BUTCHER BABIES have released their latest single, “Last Dance”. The song was produced and co-written by Matt Good (FROM FIRST TO LAST). It is the fourth taste of the band’s forthcoming EP, tentatively due later this year. BUTCHER BABIES previously released the tracks “Bottom Of A Bottle”, “Sleeping With The Enemy” and “Yorktown”, all of which are also expected to appear on the EP.
“Last Dance” shows off the clean vocal prowess of frontwomen Carla Harvey and Heidi Shepherd while retaining the musical heaviness for which the band is known. It is a powerful statement about friendships and support. In the time of COVID-19, this is particularly poignant: “You’re not in my hemisphere / So I’ll wait another year / Wish you could see me now / Through all the ups and downs / I know I’m better because of you”.
“While writing ‘Last Dance’, I was brought back to a memory in college where a few of my friends and I used to drive into the canyon in southern Utah, lay on the hoods of our cars and stare up into the stars,” explains Shepherd. “We would discuss the different paths that we wanted to take in life. As young adults, we dreamed about the future. I haven’t seen most of those friends in over a decade, and I often wonder if those nights dreaming under the stars ever cross their minds. I look back at that memory fondly as those friends were so supportive in [anything] and everything we each put our minds to. They were some of the first people to support me in the hopes and dreams of music. This song, for me, was about recreating that moment all these years later. This is an ode to you; John, Mikey and Kim.”
Harvey told Spain’s Metal Circus that the band is making its music independently after parting ways with longtime label Century Media a couple of years ago. “We’re navigating through a new world where we don’t have a label, but we have distribution through Blood Blast, which is awesome; they’ve been really great to us,” she said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).
“It’s not that there’s no labels out there for us — there could be the perfect one, and we just haven’t found it yet — but right now, we thought why not try something a little bit different.
“We kind of live in an age where you don’t necessarily have to have a label. I feel like if you have a great manager, a great lawyer, a great agent, that’s kind of a great team to help push along your career. So if you’re able to pay for your own recordings and get that kind of stuff going, and you have a strong fanbase as it is, why not try it like this?” she explained.
“The whole music industry has changed so much over the last even five years. Since we’ve been a band, it’s changed tremendously over the past decade. So this is a new kind of thing that we’re trying out, and if a great deal comes along, we’ll be happy to take it. But in the meantime, we’re kind of enjoying doing things on our own.”
Added Shepherd: “It’s been interesting, because a lot of our friends in the industry have kind of taken the way that we decided to do it too, which was to leave the label and try stuff on our own, and it’s been almost a little bit more successful.
“I think that later on, if the right deal comes along, sure, but it wasn’t something that we set out to do, is re-sign,” she continued. “We had offers, but it just didn’t make sense for us. We wanted to really do this on our own. We’ve been signed pretty much our entire career, so it was a really fun and neat experience to kind of do it on our own, and it’s paid off a lot — it really has.
“But, like I said, if the right deal comes along later on, we’ll see. I don’t know. We’re doing fine as we are.”
BUTCHER BABIES‘ latest album, 2017’s “Lilith”, was produced by Steve Evetts (THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, SEPULTURA, SUICIDE SILENCE) and marked BUTCHER BABIES‘ recording debut with drummer Chase Brickenden, who replaced Chris Warner in 2016.
In July 2019, longtime BUTCHER BABIES bassist Jason Klein announced his departure from the band. He has since been replaced by Ricky Bonazza.
