Hey, You ain’t got no mojo, you ain’t got no guts
Yeah, there’s no one you can trust
Hey, Why not try the city where poets kill time
There you’re never gonna die
Escaping the relentless din of New York, Charles Rowell sought refuge in France’s deep well of culture, trading the city’s grind for a rebirth in 2020 with Crush of Souls. A name forged in fire, a project steeped in reinvention—Rowell, known for his work in Crocodiles, Flowers of Evil, and Issue, distills decades of defiance into something leaner, sharper, and unyielding.
The next chapter for Crush of Souls unfolds in Lézire, an album slinking between seduction and menace, its title a sinister fusion of lizard and desire. Bound by self-imposed constraints yet bolstered by new collaborators, the record unspools a love letter to Paris—its splendour and its rot, its flickering neon and its forgotten corridors. Each track on the album hums with tension, passion stitched into the cracks of stone streets.
Its lead single, No Soul, is the fevered hymn of the forsaken, a song of lost bodies drifting through the haze of a city that never sleeps but never truly wakes. Flesh peels back; fire flickers; illusions dance between betrayal and the promise of something tangible. Memory turns like a slow-moving carousel, the past bleeding into the present. This banger of a dramatic darkwave anthem brings to mind Violat0r-era Depeche Mode, Dead or Alive, and Simple Minds’ earlier work.
The video, directed by Emmenuelle Negre, follows a femme fatale through a club’s dim-lit underworld, eyes trailing her every move. She slinks between specters of desire, past voyeurs and dreamers, a cipher in a city that feeds on longing. Who waits in the wings? What darkness lingers behind the glass and glamour? In the end, Paris belongs to its ghosts.
Watch the video for “No Soul” below:
Returning to Catacomb Soul studios, where (A)Void Love had recently taken shape, Charles Rowell began charting the next chapter for Crush of Souls. New collaborators emerged, bringing fresh sorcery to the project. Longtime saxophonist Stanislas de Miscault infuses the record with his untamed flair, coloring its shadowed corners. Meanwhile, Stevan Dinet, one half of COS’s new iteration, commands martial beats and Fairlight sample pads with a steady, relentless pulse.
Lézire is out 21 March 2025 on limited edition orange vinyl LP and digital. You can listen to No Soul below and pre-save/pre-order the album here.
Crush of Souls will be going on a North American tour throughout the US and Mexico in March, making stops in the following cities:
4 March: Washington, DC at DC9
5 March: Pittsburgh, PA at Brillobox
6 March: Cincinnati, OH at MOTR
7 March: Chicago, IL at Beat Kitchen
8 March: Minneapolis, MN at Cloudland
9 March: St Louis, MO at The Sinkhole
10 March: Denver, CO at Hi Dive
11 March: Salt Lake City, UT at Intl Lounge
12 March: Oakland, CA at Stork Club
13 March: Tijuana MX at Black Box
14 March: San Diego, CA at Whistle Stop
15 March: Los Angeles, CA at Footsies
16 March: Las Vegas, NV at Red Dwarf
20 March: Richmond, VA at Cobra Cabana
21 March: Baltimore, MD at Holy Frijoles
22 March: New York City at Berlin
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