Point Of No Return Ultimate Edition (2021)

Hotly tipped, modern classic rock champions THOSE DAMN CROWS have shared a brand new single, 'Sick Of Me'. Recorded back home in Wales before Christmas, the new song and official video premiered with Planet Rock Radio and Download Festival, respectively.

The single is available now from all DSPs as a standalone track and is also included on a newly released, digital ultimate edition of the band's latest album, 'Point Of No Return'. Further details follow.

Discussing the song, frontman Shane Greenhall comments, "My worst enemy, my biggest critic, the hardest, meanest person I know is nearly always myself. ’Sick Of Me' is a duel, a constant battle with the person staring back at you in the mirror and not liking what you see and feel. Truth can sometimes hurt, but denying yourself that truth can be way more damaging in the long run. Being conscious and self aware of your patterns and learnt behaviours is as important as your diet. If you’re constantly, knowingly feeding yourself/mind with toxic bad shit, you are literally on the road to destruction. Balance is everything."

With THOSE DAMN CROWS set to dazzle on Download Festival's main stage this June, the festival was an ideal partner to premiere the new single's official video. Shot in January 2021 with Loki Films, watch it below.

About the video, Shane explains, "It's set in a void of darkness representing the mind, where the struggles of who we really are exist and only really surface when we’re on our own.

THE MIRROR... showing you the truth, the multiple versions of yourself, the version you allow others to see, or the sinister dark destructing version of yourself, even the things I love the most (music) can really take its toll (piano on fire).

PAINTED BLACK HANDS are the struggles in life pulling you one way then the other, the constant fight and battle to stay afloat, and how the darkness is always there whether you like it or not, always looking for an opportunity to take you down. Understanding this and knowing this is easier to manage than pretending it doesn’t, and allowing the anxiety of it all to take over.

IN THE END... it always comes down to having the ability to pick ourselves up, because here’s another truth - those parts of yourself that you don’t like today, maybe the very thing you will need tomorrow, to help you through the painful and hurtful things that you have not yet experienced."

Latest studio album 'Point Of No Return' crashed into the UK national chart at #14 on its original release in February 2020 amidst broad praise from both fans and critics. Today's digital 'Point Of No Return: Ultimate Edition' release via record label Earache adds not only new single 'Sick Of Me' but also 4 bonus acoustic tracks, one of which is a cover of Alter Bridge's emotional smash hit 'Watch Over You'. Order on iTunes here.

The affable frontman elaborates, "It really is insane to see a full year turn around since ‘Point Of No Return' was released. To say we haven’t scratched the surface (only playing this album around the UK at a few live shows) is an understatement; the pandemic has temporarily stopped us from doing what we do best, but it hasn’t stopped the love and support we’ve had for our music and this album in particular. So much so, that adding new track ’Sick Of Me' and the 4 stripped back acoustic tracks to make a deluxe version, felt absolutely right.

There’s 3 stripped back versions of 'Kingdom Of Dust', 'Who Did It', and 'Sin On Skin' which have taken on a new identity, that I think our fans old and new will fall in love with... all over again. The last track is a cover of the incredible Alter Bridge song ‘Watch Over You’ which I did online in the summer of last year, and it had so much love from fans that we thought we’d record it and put that on the album too. Without the pandemic I probably wouldn’t have even done the cover in the first place. The pandemic has taken away so much from us as a band but it’s also given us a new way to interact with our fans. I hope they love this new Point Of No Return deluxe version as much as we do."

Point Of No Return (2020)

Since forming in 2014, Those Damn Crows have lived in the fast lane. They’ve broken bones mid-gig and carried on regardless. They’ve seen their audiences grow from several to several thousand. They’ve crafted a sound inspired by everything from rock and metal pioneers to confessional country stars. And now, with second album Point Of No Return, they have a UK Top 20 record.

There’s an instant quality to the Welsh rockers that lends itself to multiple song types on said record – from the propulsive, Foo Fighters-esque likes of Long Time Dead, chunky hard-hitters such as Set In Stone or moody ballads like Never Win. Building on 2018’s acclaimed debut Murder And The Motive, it’s the sort of slick, robust mix of beef and tenderness you’ll find in modern rock giants like Alter Bridge and Black Stone Cherry.

But there’s more to them than that, not least of all in frontman Shane Greenhall’s lyrics. Indeed, Point Of No Return is no batch of bog-standard yarns about girls and getting lucky. Who Did It draws from the ongoing issue of suicides in their hometown of Bridgend. Sin On Skin reflects themes of depression and self-harm. Be You articulates identity struggles that resonate with so many of us at one point of another. Every subject on the record is personal. Shane has felt it all, seen it all…

“Sadly it was too easy to write about, because I was feeling all those things,” he explains. “My marriage was falling apart; not because of the band, it was falling apart anyway, but you add the stresses of the band and then you’re going out more, I gave up my job for the band… And then you’re constantly thinking ‘have I done the right thing?’ and you start having dark thoughts… It was a really tough period. But the beauty of songwriting is that you can make it more accessible to other people, so they can relate to it.”

