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Welsh rockers Those Damn Crows are set to release their fourth album, God Shaped Hole, on 11th April 2025 via long-time label home Earache Records. Currently on a 12-date underplay UK tour that sees the band performing in smaller, more intimate venues than normal, we caught up with bassist Lloyd Wood to get his thoughts on the new album, the contrast between playing these up-close-and-personal dates and their triumphant headline hometown show at Cardiff’s Utilita Arena in December 2024, as well as what it was like opening for supergroup The Hollywood Vampires.
The band played their largest headline show to date at Cardiff Utilita Arena just before Christmas last year; and now you are out on these small, low-key album launch dates. What is more daunting: playing an arena with thousands of people in attendance, or playing these small venues with fewer people, but they are up close and personal?
I’m more comfortable on the bigger stages. You have more space, and as you know, I like to use the space! I like to make the actions big and play to the back of the room. That being said, it’s been nice to come back down and play the smaller venues again. It just keeps it real. Also, I think that it’s a reminder to actually realise that we have come a long way. We have done okay. It’s going well.
It must have shocked some of the fans when we announced some of the venues, as much as it was a shock to us when our team around us – our management, and agent – told us about the dates. But when we sat down and went through it all, it made sense. And it’s been nice to get back and reconnect. As I said, it’s amazing to play in the large theatres and the arenas, but I do think that you lose that connection.
Preparing for this interview I thought back to the first time that I caught the band live, it was away back in 2018 when you opened for Federal Charm…
That was actually the first tour that we ever did!
Really?!
Yes, it was a co-headline between Federal Charm and The Bad Flowers. That was a good tour. That one was fun.
It’s insane to think how far Those Damn Crows have come in those 7 years. It’s not been an overnight thing like some here-today-gone-tomorrow TikTok sensation. This has been gradual, so it must be satisfying when you come back to a city where you started in the smallest of venues, or as an opening act and through hard work have progressed to much larger venues as headliners.
It really is, yes. Going back to this tour that we are on now, we were very mindful of the mindset within the band of “We’ve done that, we need to move on to bigger things now” and keep pushing the boundaries, and keep striving on. But that’s just who we are as people. We like to work hard.
Going back to the Cardiff gig last December; it was Christmas so everyone would have been in the mood to party; the guest list would have been massive no doubt; were you able to stop and soak it all in, or – and I don’t want to say it – was it gone in a blink of an eye…
To be honest, that probably was the only show where I could appreciate every second. Well, that one, and when we played Swansea Arena for the first time, and Download Festival mainstage for the first time; those are the 3 shows where I was able to soak it up. But Cardiff was a special night, and I’m glad that we got to do it at that time of the year because it was a nice way to end our ‘Inhale/Exhale’ album cycle and have a massive Christmas party with everyone.
The new album ‘God Shaped Hole’ lands 11th of April, do you get nervous in the run-up to new music being released? You strike me as someone who doesn’t get nervous at all…
Nothing normally bothers me in that sense. I find that what will be, will be. Nervous is not the right word, but like any band, you are only as good as your last album and we think that we have written and recorded an amazing album. The truth is that it is the fans who will tell us if they like it or not, they decide how good an album is because it is their music as much as it is ours.
Did the songs for the album come together quite quickly, or were you still tinkering with them when you went into the studio?
We finished the Hollywood Vampires tour in July or August of 2023 and we started writing collectively in September. Then we went back out on tour again, and back to writing in November 2023, and then more touring. But yes, it did come together fairly quickly. I mean, Shane [Greenhall, Those Damn Crows vocalist] is a great songwriter, man. He has loads of ideas. He has this great ability to say “Don’t do that, let’s go do it this way instead”, so the development process becomes smooth and it flows. So, yes it came together fairly quickly…but the recording process didn’t! [laughs] It was a bit stop-start. We did the first 2 singles ‘Glass Heart’ and ‘Let’s Go Psycho!’ in a studio in Devon, last March. And then we went to another studio in May, and then Shane went up to London to do his vocals in a studio there…and then it got mixed over in New Zealand! We finally signed it off back in September 2024. So the process from recording it to signing it off was from March until September 2024. So it took its time! [laughs]
You would have been desperate to get it out there for everyone to hear.
