Like everybody else, Andrew John Hozier-Byrne had a lot of extra time to himself during COVID-19 lockdown days. And so Dante's Inferno and the Flann O'Brien novel The Third Policeman wound up exerting a rather large collective influence over Unreal Unearth, the third full-length album released under the Irish singer/songwriter's less cumbersome pseudonym Hozier.

The results, released in August of 2023, aren't quite as heavyhanded as touring the "nine levels of Hell" as a conceptual framework might suggest, since Unreal Unearth throws a fizzy guitar-rocker or a wisftul folk-pop ditty into the mix here and there to leaven the mood between its many earnest, epic cries de coeur and doleful piano ballads. The whole thing does demonstrate, once again, that Hozier is committed for eternity to demonstrating that he is far more than the chap who gifted the world with "Take Me To Church" and generally succeeds in that regard. 

TRACKLISTING:

1. De Selby (Part 1)
2. De Selby (Part 2)
3. First Time
4. Francesca
5. I, Carrion (Icarian)
6. Eat Your Young
7. Damage Gets Done (ft. Brandi Carlile)
8. Who We Are
9. Son of Nyx
10. All Things End
11. To Someone from a Warm Climate (Uiscefhuaraithe)
12. Butchered Tongue
13. Anything But
14. Abstract (Psychopomp)
15. Unknown / Nth
16. First Light