Welsh post-hardcore legends Casey return, four years after announcing their hiatus, with their stunning new single ‘Great Grief’ out now via Hassle Records.
‘Great Grief’ is the first song to emerge from Casey‘s resurrection, a gorgeously gloomy track that sees the band expand on the layered soundscapes that underpinned the songs of ‘Where I Go When I Am Sleeping.’ Broken, bruised, and bloody, and yet shimmering with beautiful defiance. Quintessential Casey, the band’s open hearts dripping with the same kind of pain and trauma that had defined them from the start. Casey don’t just replicate the feelings that inspire them – they embody them.
Of the single, vocalist Tom Weaver comments: “‘Great Grief’ is really special to the five of us. It was the first piece of music we wrote collectively after deciding that we wanted to do this again, and it felt like an organic progression when it came together.”
“Musically we wanted to maintain an anchor in the familiar, but challenge ourselves to produce a more mature and expansive sound. We put a lot of thought into the sound design, adding layers and harmonies – all things we’d not really put much effort into previously,” he continues.
“Lyrically, the song talks about the realization I came to after reflecting on our time as a band following our breakup. When we announced we were drawing Casey to a close, I’d tunneled on the immediate personal impact of my writing, and how it felt like I was proliferating my pain by repeating it each night. But I’m in a much better place now, and I’ve grown a lot over the last few years. So now, if I look beyond myself at how the music Casey made has been interpreted and applied in our fans, my own discomfort feels like a small price to pay for the collective joy and catharsis we felt from our community,” he finishes.
Casey, at its core, was grounded in the notion that music is a labour of love. Without expectation of success, without the desire to attain stardom, just a shared yearning to create music – and when this no longer rang true Casey stayed true to themselves, and stepped away.
In late 2018, when Casey announced they were bringing the band to a close, it felt like a premature demise. Their first two LPs – 2016 ‘Love Is Not Enough’ and 2018’s ‘Where I Go When I Am Sleeping’ – had firmly established the Welsh five-piece as one of the most exciting bands in Britain’s alternative scene. Now, four long years later, the band have returned.