Black Honey share new single ‘Insulin’

Today, Black Honey are unleashing the glowering, gothic brilliance of new single ‘Insulin’. It arrives as another temptation ahead of their forthcoming new album, Soak, due for release August 15th. A collision between frontwoman Izzy B. Phillips’ stream-of-consciousness songwriting and the band’s grunge-driven immensity, ‘Insulin’ is a towering anthem for internal disruption and chemical chaos.

For this album, Phillips is prizing intention and emotional resonance above technical perfection – and ‘Insulin’ was written in this spirit of freedom. The polemical tone of the previous albums is overridden by diving into grey areas and complexity. The track explores harrowing lived experiences of sexual assault, but written in an instinctive, free-form style. Indeed, the phrase, “You’re fucking with my insulin,” was merely a placeholder initially. It was only later that Phillips realised how perfect a metaphor the hormone provided with the way it can be ruled by emotional dysregulation.

Speaking on the track, she shares: “For ‘Insulin’ I wanted to explore tension, romantic dysregulation and the idea of being out of balance in your mind and body chemicals. I thought the word “insulin” wasn’t actually right when it first fell out of my head – maybe I was thinking more about serotonin at the time – but then found out it’s a hormone we all have that regulates your blood sugar and is directly affected by your emotional wellbeing. It was kind of accidentally accurate so I kept it.”

After their previous records have drawn from the cinematic worlds of Quentin Tarantino (Black Honey, Written & Directed) and Wes Anderson (Fistful of Peaches), Soak is decidedly Kubrickan. Steeped in retrofuturism and unsettling geometry, it sets the visual backdrop for the record’s wild dynamic shifts from the gothic to the psychedelic – all presided over by Black Honey’s frontwoman and force of nature Izzy B. Phillips. 

Speaking on the vision for the album, Phillips shares: “Soak is me processing a decade of touring and creating music and art as an addict. It’s me picking at the layers of messy, romantic, confusing, woozy, beautiful and fucked up things. Who I thought I was, who I was supposed to be and who looks back at me now are all so different but I’m kind of here for it.”

It follows on from their era-announcing new single ‘Psycho’ – Black Honey at their finest; twisting a melodic pop hook into an unnerving, rock-driven distortion of itself. The video depicts Phillips trapped in a dystopian facility where prisoners are controlled through an endless flood of artificial realities. Strapped into a chair, her mind is force-fed fabricated experiences until she becomes numb. Similar to our digital lives in 2025, then. As the cycle repeats, she escapes, discovering a control hub – a miniature model of reality. She rips out its wires, breaking free from the system. Is it possible to escape the trappings of our own dark realities as easily?

Another taste of what’s to come arrived in the form of ‘Dead’, an anthem of dissociation with gloriously scuzzy, do-your-worst chorus taunts. Her storytelling takes on a newfound sharpness – quite literally. ‘Dead’ evokes the visceral eyeball torture of A Clockwork Orange: “And you couldn’t decide to stab my back or my eyes / Oh no, I know what you like / Just press on the knife”.

Black Honey are an independent British rock band who over the last near-decade have increasingly made major moves with their last two albums bothering the UK Top 10 (#7 and #6 respectively). A melting pot of alt-rock and dark-pop – they have cut through the noise with every release, defiantly forging their own path with each record and exhilarating sold out crowds all over the world. Their eponymous debut album was released in 2018, Written & Directed followed in 2021 with their last album A Fistful of Peaches landing in 2023.

A new chapter in the unfolding Black Honey saga is upon us – and it looks like we’re in for one hell of a ride. Alongside their forthcoming performance on July 15th for DORK’s 100 Festival, see full details below for the band’s upcoming UK album release tour.