This is music of survival and perseverance. That’s always been our main driving force,” declares GOGOL BORDELLO frontman Eugene Hutz about their new album SOLIDARITINE (release date: September 16, 2022 viaCasa Gogol/Cooking Vinyl). “We just want to give the world a timeless album with messages of human potential and power.” Their eighth full-length album is inspired by survival in the face of adversity – a theme that can be applied to the pandemic just as much as it can be applied to the war going on in his native Ukraine.
“Our music was always about perseverance,” exclaims Eugene. “Rock ‘n’ roll comes out of a real place. Take a group of people who have endured immigrant traumas and dislocation. They create music, get successful together, become more baroque and experimental, and experience some years of relative calm. All of a sudden, humankind encounters these problems like the pandemic and the war. This is when rock ‘n’ roll is the most necessary and where we perform the best.”
The seven piece of mixed heritage from locations such as Ukraine, Ecuador, and Russia have consistently riled up audiences with an inimitable patchwork of punk, gypsy, dub, folk, Latin swing, and Eastern European magic. With the more hardcore leanings of SOLIDARITINE, the sense of urgency and a fresh bolt of energy returns the band to their incendiary beginnings while keeping their agit prop leanings front and center. Tapping New York underground icon Walter Schreifels (Gorilla Biscuits, Rival Schools, Quicksand) for the producer seat, Gogol dove deep into the studio and emerged with a album rife with the insurgent sound of survival. “The album is really about uniting the people of goodwill,” he reveals. “Releasing any kind of art that doesn’t address the situation in Ukraine right now would be pretty despicable.”
