Interview: Slackrr talks latest single ‘This Time’, upcoming album ‘Set The Night On Fire’ and more!

Pop-punk trio Slackrr recently released their new single This Timevia Lost Music Collective, along with the official music video, watch hereThis Time is taken from their upcoming third full length release, Set The Night On Fireout 4th August and available to pre-save here

Written by the band and produced by Pash Stratton, the track is about realising the people you associate with don’t have your best interests at heart.  The band have also revealed the official music video, which sees the band in a series of set ups, ‘trapped’ within a house. Focussing on the song’s lyrics, the video represents the group escaping the feeling of being trapped in a toxic situation and hoping for a better future.

Set The Night On Fire is the band’s third full length release and was recorded at The Clubhouse in Bournemouth. The album will be released on 4th August, aligning with the bands performance at Rebellion Festival, where they will play the main stage at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool. Mixed and mastered by experienced producer Pash Stratton, production began in December 2022 however just days into the pre-production, the sessions were put on hold when the landlord hadn’t renewed the studio’s contract. With limited time, they found a new location and in February 2023, Pash and the band rebuilt the studio and resumed recording. As well as studio issues, vocalist and guitarist Scotty Perry found himself dealing with the loss of two grandparents in a short space of timeWith all the challenges they had already faced, the group continued on to write the album that covers themes of loss, grief, relationships and perhaps the most resonating and important theme, hope. The album features the already released singles Holding On and Lie To Me

Scotty started writing songs as an outlet following his mother’s battle with a rare form of blood cancer. When he got the news that her treatment had been successful, he became even more inspired to continue writing and joined forces with bassist Cait Bowyer and drummer Joe Sammons in 2018. Since then, they have had a relentless touring schedule, playing over 500 shows and festivals in just 3 and a half years. With multiple festivals under their belt, they recently performed at Isle Of Wight Festival for their fourth consecutive year and show no signs of slowing down with over 50 shows scheduled for the rest of 2023 both in the UK and abroad. Later this summer, they will have their track The Current, featured in Sony Playstation’s VR2 game, VR SKATER. 

Their debut EP, I Know, was released in 2019, limited to just 200 copies and sold out in just 48 hours. The EP was followed by their 2021 debut album Time, It Waits For No One and 2022’s A Place That Feels Like Home. In 2022 the band signed with Lost Music Collective, run by Fueled By Ramen founder and former Less Than Jake drummer, Vinnie Fiorello. 

We managed to catch up with Cait and Scotty earlier this month as they talked about their latest single This Time, upcoming album The Night on Fire and much more!

So how much are you looking forward to releasing your latest single ‘This Time’

Yeah, we’re really excited about this one. This Friday it comes out on all major streaming platforms through Lost Music Collective. We’ve had two singles out from the upcoming album, so this is like the third one that comes out just before the release.

It’s had some really cool reviews from the likes of BBC Radio One So yeah, just looking forward to see what the general public make of it when it’s out there.

Your upcoming album Set The Night On Fire, via Lost Music Collective is also out soon on 4th August, are you looking forward to sharing this with fans?

Yeah, 100%, man. I think every time we do a Slackrr record, there’s always obstacles in the way, so everything’s going too smooth going into it. So for the last record that we did, we were just getting ready to do everything and then the Pandemic hit, which gave me more time to write a bunch of stuff to take to the band after that.

I lost two of my grandparents, one on my mum’s side, one on my dad’s side, which had a massive impact kind of on finishing up the record and sort of some of the lyrical topics and the album in terms of the message we’re putting across.

So Lost Music Collective ran by former Less Than Jake drummer Vinnie Fiorello, have you had any inspiration from him?

You know what the thing is with that label is they’re really cool in the sense that they have kind of trusted. After the last record, they really trusted us and kind of left us alone. They were kind of like they didn’t want to hear any demos or anything. They were just like, ‘we think you guys can do it’. So they had a lot of faith in us, so just been really cool in that sense. They kind of left us to it, which is also nerve-wracking because we had to send it to them at the end of the process and just let then think ‘I really hope they like this, otherwise we’ve got to start again.’

You will also be featured in Sony PlayStation’s VR2 game with your single ‘The Current’, VR SKATER, which is out 4th August 2023

We never in a million years literally thought that anything like that would happen. I remember during the lockdown, because we missed out on Tony Hawks, like on the original formats of it and saw it come out. So I bought it during lockdown. I was like, oh, this is cool. People go, oh, it’s just revamped. It was better on PS One and stuff like that. Okay, well, I’m having fun with this. And you always think it’s like there’s cool bands on there. There’s like a bunch of bands that are kind of like you think, ‘wouldn’t that be cool?’ And then it’s a small development company called Deficit Games who started it, and they basically saw two of our singles from 2020 from the Lockdown period and basically said, ‘We’re putting a game together. We’d really like you to be on it.’ And they’re from Germany. I was just like, ‘yeah, cool’. This was before it was going to be on Sony PlayStation.

When we heard it will be in Sony PlayStation, I sent them an email and I was like, hey, congratulations guys. Oh, we’re sorry. We couldn’t say anything. It had to be kept all under wraps. I was like, wow. I was just like, you know what, you don’t have to apologise. I’m going to be on a PlayStation video game for a song I wrote, that’s crazy. How did that happen to three kids from Southampton?