THOSE DAMN CROWS auf Tour mit tAKiDA
THOSE DAMN CROWS gehen mit ihrem UK-#1-Chart-Album mit tAKiDA auf Tour.
THOSE DAMN CROWS auf Tour mit tAKiDA
18.07. Piazza - Regensburg
19.07. Stadtpark Open Air - Hamburg
20.07. Schlossparkbühne - Marburg
22.07. Neue Gebläsehalle Neunkirchen (Saar)
23.07. Burg Esslingen Open Air - Esslingen
24.07. Valley - Berlin
25.07. Sommer am Kiez - Augsburg
24.08. Monheimer Sommer Open Air - Monheim am Rhein
29.08. Amphitheater Hanau - Hanau
30.08. Wasserschloss Klaffenbach – Chemnitz
Album in VÖ Woche auf #1 in UK:
THOSE DAMN CROWS – "God Shaped Hole" (Earache Records/Edel)
THOSE DAMN CROWS – "Dreaming"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqi5vRtdhsE
Im Oktober auf Headliner Tour:
THOSE DAMN CROWS God Shaped Hole
03.10. Köln - Luxor
04.10. Bochum - Matrix
05.10. Dresden - Beatpol
07.10. Berlin - Hole44
08.10. Hamburg - Bahnhof St. Pauli
09.10. Frankfurt - Das Bett
11.10. Thun, Ch - Cafe Bar Mokka
12.10. Vienna, At - Viper Room
THOSE DAMN CROWS – "Glass Heart"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sacy60cjN84
THOSE DAMN CROWS – "Let's Go Psycho!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtKX0NBpYgs
THOSE DAMN CROWS – "No Surrender"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfvgHmSOEaI
THOSE DAMN CROWS – "The Night Train"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApzQVatWSgw
THOSE DAMN CROWS – "Still"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUIWgX4GHtM
Album der Woche bei Radio Bob und bei StarFM
Rock It 9/10 (soundcheck #3): "…womit zuletzt alle Wünsche an ein immens abwechslungsreiches Hard Rock-Album erfüllt sein dürften, das bereits Lust auf den hoffentlich genauso fix folgenden nächsten Streich der Verdammten Krähen folgen wird."
Rock Hard 8/10: "…erneut dominieren packende Refrains wie beim knackigen Eröffnungsdoppel ´Dancing With The Enemy´ und ´Glass Heart´, während das melancholisch-melodiöse ´Dreaming´ oder der balladeske Albumcloser ´Still´ das Potenzial zu Radiohits haben. Den Vergleich mit der einst übermächtigen Radio-Rock-Konkurrenz aus Übersee müssen THOSE DAMN CROWS schon lange nicht mehr scheuen."
Legacy 12/15: "Hard Rock mit Hüftschwung trifft auf eine Breitseite guter Heavy-Metal-Gitarren, die in Sachen Groove mit dem Schlagzeug auch gerne Bocksprünge machen …Welcome, oh my Frühlingsplatte! Starkes Album, gute Band. So gut, dass man alles stehen und liegen lassen sollte, wenn die Krähen im Nachbardorf einen zum Besten geben."
Slam: "Was „God Shaped Hole" aber zu einem derart herausragenden Werk macht, sind die Texte…. Mal schleichen THOSE DAMN CROws dahin, mal gibt's auch wuchtig auf die Ohren („Fake"), doch egal in welcher Form: „God Shaped Hole* ist einfach schön und kompromisslos ehrlich, eine Platte mit jeder Menge Hirn und genau so viel Herz.
LP: "Wow. Es ist lange her, dass mich ein Rock/Hard Rock-Album so für sich einnehmen konnte. …. Mit „God Shaped Hole" demonstrieren Those Damn Crows, dass sie qualitativ immer noch zulegen können und katapultieren sich für mich definitiv in die Liga der führenden modernen Rockbands…"
Myrevelations.de 13/15: "THOSE DAMN CROWS legen mit ihrem vierten Album ein echtes Highlight in Sachen Modern Rock vor! Ein Dauerläufer für den nahenden Sommer! Während andere Kapellen versuchen sich selbst nur zu kopieren, klingen die Krähen aus Wales frisch, ideenreich und unverbraucht!"
Classic Rock: "Die Waliser rocken durch die Bank druck-, aber auch gefühlvoll. …So geht zeitgemäßer Rock!"
