After nearly ten years in the making, Stewart Macpherson—recording as King Colobus—unveils his long-awaited debut album, Torn Between Age & Perseverance (released February 13th, 2026). The record is less a snapshot than a time capsule: a body of work shaped gradually across a decade of personal change, political turbulence, and artistic evolution. Based in South Devon, Macpherson has steadily carved out a sound defined by darkly topical, baritone-infused alternative blues. Influences from Interpol, Alice in Chains, Johnny Cash, and Josh Homme echo subtly throughout the album—not as imitation, but as tonal reference points. There’s brooding atmosphere, weighty lyricism, and an understated grit that threads everything together.The album’s origins lie in a collection of songs written over many years—tracks that never quite found a home on earlier EPs. Rather than abandon them, King Colobus revisited and reshaped these ideas, deconstructing and rebuilding them into a cohesive narrative. The result is a record unified not just by sound, but by theme: the tension between time’s inevitability and the stubborn will to continue. Torn Between Age & Perseverance moves between the deeply personal and the outwardly political. “Hole” confronts the emotional toll of dementia within a family, written through shifting perspectives that reflect the confusion and helplessness surrounding such loss. In contrast, “World On Fire” adopts a paradoxically upbeat tone to examine a political climate increasingly defined by anger and extremism over nuance and compassion. Both songs speak to the album’s central duality—private grief and public unrest coexisting in the same fragile space.
Every track was written, recorded, and self-produced at home, reinforcing the album’s intimate character. During the isolation of the COVID period, Macpherson even taught himself drums to fully realise the project alone, turning necessity into creative expansion. That commitment—to craft, to autonomy, to honesty—anchors the album’s authenticity. Torn Between Age & Perseverance stands as a milestone for King Colobus: not simply a debut album, but the culmination of years spent refining voice, perspective, and sound. It is reflective without resignation, politically aware without preaching, and deeply human in its exploration of memory, endurance, and the passage of time.
In the end, the album’s title feels less like conflict and more like balance—an acknowledgment that perseverance is not the absence of age or wear, but the decision to create in spite of it.
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