Published: July 21, 2024
St Albans quintet Trash Boat have today announced their 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 fuelled 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, Britpop- channelling free fall of Delusions Of Grandeur. “I've already changed myself, a di?erent me every weekend.”
Anyone paying attention to Trash Boat's indomitable ascent through alternative rock’s upper echelons will find little to surprise in those statements. The band’s preceding third album, 2021’s Don’t You Feel Amazing?, elevated the quintet – completed by guitarists Ryan Hyslop and Dann Bostock, bassist James Grayson and drummer Oakley Moffatt – to the cover of esteemed tastemaker publications including Kerrang! and Upset, racking up 19m global streams off the back of key editorial playlist looks fronting Spotify’s The Rock List and Amazon’s Rock Scene. But more so, it served to shatter the constrained box into which expectation of the band previously had neatly sat. “I think people had come to expect a very particular sound from Trash Boat, and Don’t You Feel Amazing? was us exploring di?erent sides, influences and inspirations, and finding our true sound,” Duncan reflects. “Heaven Can Wait, which we collectively self- produced, 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 slow- burn 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
Tracklisting
Watching Heaven…
Burn
Be Someone (feat. Eric Vanlerberghe of I Prevail)
filthy/RIGHTEOUS (feat. Kenta Koie of Crossfaith)
Are You Ready Now?
Better Than Yesterday
Break You
The Drip
Liar Liar
Delusions of Grandeur
Lazy
Trash Boat is:
Tobi Duncan - Vocals
Ryan Hyslop - Guitar
Dann Bostock - Guitar
James Grayson - Bass
Oakley Moffatt - Drums