Musically, too, there’s more to Those Damn Crows than meets the eye. Behind their taut, muscular yet highly melodic brand of hard rock lies a densely packed history of classic rock, punk, country, metal, grunge, pop and more. And it all started in Bridgend in the 90s, when Greenhall, drummer/childhood friend Ronnie Huxford and guitarist Ian ‘Shiner’ Thomas bonded over jams in the music room at the local comprehensive school they all attended. But it was their countless nights – and “sneaky pints” – in pubs across Wales that really taught them how to play. 

“We’d go to so many jam nights,” Shane remembers, “in Bridgend, Cardiff, Swansea… And we did covers across the board, whether it be Green Day or classics like the Kinks. The beautiful thing was when you went to these jam nights you’d hear the older musicians, and they’d do Pink Floyd and AC/DC and Zeppelin. Being kids we didn’t have enough money to have the sort of kit that these older guys had, so we’d borrow Les Pauls and stuff. It was a great experience.”

At home, meanwhile, Shane was also being fed his guitar-playing father’s Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings records. “My dad used to play music every day,” he says. “Even if we were watching a movie in the living room he’d walk in and pick up his guitar and start playing. Bruce Springsteen was a big part of that too.”

After school the three friends splintered in different directions. Ronnie and Shiner formed a band playing AC/DC-style classic rock, while Shane started playing the club circuit as a duo with his brother (in order to fund the original material he was recording) – playing “anything and everything” from Bon Jovi to Johnny Cash covers. A publishing deal followed, which saw him write more songs as well as sing on albums by other artists. Subconsciously, the three of them were harnessing a collective arsenal of skills and ideas that would eventually streamline into Those Damn Crows.

In the end, to a point, it was tragedy that brought them back together. In the run-up to the band forming, Shane’s father died of cancer. “My dad passing at 58 was the wake-up call that shook me to my core,” he says. “Life is incredibly short and precious and because of that I realised you should spend it doing what you love where you can, for as long as you can. I owe him a lot as we shared a huge love for music, and as tough as it was – and still is – losing him was the most valuable lesson of all.”

Following Shane’s loss drummer Ronnie had a similar wake-up call when his mother passed away, after a brain haemorrhage. The two friends reunited and formed Those Damn Crows, along with Shiner, bassist Lloyd Wood and guitarist David Winchurch. 

Today, Shane says, he still finds strength in the response at shows. "When everyone gets it that’s a wonderful feeling. And when people come up to you afterwards and talk about songs like Be You and Behind These Walls and Blink Of An Eye, and you can see people have tattoos of your lyrics…it’s incredible.”

The band pull no punches when it comes to gigs. Drums and bass chops are slick and furious. Guitars bristle with energy and feeling.  At the front Greenhall radiates positivity, with the kind of humour and high-voltage appeal that often calls to mind a young Eddie Vedder or Dave Grohl. But in truth the gap between his onstage and offstage self is “pretty huge”. 

“I don’t like a big fuss,” he concedes. “I’m kinda reserved, I’ve got a small circle of friends. But when I’m onstage, I feel like this is my opportunity to be who I want to be. And I love that connection with people, which I don’t tend to do in my private life, but when you’re all there for the music and out there to have a good time, that’s infectious.”

It’s been said that you’ve got to hit the lows to feel the highs. Those Damn Crows have experienced lows and channelled them into their music, to deeply cathartic effect for them and their growing, fiercely loyal ‘Crow family’.

And the highs? They’re just getting started…

Murder And The Motive (2018)

In a tattoo studio just off the main street in Bridgend, South Wales, five musicians are plotting the resurrection of rock’n’roll. They’re fanned out on a pair of sofas in the studio’s main room, surrounded by an array of award-winning designs that hang in frames from the walls.

There’s Shane Greenhall, a singer with a powerhouse voice and the quietly determined approach of someone who knows exactly what he wants. There are Ian ‘Shiner’ Thomas and Dave Winchurch, a pair of skate rat guitarists who wear their love of grunge and punk rock on their sleeves. There’s bassist Lloyd Wood, who, with his long hair and tattoo of five crows in flight, looks like he could have stepped out a stoner rock band. And there’s drummer Ronnie Huxford, a man who buzzes with restless energy and voluble sociability. As co-owner of the tattoo studio, this is his turf.

Together, the five of them make up Those Damn Crows, one of the fastest rising new rock bands in the UK. Their debut album, the powerfully anthemic Murder And The Motive, has seen them push ahead of the pack. At a time when British rock is making itself known on the world stage once more, Those Damn Crows are right there in the thick of it.

“Over the last couple of years it’s felt like something’s coming through, that a rock band is on the verge of something big,” says Shane. “That kind of music is coming back – the kind that’s been missing for a long while, the kind of thing that made you want to be in a band in the first place. And that’s what we’re doing.”

