St Albans quintet Trash Boat have today announced its new album, ‘Heaven Can Wait,’ for an October 4th release. To mark the announcement, the band have also released a new single, ‘Be Someone,’ featuring Eric Vanlerberghe of I Prevail.
Speaking of the collaboration, frontman Tobi Duncan says: “Eric’s wife was actually a fan of Trash Boat, which was how we ended up touring with them in the first place. We got on great on tour and he joined us on stage for a few guest spots throughout. During the tour, we asked if he’d be up for guesting on a new song and he was down. Though things took a turn in Dublin, we were out drinking and a drunk guy was trying to fight everyone. He started tossing his own girlfriend around, which is where Eric stepped in and before you knew it, the guy turned on Eric. Eric shoved him to the floor and walked away, as he did the guy tried to sucker punch Eric from behind. That’s where I got involved and where it came to an end. The song was already written at this point, but the subject matter is poetically relevant”.
“Life is pretty chaotic” begins Trash Boat vocalist Tobi Duncan by way of explaining his band’s fervent fourth full-length album. “The world is pretty chaotic. I’m pretty chaotic, and this album is every piece of me and us as a band”.
Welcome to the world of ‘Heaven Can Wait’: a knotty, gnarled riddle of a record, at one turn deeply introspective, full of deep-seated questions, anxiety and despondency; at the next fueled by a righteous rage towards an unjust, uncaring world stuck in a downward spiral. “I just wanna change the world, but I don’t know where to begin,” Duncan sings on the twisting, Britpopchannelling free fall of ‘Delusions Of Grandeur’. “I’ve already changed myself, a different me every weekend”.
“I think people had come to expect a very particular sound from Trash Boat, and ‘Don’t You Feel Amazing?’ was us exploring different sides, influences and inspirations, and finding our true sound” Duncan reflects. “‘Heaven Can Wait’, which we collectively selfproduced, is an extension of that journey of exploration. As a band, we don’t have a singular artistic direction. We’re a cloud of chaos”.
Across its 11 shapeshifting tracks, ‘Heaven Can Wait’ crackles with a white-hot energy. There’s the Deftones-invoking double salvo of ‘Watching Heaven… Burn’; the skittish Linkin Park-sounding ‘filthy/RIGHTEOUS’, for which Crossfaith’s Kenta Koie lends a thrilling guest vocal; and the slowburn ‘Are You Ready Now?’, boasting, Duncan beams, a throat-shredding 22-second-long scream. It’s Trash Boat at their “heaviest, slowest, fastest, most complicated and contradictory”, the frontman attests.
“I’m not trying to paint a pretty picture that is nice to look at or that’s easily digestible” Duncan says of ‘Heaven Can Wait’. “I’m simply trying to paint an honest picture, and get as much of myself into these songs as possible. It’s direct. It’s unfiltered. It’s raw”.
It’s Trash Boat’s finest creative expression to date, too. Embrace the chaos.
‘Heaven Can Wait’ tracklist:
01. Watching Heaven…
02. Burn
03. Be Someone (feat. Eric Vanlerberghe of I Prevail)
04. filthy/RIGHTEOUS (feat. Kenta Koie of Crossfaith)
05. Are You Ready Now?
06. Better Than Yesterday
07. Break You
08. The Drip
09. Liar Liar
10. Delusions of Grandeur
11. Lazy