Out today, FALSE HEADS return with another cut of their patently agitated punk-tinged rock on latest single: Thick Skin.
Produced by Frank Turner and taken from the trio’s long-awaited new album Sick Moon — due 30 September 2022 via Scruff of the Neck Records — the snarling slice of garage-grunge takes aim at the current political climate and the incessant hopelessness and rage that bubbles over on social media.
With biting electric guitar lines, a final fractured drum breakdown and a gritty, yet relentlessly catchy chorus, Thick Skin swings from agitated to infectious in a beat.
Speaking of the new track frontman Luke Griffiths explains:
“Thick Skin is about how much I f****** hate the current political discourse. To me, politics seems to be completely and utterly middle-class from left to right — class has been seemingly removed from a lot of left-wing politics.”
“It’s also about social media politics. That kind of rage and vitriol is some form of lashing out for mental health problems and it’s like a form of addictive behaviour. I understand this, dealing with depression and having a history of drug abuse, and I understand how difficult it is to not let that rage inside you come out in vicious ways. But I just feel like social media has allowed a million different forms of religion, nationalism and tribalism to be completely normalised. Our brains are rotting and there is no hope, and every time I feel like there is I’m stung again.”
Produced by Frank Turner at his home studio — and with its first single unveiled just weeks after Turner’s own record FTHC landed the UK Number One spot — the ten-track LP Sick Moon arrives this September.
Of the story behind upcoming album, Luke adds:
“The album is just a pure expression of everything I’ve felt and feel. It’s pure rage, isolation, and alienation, yet also sarcastic and hopefully sprinkled with a bit of humour. It’s a stream of consciousness I used to deal with my struggles with depression, insomnia, anxiety, and issues with substance abuse.”
“It’s also about how often the external world seems to parallel and affect your internal struggle. I get trapped into a cycle of apathy and suffocation with the idea of eternalism and eternal recurrence: maybe we have no free will and maybe we do all of this again and again, forever. Humans aren’t meant to have access to every piece of information on the planet at once. I’ve felt frustration over the last five years in the music industry; rock and pop music have become an endeavour for kids from super-rich families or kids from parents already in the industry.”
The band will perform at Venn St. Social in Huddersfield on October 12th and Sidney & Matilda in Sheffield on October 14th 2022.