Band Of Skulls has announced a new album, By Default, their first to be released through Liberator Music/ BMG Recordings on May 27. Lead single ‘Killer’ was premiered on Radio 1 by Annie Mac and is streaming now and available as an instant grat upon album pre-order with iTunes.
Produced by Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters, Patti Smith) and recorded in Rockfield Studios, By Default is the sound of a group on the sharpest form of their career, more engaged and focused than they’ve ever been. The follow up to 2014’s Himalayan, from the English trio made up of Russell Marsden (guitar, vocals), Emma Richardson (bass, vocals) and Matt Hayward (drums), the new record came about via a conscious decision to take a step back from their relentless world-wide touring schedule (having never spent more than a month off the road in the last 2 years) to decamp to and write songs in a Southampton Baptist Church-cum-makeshift HQ.
“We went back to Square One,” says Matt Hayward. In the church – between visits from the vicar, bringing tea and biscuits on his trolley – they found the new songs in hours of woodshedding on ratty old practice amps. “It’s definitely a new era,” says Russell Marsden. “The first three records were like a trilogy, a piece of work in of themselves. We wanted to do those things, and we did them all. We took a breath, took a look at what we’d done, and started from scratch again.”
By Default tracklist
- Black Magic
- Back of Beyond
- Killer
- Bodies
- Tropical Disease
- So Good
- This Is My Fix
- Little Momma
- Embers
- In Love By Default
- Singing
- Something
By Default – Band Of Skulls
Out May 27 through Liberator Music/BMG Recordings
Pre-order on iTunes here
