Will Bloc Party Split Up Properly This Time?

English indie gods Bloc Party have today announced that the band will enter another “indefinite hiatus” following a run of festival dates.

Yes, this has happened before.

Back in 2009 when the band were finishing off the album cycle for Intimacy – an album that was rush-released and showed the first real signs of the band's compulsiveness – the band revealed that they'd had enough, for now.

“Unfortunately that is going to be it for the time being,” drummer Pete Tong told the BBC at the time. “We definitely need to have a break and gain a bit of perspective on life outside of the band.”

At Splendour In The Grass that year frontman Kele Okereke told triple j, “You know we might never make a record again.”

But last year they did. After solo projects the band signed a new label deal with Frenchkiss Records/Cooperative Music (which was then owned by Universal) for fourth album Four.

It was around Splendour In The Grass when, again, the band said they're ready to throw the towel in again.

“I don't know where we'll go from here," Okereke said. “I don't know what will happen. But I know if this is the last thing we ever do, then we've done everything I wanted to do.”

Today's quotes come from an interview with Canada's National Post, with guitarist Russell Lissack rehashing the same line fans have been hearing since last decade.

“Definitely after we finish the festivals in the summer we'll be taking some time off,” he said. “At least six months, maybe a year maybe two years, it's hard to say.”

Once again internal tensions mean that if the band are ever going to work together again, they'll need long breaks to get away from each other.

“I think when we first started it was probably more highs,” Lissack said. “The last record, Intimacy, when we toured that it was probably more lows than highs due to the relationships in the band not being very good and lack of communication and people not enjoying what we were doing.

“This time, before we set off on this record, it was something we discussed and I think we've been dealing with it a little better. Not a lot better but a little better.”