Rocks: "Auf ihrem vierten Werk inszenieren sich die Waliser entschieden zahmer und geben Tasteninstrumenten und Streichern mehr Raum. Das funktioniert zuweilen gut, etwa im ergreifenden ›Still."
Metalunderground.at 4/5: "»God Shaped Hole« ist ein starkes Statement von THOSE DAMN CROWS, dass ihre Entwicklung als Musiker zeigt, während sie ihren Wurzeln treu bleiben. Mit einer perfekten Mischung aus knallhartem Rock und introspektiver Lyrik wird dieses Album sowohl bei alten Fans als auch bei Neueinsteigern Anklang finden."
Metal Hammer: "Dabei liegt die Stärke der Band offenkundig in den ruhigeren Nummern. Hier kommt nämlich nicht nur das Händchen für Hooks stärker zu Geltung, sondern auch Sänger Shane Greenhalls durchaus ordentliches Organ, welches bei der ein oder anderen gefühlvollen Koloratur sogar eine bis dahin ungeahnte Nähe und Verbindung zu klassischem AOR unter Beweis stellt und nahezu im Vorbeigehen an die gesangliche Emotionalität von Tykettos Danny Vaughn gemahnt."
There’s a song on God Shaped Hole, the fourth album from powerhouse UK rock band Those Damn Crows, that sums up everything about them. The track is called No Surrender and it pulses with defiance and intent. “If you want to achieve, you’ve got to make them believe,” sings TDC frontman Shane Greenhall over pounding, heavy riffs and a barrage of drums. Those sentiments are drawn from bitter experience, but like all the best Those Damn Crows songs, it finds positivity in the struggle.
“There have been so many times in our career where we’ve been up against people who have looked down on us or thought weren’t good enough,” explains Shane of the song. “That kind of thing cannot bring you down, you can’t give up, you can’t surrender. You have to have that self-belief. Because if you don’t, no one else will.”
Those Damn Crows – Shane plus drummer Ronnie Huxford, guitarists Ian ‘Shiner’ Thomas and David Winchurch, and bassist Lloyd Wood – have earned the right to believe in themselves. In the decade-plus since they formed in the fiercely working class town of Bridgend, South Wales, they’ve gone from wide-eyed hopefuls playing to 20 people at the Camden Barfly to the leading lights of their generation, a genuine modern rock powerhouse spearheading the scene’s current resurgence, notching up a Top 3 album with 2023’s Inhale/Exhale and sharing massive stages with everyone from Queens Of The Stone Age and ZZ Top to the Alice Cooper/Johnny Depp supergroup The Hollywood Vampires.
“It’s been a big achievement, but it makes you think, ‘OK, if you can achieve that, what else can you do?’” says Shane. “It gives you even more belief in yourself, that you’re on that right track. Opportunity is everything, and you’ve got to use it and make it undeniably yours!”
Those Damn Crows’ fourth album, God Shaped Hole, reaffirms the band’s place at rock’s top table. It marries music fuelled by power, passion and melody to an intelligence and emotional honesty that’s increasingly rare these days. Like all the best music, God Shaped Hole comes from the heart and the head.
“Every album, I say, ‘This one is going to be really heavy,’” says Shane with a laugh. “But it never really works out like that, because if you go into something with a pre-conceived idea of what you want, you will fail every single time. You have to let the music choose, that’s how I see it.”
Even by their standards, God Shaped Hole – recorded with longtime producer Dan Weller – covers a lot of musical bases while still retaining Those Damn Crows’ unique identity. Anthemic opening track Dancing With The Enemy (“You’re not supposed to fight with the people you love, but your closest friends can become your closest enemy, and you see that person for who they are,” says Shane) and the electrifying Let‘s Go Psycho! (released as a single before their triumphant Main Stage performance at the Download Festival in the summer of 2024) are guaranteed crowd-starters, while the supremely melodic Dreaming would sound perfect spilling from an open-top convertible as it powers down the Pacific Coast Highway and the pummelling Spit And Choke crackles with punky energy. Elsewhere, Fake possesses an unexpected yet muscular waltz-like groove as it turns an eye on those who use social media to sell a distorted perception of their own lives, No Surrender is as defiant as its title suggests, Glass Hearts is gleaming pop rock gem and the soaring Night Train possesses a beautifully restrained, folky edge.
“I almost feel like this is an album of singles,” says Shane. “It’s like a playlist, it shows off the range of music we love more than any album we’ve done. There’s so many different flavours, but it’s all still recognisable as us.”
