The Essex gang of four – Jordan Cardy (vocals & guitar), Harry Todd (guitar), Liam Haygarth (bass), and Noah Booth (drums) – collaborated with punk icon Tim Armstrong of Rancid for CRASH! Pulling back the curtain on their usual humor-coated lyrics, RAT BOY locked in on these 18 tracks. Recorded in singer-songwriter Suzi Quatro’s garden, and co-produced by Cardy and Booth, the band set up two sheds in Quatro’s garden, as Booth ran back and forth between them, at times barely making the cut. 

“The room wasn’t soundproof; it was a single thin wooden room with no deadening, so the drum kit sounded so insane and live,” explains Cardy. “We didn’t need to add any triggers to the drums; it’s all real! We all shared a headphone mix through splitters, and we pretty much couldn’t hear what we were playing. I think it might have only been in one ear, too, so we had to trust ourselves that we were playing tight.”  

CRASH! encapsulates the band’s last few years of touring, inspired by the crowds across Europe, a raw energy and pure passion that hasn’t been seen in decades. With live performances in mind, the band rehearsed the tracks, determined to conjure that unrelenting liveliness. Tracks like “MAKE ME STAY” and “NO STARS” pull from that mid-90s raw aesthetic, catchy hooks and rebellious spirit that defined an era. Between the bright, crunchy guitar riffs and low thumping bass lines, there’s no doubt RAT BOY has hit the sweet spot.  

The artwork for CRASH! was approached with the same DIY ethics, with Cardy sharing, “I wanted the process to be as close as possible to how it would have been done before computers, to keep the artwork feeling authentic and rooted in a physical, hands-on tradition. In the same way the album itself favors rawness and immediacy, I didn’t want the artwork to feel overly polished or digitally constructed.”