We finally have an official release date – Skeleton Crew’s second album will be out on Monday 27th February 2012! The album will be available as both physical CD and digital download from our webstore, and also via iTunes and Amazon.com in due course. Those of you desperate to get your grubby little mitts on it will be able to pre-order from the first week of Feb.

We’ll be kicking off our 2012 gigs on the 3rd March at Old Nick’s in Horncastle and will be holding an album launch “soiree” at the The Castlegate in Grantham on Saturday March 10th, with a load of additional dates also live on our shows page. We’re looking forward to throwing a “Theatre” launch event /gig for our Nottingham friends in the very near future too, we’re just trying to get a date and venue sorted, so stay tuned!

The tracklisting will be as follows:

1. Theatre of War
2. 4-Letter Word
3. Retribution
4. Kiss Kiss
5. Moon On The River
6. Opressor
7. Obsessive Ex
8. Into The Light
9. Twenty7
10. Say Goodbye

We’re all getting very excited as Theatre of War reaches completion. Recording is finished, first mixes of all tracks are now complete, artwork is mostly ready and we’re steaming ahead for our end-of-February release date. As this journey reaches its end, we’d like to take you back the very start, to the day when Lyndon walked into rehearsal and said “I’ve got a song for you guys…”

That was definitely a day we knew that this album was going to be a huge step forward from “Bring It On”, as it really set the bar pretty high. The song was “Moon On The River”, and this is how that day played out. I though this footage had been lost forever, so glad to find it and to be able to share it with you all!

We’re right down to the last half a dozen of the Bring It On / “Go S-Crew Yourself” T-shirts, so if there’s a notable hole in your garment collection, this is your chance to fill it! We will have a brand new design for 2012 to celebrate the release of Theatre Of War, but meantime, this is pretty much your last chance to grab one of these designs as we’re not planning on doing another run! Please note, we now only have the Large size in stock, but unless you’re either extremely tiny or large (or a toddler) they should be just fine …

Here’s the link …

Last night marked the end of the recording sessions for Theatre of War. As always the last process is recording backing vocals and harmonies, which often the most enjoyable part of the whole process … well., its certainly the most likely to cause mirth as you can’t put 5 guys with a penchant for acting like kids in a room with a a mic each and not expect them to lower the tone … suffice to say there WILL be a gag reel for this album!

To mark this momentus occasion, we had a little bonding and farewell moment. A single Chinese lantern, carrying the titles of all the songs, our signatures and the dates that we started and completed the project (interestingly, our completion date was 20/11/2011) was lit and released. As we watched it sail into the night sky we felt our hopes leave with it  it felt like a good way to mark the end of that period of creativity.

Next comes the process of mixing. The release date for Theatre of War is set for Feb 2012.

VIDEO GALLERY

Check the harmonies

Cry havoc and let slip the balloon of ‘War

IMAGE GALLERY

One of our main concerns when writing the new album has been to ensure that lyrically we’re not being trite or cliched, so we decided to invest in this little bit of kit. At £239 from www.canford.com its not cheap but its a worthwhile investment.

Usage is simple. Simply connect the input terminals to the output of a CD player or soundcard and play your song. Advanced intelligent ferromagnetic drivers analyse the lyrical content in realtime and give you a reading on a scale of 1 to 7 based on – well, how shit the lyrics are. The scale is overlaid with cultural reference points for contextual comparison (overlays are also available for the European, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi markets, with Canadian expected in 2014)

Do you want to see 12 foot pixelated projections of faces mouthing the lyrics to your songs? Then buy the Digishitlyricometer. NOW!

This is the analogue version. A digital version is also available featuring 6 AES-EBU inputs, digital redouts, Shitness Radar metering (which tracks the lyrical content over time) and the ability to project an image of the face of the nearest cultural reference, silently mouthing the words to your songs with baleful condescension, onto a nearby wall. Waves are apparently developing a plug-in version as well, which will cost £1200 and feature artist presets by Bob Clearmountain, Moby, and Chaka Demus and Pliers.

Finally, after many long years … we’ve got out first gig booked in Sheffield! Come and see us at Mentholmans (West Street Live) on Sunday 21st August. We’re really looking forward to seeing those of you who have asked us to come and play there, and sorry its taken so long!

Also on the bill:

Broken Blue Eyes, Dead Replica, Mourning For Autumn and an acoustic act opening up.

As work on Theatre of War nears the final stages, we’ve decided to give all of our lovely fans the chance to hear samples of the new tunes, even before they are finished! We’ll be putting  a 90 second preview of a different song up every week or so on our SoundCloud account, and posting the link via Twitter and on our Facebook page. Only one song will be available at any one time, when a new one goes up the old one will come down so catch them while they’re there!

First up is Retribution – let us know what you think! http://soundcloud.com/skeletoncrewuk/preview-of-retribution

Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/skeletoncrewrocks

On Twitter: www.twitter.com/skeletoncrewrox

Or of course on our Soundcloud page: http://soundcloud.com/skeletoncrewuk/

On the 19th of May Nottingham Evening Post invited us along to Stealth in Nottingham to do an interview and acoustic performance for part of their This Is Live section, where they feature local bands who are particularly good looking. Not to be churlish, we of course jumped at the chance to show of our mad acoustic skills and blistering catwalk looks. Being a Thursday (arguably the most rock and roll day of the week) we couldn’t all be there due to work, so Drew, Lyndon and Rob sat down with Zoe Kirk to talk about who we are, where we came from, where we are going and what we might do when we get there (providing there are some sandwiches). Oh, and we turned down to 4 to perform a chillaxed (I’m so down with the kids) version of “If This Is It”. Its like Skeleton Crew, but quieter.

Here’s the video of the interview and performance, and of course Drew pulling some serious Blue Steel. Big thanks to Zoe Kirk for asking us, and don’t forget to hit that “like” button… You can read the full write-up on the Nottingham Evening Post’s website here http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Rock-s-bones/story-12749650-detail/story.html

Peace, y’all …

S-CrewX

Accoustic set and Interview for This Is Live

Earlier today at Stealth in Nottingham Lyndon, Drew and Rob did and acoustic set and interview for This Is Live, part of the Nottingham Evening Post’s website . You may recall we were originally scheduled to do this before Christmas, but unfortunately the weather had other ideas and we were all snowed in!

Huge thanks to Zoe Kirk for giving us the opportunity to get 3/5 of our mugs in the press. A video of the interview and our performance will be available on the Evening Post website in a few weeks and as soon as it is live (no pun intended) we’ll let you know!

We wanted to give you guys a little treat, so you can now make a few pennies of savings in the store – If you order a T-Shirt AND a copy of the Bring It On CD, you can run away with both for just £15.00! Thats a saving of 3 of those lovely gold coins, meaning you can also afford … well, something else that costs £3.

And don’t forget that postage is included. Head over to the store for more details.

click here to visit the store >>