Kasabian on track for sixth UK Number 1

Virgin Radio

17 Aug 2022, 13:09

'The Alchemist's Euphoria' is the first to feature Serge Pizzorno as lead singer.

It's looking like a good week for the retooled, rebooted Kasabian. At the mid-week point, the Leicester band are currently out-selling the rest of the Top 5 of the Official Albums Chart combined. 

Their group - who were fronted by singer Tom Meighan until his firing in 2020 - previously hit the top of the charts with Empire (2006), West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum (2009), Velociraptor (2011), 48:13 (2014) and For Crying Out Loud (2017).

Pizzorno recently told the BBC about the themes present in his songwriting on the new record.

The album, he says, is the sound of him and his bandmates working through the "many emotions" of the turbulent time around Meighan's departure, while preparing to go again with Kasabian 2.0.

"I knew I didn't want to write specifically about the band and what had happened,"he says. "But I knew the subject around what had happened would relate to everyone.

"It's not really about what went down. This is more about, these are the emotions that I was going through, and people all over can relate to forks in the road, survival, dealing with loss, grief, getting to a point [of] being present and letting go."

In 2020, former singer Meighan admitted assaulting his fiancee and was fined and ordered to carry out community service and rehabilitation. He's since launched a solo career.

Pizzorno says it was "completely and utterly heart-breaking" and "devastating in so many ways" to part ways, but "there was nothing else we could have done".

He explains that the group had to "sit down and decide what we were going to do. We couldn't let the story end like that. We still want to play the songs. We're a band. It's not fair that we have to stop."

The new look Kasabian head out on tour in the UK in October and November. More details here.