The breadth of the music on God Shaped Hole is matched by its emotional depth. That depth is evident in the album’s vivid title, taken from a lyric in Let’s Go Psycho!, partly inspired by the singer’s late father and the latter’s own search for fulfilment via religion and, later, philosophy.
“I feel that some of us have a feeling of something or someone’s missing, whether it’s a love, a truth or a god, and that you’re always striving to fill this hole,” explains Shane. “But that’s not the thing to focus on. Whatever you believe that hole is in your life, you have the power, creativity and mindfulness to stop thinking about what’s missing and to focus on what you do have. We’ve been taught to dwell on what we haven’t got, forcing us to fight harder for that missing thing that will eventually fulfil us. But it’s an illusion. If you pursue becoming the healthiest, most healed, most present version of yourself, then a path will reveal itself.”
What separates Those Damn Crows from so many other bands is the beating emotional heart at the centre of their music. Their songs are undeniably anthemic, but they’re powered by an honesty and passion that’s a rare commodity in 2024 – one that provides a connection between the band and their audience.
“I don’t know how to write any way other than being completely honest,” says Shane. “Maybe I’m a little too honest and reveal a bit too much of myself. But I think that’s what people connect with.”
That kind of emotional openness is there in a song such as Glass Heart, which finds the singer admitting to his own insecurities and embracing them. “The whole premise of that song is, ‘I’m going to tell it like it is, flaws and all,’” says Shane. “I can be anxious, I can be unstable when sometimes It looks like I got my shit together, and have all the answers. I’ve been hurt and broken – who hasn’t got a glass heart? But it’s OK, because we’re still here, we’re still fighting.”
The stories behind The Night Train and Let’s Go Psycho! are even more potent. The former has its roots in an incredibly vivid dream the singer had about his late father, uncle and grandparents. “To this day, I’ve never had a dream like it,” he says. “It was so vivid and moving, to the point where I woke up in bits. It inspired the idea of the Night Train as the transport that takes you to your loved ones who are no
longer with us, so you can be with them for a short time at the same time every night, grieving Groundhog Day. That’s why I sing, ‘Your destination is one dream away.’”
Let’s Go Psycho! was inspired by another out of body experience Shane had, this one on a guided trip while under the influence of the psychedelic drug DMT. “I don’t do drugs, I’m so against that, but I’d heard how DMT could take you to these different places,” he says. “I was sitting in my friends living room, and it felt like I left my body, travelled and thrown into a completely different dimension. I wrote Let’s Go Psycho! because of what I experienced on that trip.”
The resulting song involves a three-way conversation between God, AI and a human – a timely look at who is controlling who, who the puppeteer really is. “Which one of us is more ‘God-like’,” as Shane puts it. “The whole concept of it is, you just don’t fucking know. None of us knows.”
But arguably the most personal song on the album is the meditative closing track Still, whose roots date back more than 10 years to a period Shane describes as the darkest time his life.
“I wanted to end my life,” he says bluntly. “It’s hard to say this now, but at the time I was at peace with knowing that I didn’t have to think or feel anything about my life any more. But something happened on that night that literally shocked me out of it and brought me back to reality, and ultimately stopped me from doing what I was doing. Every line in that song hurts for completely different reasons, but it’s ok and important to talk about it as most things are temporary even our feelings.”
It’s that combination of musical power and lyrical depth that sets the Welsh band apart. While the rest of the music world gets hung up on streaming numbers and TikTok algorithms, Those Damn Crows are in it for the long haul.
“We’re not a band who are made for TikTok,” says Shane. “Everything today is flash-in-the-pan, here one minute then it’s gone and everybody’s on to the next thing. For us it’s about writing brilliant songs and then going out and playing them to as many people as possible.”
At a time when rock music is constantly (and incorrectly) written off, Those Damn Crows prove it’s more alive than it has ever been. God Shaped Hole is the sound of a band at the very peak of their powers – but one who are determined to keep building on their achievements.
“We’ve never been the sort of band who sit back and think at what we’ve done,” says Shane. “It’s always about what’s the next goal, the next tour. We can’t rest, we need to keep moving forwards. That’s what keeps us alive.”
God Shaped Hole Track List:
1. Dancing With The Enemy
2. Glass Heart
3. Fake
4. Dreaming
5. Let's Go Psycho
6. No Surrender
7. The Night Train
8. Turn It Around
9. Spit & Choke
10. Stil
Quelle: cmm-consulting for music and media