We’ve got so many records now, we could spend the rest of our lives celebrating anniversaries but we’d rather make new shit.“Īlkaline Trio press shot 2024. “We’re very proud of all our records, and we’re thankful fans still care but if I love a band, I want to hear a new record.”Īndriano agreed: “If you feel like you’ve got new places to grow and new realms to explore as a band, you’ve got to do it. Why did Alkaline Trio prioritise new music over what could have been very lucrative anniversary tours? The same year, the band’s fourth album ‘Good Mourning’ turned 20 while eighth album ‘My Shame Is True’ turned 10. “The power of music is pretty wild.”Ī post shared by Alkaline Trio Hair And Eyeballs’ was written and recorded throughout 2023. It is a dark record but there are moments of hope,” added Andriano, who described writing ‘Blood Hair And Eyeballs as a “cathartic” experience. “There’s so much evil in the world right now – kids dying from drugs, kids killing each other with assault rifles as well as a multitude of wars happening all over the world – but I want people to know we’re here for them. “It’s shining a light on the horror show that our world has been and keeps being, but we also wanted to make something that people could hopefully dance to,” Skiba continued, with the gallows humour title coming from something his mum would say while working particularly busy nights in the emergency room in Chicago. “Hearing the absolute terror, but also the absolute courage, and love in people’s voices was very powerful.” It’s what the driving ‘Meet Me’ is about, but also helped inspire ‘Blood, Hair And Eyeballs’ overarching message of “tragedy and survival”. “You’re hearing people’s last words to husbands, wives, daughters, brothers, and sons,” said Skiba. Netflix documentary Turning Point: 9/11 And The War On Terror also inspired the record, with one scene involving recordings of phone calls from inside the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers proving particularly impactful. “Coming out the other side and getting comfortable with socialising again, I realised that as horrible as it can be, life is quite beautiful.” In retrospect, that’s incredibly dark,” he said. “I honestly thought it was curtains for all of us, and I just didn’t care. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to pull that off.”Ī post shared by Alkaline Trio there are no songs directly about the COVID-19 pandemic, living through it had a “big influence” on the record, according to Skiba. “Humanity really needs to get its shit together, which means the record is broader than just Matt and I writing about our personal lives. “There’s a fairly apocalyptic theme that runs through the record, because it seems like we’re living through the end of time right now. “Unfortunately, ‘Blood, Hair And Eyeballs’ is a dark record but I don’t think we had a choice,” Andriano explained. We really took our time crafting this record.”Īfter going through the mindset of “it’s not done until we all love it,” the band landed on an album with some familiar noir themes. “The Neve console has been signed by Stevie Nicks, Paul McCartney and all these other heroes, so the history is right in front of you. “There isn’t a cooler place to work,” Skiba agreed. Recording a bulk of the album at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 was also “so fucking cool and inspirational,” Andriano revealed. “Everything The Police put out sounds so full.” “There was a lot of me listening to some of my favourite bands of all time, asking how they achieved what they did,” said Andriano. Leaning into that idea, Alkaline Trio pulled influence from other iconic three-piece bands for ‘Blood, Hair And Eyeballs’ including The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Police and Nirvana. When there’s three people doing it together, there’s an urgency and an inspiration that doesn’t really happen when you’re on your own,” Skiba offered. “The whole idea of building a record from the ground up was a great deal of fun and very effective. It’s also how Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker worked with Skiba on those two Blink-182 records. “We easily had an album’s worth of song ideas,” said Skiba, but they wanted to write the album together in the same room, which is how they created their first two albums, 1998’s ‘Goddamnit’ and 2000’s ‘Maybe I’ll Catch Fire’. “If we really wanted to accomplish something new, maybe we should try something we haven’t done in a long while,” said Skiba.Īfter taking a snowboarding trip together to set the course for the record, Skiba and Andriano made the “daunting” decision to scrap everything they’d worked on separately. However, the band realised they needed to shake things up. At first, the pair worked on demos separately, with Skiba telling NME in 2021 that he was pulling inspiration from The Strokes.
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