Today, Cardiff-based four-piece Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard have shared a new single from their forthcoming album “Skinwalker”, which is set for release on 12th April via Communion Records. The single follows their critically acclaimed singles “National Rust” and “Therapy”, and lands as the tour across the UK.
Following on from their Welsh Music Prize nominated debut album ‘Backhand Deals’ in 2022, the band wrote and recorded the album at frontman and producer Tom Rees’s Rat Trap studio, the room where Rees has previously recorded and produced tracks for emerging talent – Panic Shack, Do Nothing and The Bug Club. The material – as previewed on “Therapy” and their earlier single “Chew” – showcases a heavier and more disquieting sound than anything the band have released to date.
This darker sound and aesthetic take inspiration from found-footage horror and the Navajo concept of the Skinwalker – a legendary malevolent shapeshifter – from which the album takes its name. Thematically, each track on the record is designed to take you through descending floors of Rees’s mind each becoming more horrific than the last with the Skinwalker at the final floor, representing his inner fears, self-sabotage, hatred, and self-doubt. It’s a deeply intimate record of self-analysis and personal growth told through heavy fuzz-drenched guitars, a crushing rhythm section, and fevered vocals.
The band still carry that same the fast-paced energy and subtle trademark ‘70s references from their earlier releases though, and this is particularly evident on the new the harmony-filled single “In My Egg”, which sees Rees sing about the struggles that force yourself out of your comfort zone.
Speaking on the single Rees says, “I foolishly went to a cottage for five days in May last year with my dog Norma to write, thinking that I would participate in some kind of cerebral orgy that would gift me ’ten hot bangers’, but instead I just managed to secure myself a place in a customised hell that had all the facets of a waking nightmare crossed with the paranoia I experienced after taking the worlds smallest hit on my friend’s Super Mario bong that one time.
I wrote about fifteen horrible songs that made no sense and all sounded like weird Take That B-Sides, and after taking some advice from Norma (she told me to get my shit together), I decided to write a song about how I just wanted to go home and go to bed.
I’m not made for trips away, at least by myself, I don’t have the mental fortitude. I thought I was strong, but I’m totally not, and that’s okay I suppose. That’s what In My Egg is about, realising you’re not strong enough, but being chill with it.”
Elsewhere on the record, “Human Compression” see the band delve into an almost desert-rock sound with hazy, unrelenting guitar work supporting Rees’s lyrics about the pressure he puts on himself. The psychedelic glam-tinged “Night Of The Skinwalker” – a song which centres around his struggles with self-doubt- marks the albums opus, melding a number of styles and genres across almost six minutes.
Tracklisting:
1. Intro
2. National Rust
3. Chew
4. My Star Sign Is A Basset Hound
5. Sugar Sandwich
6. The Drowning Bell
7. Leatherbound
8. In My Egg
9. Therapy
10. Human Compression
11. Night Of The Skinwalker
“Skinwalker” is out 12th April via Communion Records – Pre-order HERE
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Photo credit – Charlie Harris