Track By Tracks: The Trousers - Animal Gun (2022)

1. Hope dies last:

The song musically is really close to what we would define as „our” style: a mixture of classic late 70’s rock, when instead of long, complex songs bands like AC/DC or Cheap Trick began to play tight „hits”, but without losing hardness or energy. The lyrics in the chorus are tricky: „hope dies last, hope is dying lust” – it's about relationship complications.

2. Bag of bones:

It is the heaviest song on the album. Several people told us it's the best of this record. The riff hits like a hammer, and there are some hooks in the melody too. That’s what we always intend to do.

3. My kind of business:

The basics of this song is coming from my old band with my brother who sadly passed last year. We dedicated the whole album to him. So this song which was the first single is a result of a cooperation with him.

4. Come undone:

This is a „typical” The Trousers song, although the riff is unusual in this context, a bit Randy Rhoads-like. We always wanted to write a chorus including „whoo-hoo”, now it happened.

5. The great beyond:

It is about death and refers to the passing of my brother which shocked the whole band because we were friends, and often played with his band The Royal Rebels. This composition is also heavy musically, with open D tuning guitars.

6. Vanish in the haze:

Our records always contain at least one fast garage rock song, but Vanish in the haze is different because the chord progression is much more complex than in the usual three-chord garage rock songs and it has a keyboard solo before the guitar comes in.

7. Sunday crimes:

In recent years I became a huge Thin Lizzy fan and wondered if I could write something similar, with twin guitars, etc. The guys in the band, Pete (guitar), Bandi (bass), and Sam (drums) really liked it, a band favorite. The title refers to the fact that violent crimes against males mostly happen on Sundays.

8. All over shakin down:

This song is also based on an old tune from my old band with my brother Peter. The chorus and the riff (slowed down) remained, and I wrote a new verse and bridge. The verse is dark, while the chorus is fun, old-school rock and roll with piano and female vocals. Female backing vocals are there throughout the whole album, several important bands, The Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Black Crowes used this too.

9. Animal gun:

The title song is always crucial. Animal gun, on one hand, refers to our instincts, on the other hand to the sad progress of animal extinction in this climate crisis that we experience. Musically I think its an original mixture of several influences, some of which are pretty unusual, like the Doors-like organ after the solo.

10. Secret symmetry:

There were some friends of ours that this is maybe the best we have ever recorded. The last songs on our albums are always intended to be uplifting, slower, and more experimental. This time we included some psychedelia, for example, the bridge contains some strings-mellotron, in an early Pink Floyd and Zeppelin-like manner.