Yes, sometimes it can be a painstaking process because you always hear these songs and different versions of them from different mixes, and you end up doing your head in with it. It’s a fine line because you don’t want to fall out of love with these songs but they are starting to fucking piss you off! [laughs] As long as you keep reminding yourself that we have got to get the songs right, then it’s worth going through the process because once they are out there, they are out there forever.
It must be a great feeling now that you are finally playing these songs live.
Now that we are out there, and the songs are in the set, like ‘Dreaming’, ‘Glass Heart’, ‘Let’s Go Psycho!’, and ’No Surrender’, it is great. The fans deserve new music and you can see that they are as captivated with it as we are. And that is what is important. That is why live music is so special.
With a title like ‘Let’s Go Psycho!’, surely you have to open the set with that?
Yes! We did it at Download 2024, and we weren’t sure about it. But I remembered saying to the guys that we had to give it a bit of time because we went with ‘Who Did It?’ as the opening track for so long. But now though I’m settled on ‘Let’s Go Psycho!’ because, well, it’s in your face isn’t it, and that’s what you want for an opener!
Setlist headaches incoming!
[laughs] Yes! It’s not a bad problem to have, is it?! It is hard to choose a setlist because, as a band, there is a lot to weigh up. It’s not just about what songs we want to play, and what songs the audience wants us to play; it’s more about how the setlist flows. Like, vocally for Shane, for one. That guy works so hard on his vocals, and his warm-up, he has an excellent diet and tries to look after himself…not like us fuckers! So with all that in mind, when the setlist is being written you can’t go from zero to ten in one minute, it’s all got to flow. Adding more songs to the list means that something has got to give.
You mentioned earlier the tour with the Hollywood Vampires, we caught you in Berlin on that tour, what do you take from such an experience? Joe Perry once said that he thought that both himself and Alice Cooper were quite famous until he walked into a room with Johnny Depp, and then he realised maybe he wasn’t as famous as he thought…
Man, that tour was…insane! I am a massive Aerosmith fan, I love Alice Cooper…I love Johnny Depp. I think that he is a better guitar player than he is an actor, and he’s a fucking good actor. But it puts it all in perspective, I mean, you were there, when they all walked on, you know when it was Johnny Depp walking on because the whole fucking place erupted!
That Berlin show you mentioned was interesting because we were only allowed one song at soundcheck. Which was fine. So we split two songs in half and squeezed them into the allocated timings. And then Joe Perry wanted to come to the stage, so our soundcheck – and I have no problem with this – kind of got absorbed with Joe Perry being on the same stage as me, working out his fuzz pedals with his guitar tech! And I shouldn’t really say this, but fuck it, I went on Whatsapp and voice-recorded him playing – it was really strict, and no phones allowed or nothing like that – and I texted my partner, Samantha, and said “You’ll fucking never guess what, I’m on a stage with Joe Perry while he is playing…” and she is like “Oh, that’s amazing”, and I said, “No, you don’t understand, that is Joe Fucking Perry!” [laughs]. He is a cool guy, very quiet, but I don’t think he is one to be messed with. Very driven, and very focussed.
How far ahead is mapped out for The Crows? There will be things that you can’t mention yet no doubt, but how is the rest of 2025 looking?
So, we have some news coming very soon, for the back end of the year. We finish this tour on March 27th in London, and then we go back home for a few weeks. We then have the in-store and acoustic appearances, which again is another tour; well, I’m treating it like another tour. And then, we’ve got to learn the fucking album! [laughs] So that means we are back in rehearsals. July we head back over to Europe to support tAKiDA who are a Swedish band, and a great bunch of guys. Their audience fits in quite well with us. That’s quite a big tour similar to the Hollywood Vampires one as it’s mostly outdoor venues. We travel back to headline Sunday night at Steelhouse Festival in late July. Before all this though we have the show in Stevenage with Skindred and Bob Vylan. As for the end of the year, watch this space…
‘God Shaped Hole’ is available April 11th via Earache Records, PRE-ORDER now.
Connect with Those Damn Crows, HERE
Interview – Dave
Live images – Dave Jamieson/Rob Wilkins
