Gen and the Degenerates announce second album Earthly Delights & share new single/video 'Sex Symbol'

North-west based indie art-punk trio Gen and the Degenerates announces the news of their second studio album, Earthy Delights, scheduled for release on January 8, 2027 on Marshall Records. Accompanied by this news is a brand new single, ‘Sex Symbol’, a spiky synth-lead, dance-punk floor filler that sees them playfully dissect society’s objectification and fetishisation of the female body.

Entering a new era with a refreshed lineup, Gen and the Degenerates return with Earthly Delights — produced by Michael Champion (Wet Leg, Swim School) and Paul Whalley (The Wanted, Louis Tomlinson), and their most ambitious and fully realised project yet. Blending sharp wit with emotional honesty, the album unpacks identity, grief, sexuality and the chaos of modern life. A more cohesive yet expansive evolution of their sound, it’s a caustic, absurd soundtrack to strange times — never without joy or defiance.

The band states that they took their album title from a 500-year-old painting, ‘The Garden of Earthy Delights’ by Hieronymus Bosch. “This album isn’t about anything new. It’s about the same things humans have always made art about; sex and death and love and power.”

The album is about this moment in history, through concepts and contradictions that are timeless and internal; there’s no grief without love, there’s no joy in life without knowing it ends. Sex and death. Earthly Delights.

“People make strange assumptions about my personality and morality based on my body.” states vocalist Genevieve Glynn-Reeves on the latest single. “They think because I’m overtly feminine and curvy that I must be flirtatious or highly sexual when in reality it’s them who are sexualising something that I have no control over. I can wear the same exact outfit as a very slender person and be perceived totally differently in it. I’m pointing out the hypocrisy and taking a tongue in cheek look at what society expects me to be.”

Expanding on the song’s narrative, Glynn-Reeves also reflects on the ways marginalised bodies are simultaneously stigmatised and fetishised.

“There is also a point to be made about the fetishisation of oppressed bodies. I’m speaking from my own experience with fatphobia where the same traits that I’m shamed for societally I am also fetishised for. Fatphobia is rooted in racism and women of colour are constantly fetishised by the same society that is structured around their oppression. I also know that porn searches for categories that feature older women actually outweigh those for younger women who fit more neatly into the traditional male gaze. Yet, as women age, they are told their value is depreciating. I have never met a woman who has gotten less interesting and potent as she got older honestly. I can’t speak to all of these experiences personally and chose to focus very much on my own lived experience but I hope it can resonate widely nonetheless. This song is both an analysis of this phenomenon, and a rejection of it.”

They share that the track became an instant favourite upon creation. “It came about very suddenly, me and Sean were driving home from somewhere, and I started singing the hook. I got him to voice-note it while I drove, and then when we got home we spent the evening writing the rest, arranging it in Ableton. The whole thing came out like word vomit, for both of us. That was the moment, more than any other, that we knew we had something special with the album. As a result, it’s a favourite for all of us.”

Earthly Delights: