Given that the band was born as an affirmation of life energy and an outlet for raw emotional expression, maybe it’s inevitable that Toronto rockers Dearly Beloved would answer the weird silence of global pandemic with a roar. The relentless noisemakers emerge from two years of lockdown with the vivid, bracing Walker Park (out Jan 24, 2023 on Sonic Unyon Records).

A bioluminescent 10-song set, the album is the band’s follow-up to Times Square Discount, which was released in late October 2019, just before the world closed in on itself. Where Times Square Discount was conceived on the road, by a band that had logged hundreds of tho1usands of miles of touring around the planet, the songs of Walker Park were spawned in the first year of the pandemic at Phoebe Street, the home studio of DB frontman Rob Higgins. Writing and recording these songs was a process Higgins describes as deeply cathartic.

The band’s self-described “barrage rock” is both a clever bit of wordplay and a pithy statement of intent rooted in bedrock truth. For the past 16 years, the Beloveds’ collision and fusion of pop and hardcore sensibilities, melody and menace, has offered up unabashed stoner rock sensibilities coiled like smoke around a magma core of psychedelic post-grunge. Walker Park anchors itself in the lessons learned over a 16-year career and launches the band on an exciting new trajectory.