TRACK PREMIERE: Blackout Balter – Burn The Ships

TRACK PREMIERE: Blackout Balter - Burn The Ships

Blackout Balter is an electrifying, 5-piece Alternative Rock band from Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Their first EP, Twist And Bend, featured Dave Keuning (The Killers), and received critical acclaim by the famed Consequence of Sound and Paste Magazine media outlets—two of America’s most important music magazines; and the album charted on CMJ’s “Top 200” and was named an FMQB “Top 25 Album” while being spun on some of America’s most important radio stations, to include KROQ.

‘Burn The Ships’ is the third single to be taken from Blackout Balter’s forthcoming debut album ‘Animal’ which explodes with a rush of punk and alternative rock energies, ready to seize the moment and arrest the senses. An unapologetic assertion of love, struggle, and leaving, the band’s aptly-titled Animal speaks to human nature at its most visceral core: When gut instinct supersedes logic, and our inner animal roars. Blackout Balter’s first full-length album, produced by Grammy-winner Jeremy Ferguson (Cage the Elephant engineer and producer), and assisted by Grammy-winner Emily Lazar (David Bowie, Cold Play), provides 14 tracks of pure adrenaline that inspires, excites, and pushes us to attack our dreams.

“For some reason, I’ve always heard a lot of Bowie in this song,” says Blackout Balter frontman, Phil Cohen. “When I was writing Burn The Ships, the chorus melody structure felt epic to me; so I really needed lyrics that fit the feel of the song. I remembered learning about the story of Cortés, burning down his own fleet of ships, off the coast of Veracruz, to remove any possibility of retreat; and I always loved this image. It was the ultimate sign of commitment, and it was the perfect backdrop for the song.”

“The songwriting behind Burn The Ships was a bit different for me, as a songwriter,” says Phil Cohen, Blackout Balter frontman. “I usually don’t tell stories in the songs I write; rather, I like to focus on the ‘feel’ a song portrays, and usually employ fairly abstract lyrics to twist and shape the feeling of a song. But there’s an actual story here, and I like the fact that there’s some historical significance to the story. As an artist, it doesn’t happen often for me, but every once in a while you know when you get something right. And, to me, the bridge of Burn The Ships is one of the best things I’ve written, melodically. In my mind, it’s a moment of clarity in the song, surrounded by a sea of chaos. Of course, these moments of clarity happen in real life too, and I think they’re worthy of artistic examination. To me, they’re really beautiful. And I think Burn The Ships gets this feeling right.”

Listen to ‘Burn The Ships’ – BELOW:

Xsnoize Author
Mark Millar is the founder of XS Noize and looks after the daily running of the website as well as hosting interviews for the weekly XS Noize Podcast. Mark's favourite album is Achtung Baby by U2.

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