Listen to the brand new Shihad song "Tear Down Those Names"

Kiwi rock icons Shihad have announced their new album 'Old Gods' will be released on August 27th, 2021.

Alongside the announcement, the band have released a taste of the album with the opening track "Tear Down Those Names".

'Old Gods' is a step into fury for frontman Jon Toogood whose lyrics encapsulate our collective anger at recent world events. As a new parent and convert to Islam, recently married to a Sudanese woman, Toogood begun to see perspectives other than those he’d been raised with.

Add in the soul searching that came with the COVID pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement, and the band’s collective disgust at the rise of Conservative politicians such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, and he took on a new understanding of his place in the world as a privileged white male. The result is an album that states its intent from the moment the crushing, grinding riff of opener "Tear Down Those Names' explodes to life.

Toogood uses the song as a platform to address the tumbling of existing cultural structures, such as statues celebrating slave traders: “There’s been a change in the weather/We’re witnessing history/Throwing thieves in the river/We’re banishing bigotry”.