Synth-pop duo Soft Cell have returned to end a 20 year hiatus with the announcement of their upcoming album *Happiness Not Included. Marc Almond and Dave Ball first teased a follow-up to 2002's Cruelty Without Beauty back in April.
Almond said of the new project, “In this album I wanted to look at us as a society: a place where we have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality and decency, food before the rights of animals, fanaticism before fairness and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others. But in the album there is also a belief that there is a utopia if we can peel back the layers and understand what really matters.”
Ball added, “Science fiction stories for the 21st century,” noting that the album was “recorded remotely during a world pandemic."
*Happiness Not Included is set to be released on February 25, 2022.
