Death Cab for Cutie promises louder, abrasive, dissonant new album

After hitting the big time with 2005's breakthrough Plans, Death Cab For Cutie looks to be headed down an unexpected direction for the follow up.

In a recent Billboard piece, the band is promising a "curve ball" and though it will have a number of slower songs, the band is promising some surprises:

It's really weird. It's really, really good, I think, but it's totally a curve ball, and I think it's gonna be a really polarizing record. But I'm really excited about it. It's really got some teeth. The landscape of the thing is way, way more lunar than the urban meadow sort of thing that has been happening for the last couple of records.

[It's also] louder and more dissonant and ... I think abrasive would be a good word to use. [We were influenced by] heavy, sludgy, slow metal [and] synth–punk band Braniac.

The record is expected in 2008.