Raunchy

Prisoner Raunchy Limited Splatter Vinyl edition

There’s a particular kind of silence that follows a band when nobody’s quite sure if they’re done or just sleeping. For RAUNCHY, that silence lasted the better part of a decade - and now it’s broken.

“Prisoner”, the seventh studio album from the Danish genre-benders, lands in summer 2026 via Mighty Music, the same label that first put them on record back in 2001. A full-circle moment, and the band knows it.

“It feels right being back at Mighty,” says drummer Morten “Molle” Toft Hansen. “We’ve been around the block - Nuclear Blast, Lifeforce, Massacre - and there’s something about coming home to the people who believed in us first. They get what this band is”.

For longtime fans, that’s almost the entire story right there. Raunchy have always been the band that belonged everywhere and nowhere: too melodic for death metal purists, too heavy for the radio crowd, too synth-driven for the metalcore kids, and too riff-forward for anyone trying to file them under industrial. “Prisoner” doesn’t try to resolve that contradiction. It leans into it.

Drum tracking began as far back as 2021 - a Facebook clip of Molle behind the kit was the first sign of life in nearly seven years. From there, the album came together slowly, piece by piece, squeezed in between day jobs, family life, and a pandemic that wasn’t doing anyone any favors. “This album took the time it needed” says keyboardist and vocalist Jeppe Christensen. “We had no deadline. No label breathing down our necks. We just wrote until the songs felt right and threw out everything that didn’t. I think you can hear that - there’s no filler on this one”. Producer Jacob Hansen, who has helmed nearly every Raunchy record going back to “Velvet Noise”, returned for “Prisoner”, and the chemistry shows. Hansen knows this band’s DNA better than anyone outside the lineup itself.