Trophy Scars to release their epic 4th LP, ‘Holy Vacants’, on the 8th of April
Holy Vacants, the fourth album from Trophy Scars, sees the New Jersey quartet deliver their magnum opus as they continue to evolve their sound. We are tremendously excited to be working with the band and releasing this brilliant album!
Artist: Trophy Scars
Title: Holy Vacants
Catalog no.: Mono-85
T R A C K L I S T I N G
1. Extant
2. Qeres
3. Archangel
4. Crystallophobia
5. Burning Mirror
6. Hagiophobia
7. Chicago Typewriter
8. Vertigo
9. Gutted
10. Every City, Vacant
11. Everything Disappearing
12. Nyctophobia
TROPHY SCARS
Andy Farrell: Bass
Brian Ferrara: Drums
John Ferrara: Guitar
Jerry Jones: Vocals
About Holy Vacants:
The album was initially worked up as a 35-page screenplay by vocalist/lyricist Jerry Jones and is even more ambitious than 2011’s Never Born Never Dead, which took reincarnation as its theme. Holy Vacants uses as its springboard a bizarre cocktail of mythology, ancient religion, and conspiracy theory surrounding the Nephilitic gene. The album revolves around Jones’s tale of two lovers who have discovered not only that the blood of angels contains the fountain of youth, but also the formula for Qeres. This ancient Egyptian perfume is claimed to be the only substance that can kill angels and Nephilites, who are the supposed offspring of angel/human unions. Armed with this knowledge, the couple embark on a killing spree, drinking spilled Nephilitic blood to stop growing old.
The narrative may be conceptually out-there, but it doesn’t fence the album in and stands as a metaphor for far simpler and more widely recognized issues – the idealization of youth, loss of identity and corrupted innocence. It’s also Jones’ personal way of drawing a line under an intense past relationship: “The album was about being so in love with somebody that they literally destroy you,” he explains. “I had to write the album as a way of exorcising this person from my mind and soul. I wanted a Bonnie and Clyde-type story, because I’ve always loved that. There’s something beautiful about the idea of rebelling together against something and losing yourself in the rebellion to the extent that it destroys your life. It’s the doomed romanticism thing.”
Holy Vacants was intended the band’s final album , but instead constitutes a complete rebirth. “I thought we had one more record in us and we wanted to go out with a bang”, says Jones. Guitarist Ferrara, who Jones calls “an unbelievable composer”, sent the singer some bare-bones riffs and he found himself connecting with them immediately, hearing how they might work with strings here, a Moog and organ, maybe some brass and an all-girl choir there. And listening to the likes of opener Archangel and Qeres, with its free-wheeling but complex and cathartic, psychedelic blues, it’s obvious the band have moved light years away from their post-hardcore early years. They reveal their admiration for fellow New Jersey son Springsteen, circa Darkness on the Edge of Town with Crystallophobia, Everything Disappearing and Extant, and for Jimi Hendrix via Hagiophobia, while elsewhere there are echoes of Guns N’ Roses and The Mars Volta. But what might sound like an unworkable agglomeration of disparate parts is an intense and cohesive, hugely compelling whole, with powerful contrasts that make for a visceral immediacy.
Ferrara’s skill at laying out the panoramic sonic picture and his mastery of dynamic builds, plus Jones’ love of graphic novels and comics, the work of David Lynch and TV series like ‘The Wire’ (one episode of which suggested the album’s title) are equally responsible for the record’s impact.
“The making of this record opened a whole new door, in all of our minds,” Jones enthuses. “When we started doing all the pre-production on Holy Vacants, we realized how much more we had to investigate in ourselves and what we were capable of.”
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The album will be available on CD and digital download formats, as well as a limited pressing deluxe 180 gm double gatefold edition with a free poster and album CD included inside: 750 copies clear with blue with black marble and 250 black vinyl.
Pre-order here: http://monotremerecords.limitedrun.com/products/524766
Physical product pre-orders from the Monotreme Records web shop will also receive free Trophy Scars pins and stickers whilst supplies last.
Album credits
TROPHY SCARS
Andy Farrell: Bass
Brian Ferrara: Drums
John Ferrara: Guitar
Jerry Jones: Vocals
Gray Reinhard: Piano, Organ, Moog
ANGELS
Desiree Saetia, Kate Lewis, Heidi Bovine Sigler: Choir
Taylor Mandel: Trumpet
Caleb Rumley: Trombone
David Rimelis: Viola, Violin, & Cello Arrangements/Direction
Gabrielle Maya Abramson: Vocals on “Nyctophobia”
Adam Fisher: Extra Vocals on “Chicago Typewriter”
Reese Van Riper: Vocals on “Gutted”
Desiree Saetia: Vocals on “Crystallophobia” & “Gutted”
Cello, viola, and violin conducted and arranged by David Rimelis
All music by Trophy Scars. All lyrics by Jerry Jones, except “Chicago Typewriter” by Jerry Jones and Adam Fisher.
Produced, mixed, and engineered by Chris Badami. Co-produced and engineered by John Ferrara. All at Portrait Recording Studios, Pompton Plains, NJ 2013.
Mastered for vinyl by Scott Hull at Masterdisk, New York, NY 2013.
Cover art by Christopher “Royal” King.
Package design by Jerry Jones
Management: Aneel De Albuqureque, The Same Ghost Collective thesameghostcollective.com
Trophy Scars Discography:
2003: Darts to the Sea (LP)
2004: Hospital Music for the Aesthetics of Language (EP)
2005: Goodnight Alchemy (EP)
2006: Alphabet. Alphabets. (LP)
2009: Bad Luck (LP)
2010: Darkness, Oh Hell (EP)
2011: Never Born, Never Dead (EP)
