Twin Atlantic are unashamedly cranking up the guitar for the release of their fifth album ‘POWER’.

The rip-roaring energetic surge of power is an impressive exhilarating return that sees the band introduce their reinvigorated sound with a bold ten-track experimental treat.

To delve into the album release, we caught up with frontman Sam McTrusty who explained the new album saw them reapproach their entire recording process. It was no longer a case of ticking boxes for label releases – and they didn’t have to tone down to make more palatable – for the first time in years they had full control over their music and free reign in the studio.

“Over the years when recording with different producers we’d treat recording as almost like some sort of uni project or something like you’d have something to hand in and we were really serious about it,” Sam said reflecting on the band’s decade-long career.

“We respected the people we looked up to so much in rock music as a genre that we were just emulating their process. At one point, we wanted to try and make a better record than the Foo Fighters so we thought we’d at least start with how they did it, to the point we used the same microphones and we even used the same producer and mixer engineer, but that was the origin of recording. We were quite spoiled because we signed a record deal with Red Bull when we were still teenagers so we were straight into these multi-million-pound studios and that made us get really respectful. We’re all from tenements and all of a sudden we’re in this mad place so we were making the best of the opportunity.

“Over time, we got in a bit of a rut so we worked with another producer called Jackknife Lee and he really inspired us. He said ‘guys, you can just do this in Glasgow.’ A huge part of all the messing about we do when trying to figure out new ideas, we realised we could easily do a lot of it in Glasgow so we started very mildly doing that and it was all just a bit of luck with timing.

“We needed new demos to send record labels for the first time in ten years so Ross (McNae, bass) and I were making demos and were asking ‘who wants to pay for us to do these again properly?’ but people were like ‘these are f*cking amazing, you don’t need to!’ That took us all by surprise and, once you get that encouragement, it just snowballed and we ended up producing our own album and investing into the studio… It’s something that didn’t really come about by design, it was more a necessity.

“It’s not a fluke that it’s [recording and producing] something we’re good at, we’ve worked with such legendary people and been in these amazing studios. We must have just soaked it up somehow. Once we got over the threshold of people saying ‘your demos are good’, I started watching YouTube tutorial videos for techniques, listening to podcasts and reading magazines, I find learning really addictive. I got really interested in drums and using drums as a songwriting tool rather than accompaniment and that was because I was able to use drum machines to record ideas then Craig (Kneale, drums) would expand upon that in the record.

“It was almost like we’d only been working with primary colours before and someone said you know you can get this paint in all these other colours and we were like ‘oh sh*t…we can use this massive palette.”

The release marks a new turn for Twin Atlantic in a variety of ways. With their own studio alongside this control over production and recording, this also enabled Sam to fully uncover the capabilities of his synesthesia, a neurological condition in which a sense is perceived by one or more additional senses. For Sam, it was seeing colour and shape.

“It [synesthesia] kinda became a bit of a fashionable sort of ‘buzzy’ term to talk about when it comes to music production,” Sam explained. “I don’t know if that’s just because the world has become a lot more visual, obviously everyone lives their lives through a screen so it’s another sort of way you can expand on your storytelling.

“It was only as it was happening more and more, and being talked about more and more, that I was like ‘that is the way that I experience it?!’. Not just music though, loads of things. I have a process in my mind of colours and overlapping shapes and I just thought that was normal.”

“It’s not like some weird superpower,” Sam joked. “But in our past when making music the other three guys were just like staring blankly at me when I was saying ‘guys, it needs to be more like violet and then gold’ and they were like ‘what the f*ck are you talking about?’ They’d just go ‘ok anyway…’ and start talking in a more musical sense while I’m sitting the corner talking about how it feels more square and we need to make it rounder or more kinda yellow. Things all started to line up and made a lot of sense when I heard other people talking about it and once the guys in the band knew that’s how I experienced sound, it made them interpret my views a lot easier.

“Once I knew it was something, it was an extra tool that I could take a bit further than when I wasn’t aware it was a thing. I’m fascinated by it because I’m now in my 30s and just realising that it’s something that I can use.”

Fully embracing his synesthesia, Sam ensured the studio was equipped with bright colours and neon, immersing himself and the band in colourful environments to help bring Twin Atlantic’s latest release to life.

