.
It is dance music that wants to be felt physically — but also inspected closely once the adrenaline wears off.
And that might be the most devoted thing about it.