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One of the biggest bands on the London Irish circuit are finally releasing their hotly anticipated follow-up to New Hazardous Design, which features guest appearances from the likes of Elvis Costello and Hollywood star Russell Crowe.
It is their first release in almost five years, yet songwriter and guitarist Andy Nolan says that Walk Like Kings was as much as a surprise to the band as it was to their followers who didn’t believe that another album would ever come to fruition.
"When we recorded our first two albums in consecutive years, Ghosts Of Our Past in 2006 and Boots Or No Boots in 2007, we purposely set out to write about the London Irish experience," he says.
"We wrote about the people and places around us, the wider Irish diaspora and to tell those stories from a London Irish perspective.
"Then in late 2010 we began a much more ambitious project which took us three years to complete, scrapping an entire album and starting again so that we could get it sounding just right.
"We broadened our horizons lyrically and sonically, working with producer Michael Smith in a new studio and working in a much more in-depth way than we had previously.
"We set the bar higher for ourselves and the resulting album New Hazardous Design was us spreading our wings and bringing in more influences to our sound.
"Lead guitarist Kian Chanter had joined the band and the tracks reflected the change in sound that resulted. We had a much more rock-influenced BibleCode Sundays sound and we felt we had matured as a band."
But that was where their recording career was meant to finish, and another album was never on the cards before a new project left them with material they knew could not be left in the cutting room, as it were.
"The difference between those albums and Walk Like Kings is that we had an approach to those albums, a target to hit. With this one we weren’t even planning on making an album. New Hazardous Design was going to be our last album.
"But three years ago there was a shout out for music to be included in the movie Black Mass which was in pre-production at the time.
"The movie, which stars Johnny Depp, is based on the notorious Irish American gangster Whitey Bulger, a character which my previous song "Whitey" tackles on our Ghosts Of Our Past album.
"We then decided to go for it and write some made-to-measure songs to be sent to the production company for consideration for the movie soundtrack.
"Unfortunately, the tracks were not used but we
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