“Too many bands these days are almost factory-based,” adds Ronnie. “They’re told they need to do this or look like that to succeed. They’ve been moulded into something else by the people around them. That’s not us. This band is about the freedom and honesty of doing what you want to do.”

This is more than just empty talk. Those Damn Crows draw on a wealth of influences: the undiluted energy of 90s grunge and punk, the arena-scraping ambition of the Foo Fighters, the sheer class of such legendary metal bands as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.

But they haven’t just stitched those disparate sounds together, Frankenstein-style, and hoped for the best. Instead they’ve cherry picked the best parts of each of their influences and turned them into something new.

“Our influences are so vast,” says Greenhall. “I grew up listening to bands like Green Day, Nirvana and Pantera. But then you dig deeper and go further back and get into Led Zeppelin, AC/DC. We draw from all of them.”

Their South Wales background plays a part in their burgeoning success. Those Damn Crows’ hometown has always punched above its weight musically. In recent years, the tight-knit Bridgend scene has produced big-hitting acts such as Bullet For My Valentine and Funeral For A Friend.

“We went to school with Bullet, so it’s great to see our mates do so well,” says Ronnie. “When you come from a mining town, the thinking is that you get a good job, settle down, have a family, be responsible. They showed that going off and making it as a rock star isn’t impossible.”

“Everybody knows everybody on the scene anyway,” adds Lloyd. “It’s not competitive. The pool is big enough – you look at one band and think, ‘They’re doing that, so we’re going to do this.’”

Shane and Ronnie both come from musical families. The singer’s father was a fixture in the pubs and clubs of South Wales, playing country’n’western to diehard audiences and Shane grew up around music. When the frontman was young, he got a publishing deal to write songs for other people.

“People would say, ‘I want a song in this style, or in that style’, so I’d go away and write something,” says Shane. “It hones your craft. But the music we’re making now is the kind of music I love writing.”

Ronnie’s dad was a professional musician who played with some of the most famous names of the day way back when: Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield, PJ Proby. It was Huxford Sr who inadvertently gave the band their name.

“My old man’s 92, he feeds the birds in the back garden,” says Ronnie. “I was talking to him one day and all of sudden he shouted, ‘Those damn crows!’ I thought that would make a cool lyric so I took it to the rest of the guys and they were, like, ‘Nah, that’s a brilliant name for the band.’”

All five of them put in the legwork in a string of different bands before they formed Those Damn Crows in 2014. They had made all the mistakes young musicians are supposed to make: bad decisions, naïve compromises, the kind of demoralising setbacks that can make you or break you as a band and as a person.

“I basically quit music after for a while,” admits Ronnie of his past travails. “I’d been through all these bands who were so hungry for success, and I was so ambitious personally. And then it just didn’t happen. I just though, ‘Fuck it, that’s me done.’ I couldn’t even look at a drumkit for a long time. That’s when I decided to focus on the tattoo studio. I’d been working here since the mid-00s when I wasn’t touring. Eventually I made an investment in it. Now I own half the business. We do conventions all over the world, win awards.”

Being away from the frontline helped Ronnie rediscover his love of music, and he and Shiner began to sow the seeds for Those Damn Crows. The pair of them had been in countless bands together. They knew that this had to be different. Ambition is fine, but pursuing success for success’ sake at any cost is a recipe for disaster. Instead, they decided to adopt a different set of rules: honesty, enjoyment, freedom to do whatever the hell they want.

Slowly, the band took shape. They knew Lloyd and Dave from the Bridgend scene, while Shane was an old school friend. From the start, Those Damn Crows opted to seize their own destiny and take their future in their hands. Such was their self-belief that they decided to record Murder And The Motive after they’d played only a handful of shows. Funding themselves, they booked themselves into the world-famous Rockfield Studio in Monmouthshire to record it.

Shane: “The songs were there. It felt right. We thought, ‘Let’s go for it. Let’s not waste any more time.’”

Since then, Those Damn Crows have made up for lost time, gigging up and down the country. As well countless shows of their own, they’ve made high-profile appearances at the likes of Camden Rocks, Ramblin’ Man Fair, the Steelhouse Festival and Planet Rock’s Winters End.

“We get everyone at our gigs,” says Dave. “Rock fans, metal heads, punk kids, skaters. It’s a broad church.”

Earlier this year, Those Damn Crows signed to influential British label Earache Records, home of Rival Sons, Blackberry Smoke and The Glorious Sons. The band recently worked with legendary producer Mike Exeter (Judas Priest/Black Sabbath) on new songs.

And if that’s not a measure of success, then the fact that a growing stream of Those Damn Crows fans have been coming into Ronnie’s studio, asking to be inked, definitely is.

“We’re getting more fans booking in for tattoos,” says the drummer. “And a lot of my clients who are music fans check out the band, so it’s working both ways.”

The path that Those Damn Crows have chosen to take – honesty, freedom, ambition – is paying off. Rock’s new heroes are about to take flight.