Square Wild Bring Debut album Otherling to Life

Manchester’s Square Wild are a powerhouse of progressive and experimental hard rock, drawing on influences from blues and funk to metal, reggae and beyond. The band describe their music as difficult to pigeonhole, combining heavy riffs and groove-laden rhythms with progressive dynamics and a punk ethos.

Their debut album, Otherling, takes its name from a word for something that exists just outside definition. Square Wild have often been told that their music feels different and doesn’t sit comfortably within one genre or scene. Rather than trying to change that, the band have embraced it as part of their musical identity.

For Square Wild, Otherling represents the outsider — something that doesn’t quite fit the expected picture but becomes unique because of it. The album explores that feeling of being slightly out of place, both musically and creatively.

The story behind the record began in 2022, when the band's practice room was sold to be converted into flats. The band recorded the drums before losing the space, but the album would take several more years to complete. Remote recording sessions, re-recordings and further changes followed as band members moved away to study ecology, began and completed a welding apprenticeship, travelled between countries, and revisited previously recorded drum tracks.

After years of work and countless group calls, Otherling emerged as an 11-track album that Square Wild describe as a journey through a “storied, proggy landscape” inhabited by the weirding creature The Otherling.

Along the way, Square Wild became winners of Prog Magazine’s Best Unsigned Band and Metal To The Masses, leading to appearances at Bloodstock and Bloodstock Winter Gathering.

We’re really enjoying what Square Wild have created with Otherling, it is a genuinely exciting debut, packed with ideas and a fearless approach to song writing. It’s bold, energetic and refreshingly unpredictable with a restless energy running throughout while still maintaining a strong sense of identity.

Otherling was released on August 24, 2026, with the digital release arriving on September 5 across all streaming platforms. The album launch takes place on September 12 at The Bread Shed in Manchester.

The band have a run of live dates taking them across the UK throughout the remainder of 2026 and into 2027, including The Greystones in Sheffield on October 18 which we are hoping to make it down to.