Lake Malice’s debut record stares down AI anxiety, social media addiction and the slow erosion of authenticity in the digital age…

Words by Felix Bartlett | June 08, 2026

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London alt-duo Lake Malice have announced their debut album, I Wanna Know If It’s Real, arriving September 11.

The record comes after years of building real traction in the alt. scene, and lands alongside new single Ghost In A Hell, out this Wednesday (June 10) ahead of their Download Festival appearance this weekend.

Thematically, the album covers serious ground: social media addiction, AI anxiety, nostalgia, trauma, identity, and the blurring line between authenticity and performance. Vocalist Alice Guala says the duo wanted something both personal and historically grounded.

“We wrote this album thinking about how we wanted something autobiographical, but also able to capture a moment in history and the feelings of a generation,” she explains. “As millennials, we’ve gone through such a unique and drastic change in how we manage our social connections and how self-worth is measured, and we’re now also witnessing the advent of AI, which is a crucial part of what inspired this record.”

“In a matter of a few decades, we lived without the internet, then with social media, and now with AI. This isn’t an anti-AI statement or an anti-technology one. Rather, it questions whether any of the values we deemed important will last through this change.”

The questions pile up from there. Are you someone’s friend if you watch their life online but never actually speak? Is art still art if a prompt does the work? Is music made to say something, or just to go viral? I Wanna Know If It’s Real sits inside all of that discomfort and refuses to look away.

Previous singles Scatterbrain and Nobody Wants To Be You are out now.