Adeem the Artist’s New Album Reaches Back Through a Life of Changing Identities
Before Adeem became their name, it was an answer encountered during a crisis. At 20, they left the stage during a snowy bar gig in Mattydale, New York, and ran into the woods. Sitting in the snow and praying, they felt that God had given them permission to begin again under a different name.
That experience belongs to the long personal history behind Christians for Goliath, the new album from Adeem the Artist. Produced by John Darnielle and due December 11, the collection revisits faith, inherited identity and the work of imagining a life beyond expectations established by others.
Adeem was born in Gastonia, North Carolina, and spent their early years in Belmont before the family moved to Locust. After another move, this time to the Syracuse area during adolescence, their Southern accent became a source of unwanted distinction. They worked to shed it, distancing themselves from much of their regional inheritance.
Their records have repeatedly returned to the material such departures leave behind. Cast-Iron Pansexual brought wider recognition in 2021, while White Trash Revelry examined race, class, inherited trauma and white responsibility in the South. Anniversary, released in 2024, focused on marriage, family and mental health.
Following a 2025 hiatus, Adeem released the independent collection notes from inside, documenting a period of unraveling and repair. The new album reaches further back than those recent events, assembling songs and prayers accumulated over 15 years.
Its introduction is “Hard to Get”, a collaboration with The Mountain Goats released alongside an official lyric video. The song honors Rich Mullins, whose writing and generosity influenced Adeem’s earliest ideas about making records. Darnielle’s involvement connects that early education to a later songwriting influence.
Across 11 tracks, Christians for Goliath makes room for identities that might otherwise seem difficult to reconcile: fundamentalist child, former chaplain, queer country artist, agnostic parent and persistent spiritual seeker. The album is available to pre-order and pre-save through Four Quarters Records / Thirty Tigers. Its history suggests that beginning again can also involve returning to questions left unfinished.
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