South Wales’ Top 10 rockers Scarlet Rebels return with the follow-up to their #7 UK Top 40 Album “See Through Blue”. Boasting an eye-popping album cover by Boomtown Festival poster designer Holy Moly, it certainly lives up to its name and perfectly illustrates the band’s message of unity – i.e. “Where the Colours Meet”.
Armed with the crack production team of Colin Richardson and Chris Clancy, “Where the Colours Meet” sees the band radically expand their sonic palette, bringing in lush instrumentation, piano, keyboards and large drum sounds to channel the best of 80s rock. It’s an album full of fluid guitar lines, tasteful leads and irresistible choruses but with a contemporary full-on sound – imagine a modern-day U2 meets Bruce Springsteen!
This time, the band have collaborated with multi-award-winning blues artist Elles Bailey, who brings her velvety vocals to the co-written “Out of Time”, plus Ricky Warwick (Black Star Riders, The Almighty) lends his songwriting prowess to the high-octane stomper and album closer, “My House My Rules”. Diehards will spot that two songs from Scarlet Rebels’ live sets come to life too, as “Let Me In” and “Practice Run”, which have been fixtures at their concerts, are now heard on a proper studio recording for the first time.
“Where the Colours Meet” shows frontman Wayne Doyle displaying his raw emotions like never before. In “Declining”, the poignant lyrics have a counterpoint of jubilant tubular bells – seemingly incongruous at first hearing, in the context of this album it makes perfect sense. In “How Much is Enough”, “Divide and Conquer” and “Streets of Fire” Wayne’s lyrics become more strident, attacking business fat cats and government policies which have caused so much suffering to families in the UK.
Doyle comments: “We’re incredibly excited to show the world what we’ve been up to. ‘Secret Drug’ is the first chapter from our new story and we’re so happy that we can finally unleash it on the world. It marks a new era for the band, defined by a feeling of bold new confidence that we have to thank our fans for since the release of our previous album ‘See Through Blue’. The positivity that they bring to our world shines bright on ‘Where the Colours Meet’. With ‘Where the Colours Meet’, we made an album of unity, a call for togetherness in a world gone mad. Our last album was deliberately polarising – I don’t regret that, and it was amazing to see everyone who did choose to stand with us as we spoke the truth about the wicked forces working in our world. But this time around, we made an album that will bring people together”.
Doyle continues: “I genuinely feel it’s the best set of songs we’ve written. The band’s performance is superb and Colin [Richardson] and Chris [Clancy] brought totally new ideas and focus to our music. We hope you enjoy this album as much as we enjoyed making it”.
Watch the official video for the new single “Secret Drug” below.
Having already hoisted their flag into the UK Top 10 charts, Scarlet Rebels are poised to fire Welsh rock back into the mainstream spotlight.
“Where the Colours Meet” will be out on August 16th, 2024, via Earache Records and is available to pre-order on limited edition vinyl, signed CD, collector’s bundles and more here.
Tracklist:
1. Secret Drug
2. Let Me In
3. It Was Beautiful
4. Grace
5. Declining
6. Out of Time (feat. Elles Bailey)
7. How Much is Enough
8. Practice Run
9. Streets of Fire
10. Who Wants to Be in Love Anyway
11. Divide and Conquer
12. My House My Rules
Weblinks:
www.scarletrebels.com
www.facebook.com/ScarletRebels
