The strident, sometimes touching, always defiant Spear of Destiny are celebrating their nearly 40th year with a new album and new tour, but with that same punchy incision.

New album Ghost Population (out now) has tracks spanning everything from personal to political and past to present.

Ghost Population

“The album title came about because of a piece I read online where scientists were researching the available DNA samples from human history — Denisovans, Neanderthals etc. It became clear to them from fragments in the DNA that there was another race back then. They haven’t found out who these people were as yet, but they nicknamed them a ‘Ghost Population’,” said Spear’s Kirk Brandon.

“I applied this in my non-scientific way, and thought of how social engineering has marginalised so much of society, not acknowledging the disenfranchised and writing them out of existence. When someone is no longer talked about, eventually they no longer exist.”

Evolution

With some tracks written during lockdown, and others penned as far back as 1986, Ghost Population is a journey through the evolution of society as much as it is the evolution of the band, which hasn’t been without its bumps.

Traversing a broad range of themes, the album includes Ballad of the Dog, “a true story of a piratical burial at sea”, Neolithic By Design, a track set “at the beginning of a relationship [when] both parties are in the maelstrom”, and Pilgrim one of the album’s “few autobiographical songs” inspired by Brandon’s mum merging together the tales of Jack and the Beanstalk and Dick Whittington when he was a child.

It may feel a long journey since their debut album Grapes of Wrath in 1983, but those themes have to be explored and those songs have to be sung.

SPEAR OF DESTINY ‘GHOST POPULATION’ UK TOUR 2022

NOVEMBER
22 – LEEDS – Brudenell
23 – CARDIFF – The Globe
24 – BIRMINGHAM – Asylum
25 – BRIGHTON – Patterns
26 – SOUTHEND – The Venue
27 – PLYMOUTH – Junction
29 – STOKE – Underground
30 – NORWICH – Waterfront

DECEMBER
01 – HULL – Polar Bear
02 – LONDON – Oslo
03 – DERBY – Hairy Dog
04 – NUNEATON – Queens Hall
06 – SOUTHAMPTON – Joiners
07 – HERTFORD – Corn Exchange
08 – BRISTOL – Fleece
09 – BEDFORD – Esquires
10 – DARWEN – Library Theatre
11 – WORCESTER – Marrs Bar
13 – NOTTINGHAM – Rescue Rooms
14 – NEWCASTLE – Cluny
15 – GLASGOW – King Tut’s
16 – DUNFERMLINE – PJ Molloys
17 – MANCHESTER – Academy