The album was hinted at as early as October 2020, before the previous album had even been released. The band released a shirt with their full discography on the back, where fans deduced that the final letters, "K.G.L.W.", were referring to the band's upcoming album, K.G. and a future album, presumably titled "L.W.".[8]
The album's opening track, "If Not Now, Then When?" was released as a single on 10 December 2020, and was accompanied with a music video, uploaded to the band's official YouTube page.[9] The singles "O.N.E." and "Pleura" were released on January 28 and February 18, respectively, with accompanying music videos - with the latter recorded, edited, and uploaded to YouTube in under a day.[6]
The album's existence was confirmed by a listing on the online music store Elusive Disc, where a listing for the album's pre-order had appeared. This listing also confirmed the tracklist and release date, albeit by accident.[10] The band itself clarified that this was untrue, with the album "definitely not coming out in February", but later backtracked, giving three different release dates for the album, eventually confirming the release date.[5][6] On February 22, a final teaser snippet was uploaded to YouTube, featuring a minute of audio from the sludge-metal track "K.G.L.W". The video, created by long-time band collaborator Jason Galea and titled From the bowels of hell, comes L.W (real footage), is a 3D animation featuring an army of skeletons working to forge a number of chains, which they use to pull the L.W. logo out of a pit of lava - announcing the final release date of February 26.[11] It was then released a day early on their personal Bandcamp page.
Composition
L.W. has been praised for exploring and utilizing a diverse array of facets from psychedelia genres and incorporating an "Eastern" sound.[12]
The album starts with the psychedelic funk song: "If Not Now, Then When?," with "O.N.E." and "Supreme Ascendancy" continuing to utilize the funk. "Ataraxia" has been described as dark and Sabbath-meets-T-Rex-like, and is followed by the penultimate "See Me," which is "a slice of experimental psychedelia."[12]
L.W. was well received by critics, with reviewers such as Pitchfork and Exclaim differing in their opinions on whether it was a stronger album than its predecessor.[14][15] Among professional critics, L.W. received an average Metacritic score of 82 (versus 77 for K.G.); their scores were 8.3 and 8.9 respectively among users of the site.[16][17]