Forcing themselves to use the studio as much as possible, Ross and Sam decided to only write material in the studio – with no label and no A&R guiding the way. Instead of crumbling under the pressure of the lack of stability, the band decided to make ‘an album of limitations’.

The result – a rock-propelled electronic-influenced release that puts guitars at the forefront. The amps have been cranked up instead of toned down, the chart-ready pop elements stripped away and a return to the band’s rock roots.

“You’re the first person to really say that out loud,” Sam said laughing down the phone. “It was a conscious decision. During the process of going to all these major labels, or any labels really, and when working with new management, everyone was saying ‘guitar music is dead’ and ‘guitar is this and that’. It’s like ‘yes, it is right now’ but ‘dead’ is a bit of a strange word to use – and extreme – but our whole thing was that guitar is meant to be bigger than the frontman…

“…it’s meant to be bigger than the vocals. It’s meant to come in and be this sexy, raunchy thing that takes you over the edge of the experience.”

“Instead of weighing up for size and thinking we’d get to the chorus and do fifty layers of guitar, that’s what we used to do to make this big slab of sound, I don’t know if that was just because we were hiding behind not having good enough songs at the time or something. We just thought we’ll only put the guitar in when it’s going to be able to compete with the lead role in the song and therefore we won’t have to turn it down. We’ll want it to be even louder. That’s our way of providing an antidote to the whole guitar music is an ‘uncool’ thing. Generally, people have just been using it in a bland way.

“As we were in control of what we were recording and producing, you’re getting a lot more mistakes being left in…We didn’t have any tried and tested method, the unique parts of our minds and imaginations got to be explored a little more so maybe it does sound a little more electric because of that.”

Alongside this new experimental approach, ‘POWER’ sees Twin Atlantic introduce interludes into the mix with two contrasting tracks in the form of the almost chaotic sample sounding ‘Mount Bungo’ and the gentle unexpected addition of ‘Asynchronous’.

“Those two interludes were to try and show that Ross plays a big part in writing this record as well,” Sam said. “Ross used to be more the in-between of me and the band, he was almost like the band’s producer at time and I was the songwriter and he’d be the buffer between making my songs into big full band production, but this time – because we had the studio together – he’s more musically gifted than I am and I’m more emotionally connected to the music and the lyrics from my brain so we’d tap into my imagination and tap into his skill. These two interludes were to try and bridge between those two hats as much as they were just nice moments of noise,” Sam explained. “Like ‘Mount Bungo’ is meant to really grate on you and be like ‘what was the point in that’ it’s meant to reset your senses.

“If you walk through an art gallery and there were ten paintings and they were all similar to each other, it’d be nice and you’d leave thinking ‘aw that was good’ but my favourite thing is turning a corner and seeing something you’re not expecting.”

And it’s that unexpected element that is set to make Twin Atlantic’s forthcoming live shows extra special.

“We’re really looking forward to it,” Sam said. “It’s something we’re going to kind of learn as we go because there’s a lot more electronic stuff involved. We’re familiar with all the gear in the studio, but not in a live setting so we’re having to learn. The best answer for what to expect is ‘I don’t know’ but I like not knowing.

“The more comfortable you are, you start to slow down. The slower you get, you start to settle and that’s when life can get a bit boring. Hopefully, we make loads of mistakes and people come to the gigs and are like ‘what the f*ck?!’.

“We want to create an experience, otherwise, why would you see it live? We want it to be a bit on the edge of almost about to fall apart – that’s kind of our take on what rock music should be anyway – something that’s a bit unwieldy.”

“After playing shows for 13 years now, even just for our own mental stimulation, we need to add a challenge.”

One thing is for certain, Twin Atlantic are back. Reinvogrised with a no-holds-barred album, it feels the band have found the sound they’re comfortable with. It’s a release that although is bound to cause split in fans opinions, it’ll undoubtedly bring more into the mix, adding to their versatile repertoire of releases with an album that proves there’s more than enough room for rock – and it’s time to turn it up.

Limited tickets are remaining for Twin Atlantic’s album release shows at Glasgow King Tut’s and Edinburgh Liquid Rooms with Assai Records.

You can stream Twin Atlantic’s new album ‘Power’ via Spotify below: