Ska-punk pioneers The Mighty Mighty Bosstones have announced a release date for their 11th studio album.
The Boston, MA band released new track The Final Parade at the end of January as they announced their signing to Hellcat Records.
Today they followed it with another new single, I Don’t Believe in Anything, and announced that a new album, When God Was Great, will drop on May 7.
Co-produced by longtime collaborator Ted Hutt (The Gaslight Anthem, Dropkick Murphys) and Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong (Transplants, Jimmy Cliff), When God Was Great is the culmination of their extensive and all-embracing career.
It sees the band bringing back friends, tourmates, and bandmates from the past for a sonic celebration that stresses the power of perseverance and human connection during tumultuous times. The album features 15 tracks which initially arose out of a collective sense of loss.
“We were lightly writing songs before the insanity without any sort of timeline in mind,” said frontman Dicky Barrett. “All of a sudden, the world changed and benchmark events in a very long career that we were looking forward to, such as playing with Madness at the Greek Theatre [in Los Angeles], were taken away from us.
“With all of this time on our hands, we started writing at a quickened pace and we were really inspired. As grim as everything around us was in the outside world, this was the most fun we ever had making a record.”
Formed in 1983, the Bosstones have been credited as one of the forefathers of ska-punk and the creators of its subgenre, ska-core. With a career spanning over 30 years, Boston’s best dressed band has built a devoted following with their unique brand of brass-infused punk rock.
To date they have released 10 studio records; Devil’s Night Out (1989), More Noise and Other Disturbances (1992), Don’t Know How to Party (1993), Question the Answers (1994), Let’s Face It (1997), Pay Attention (2000), A Jackknife to a Swan (2002), Pin Points and Gin Joints (2009), The Magic of Youth (2011), and While We’re at It (2018).
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are vocalist Dicky Barrett, bassist Joe Gittleman, saxophonists Tim ‘Johnny Vegas’ Burton and Leon Silva, Bosstone Ben Carr, drummer Joe Sirois, guitarists Nate Albert and Lawrence Katz, keyboardist John Goetchius, and trombonist Chris Rhodes.
