Melbourne’s Casanovas have released their latest single and video, “Reptilian Overlord“, taken from their recent album of the same name. The album was produced by legendary Australian producer Mark Opitz (AC/DC, ANGELS, DIVINYLS, COLD CHISEL etc) and is getting the best press of the band’s career.
As Casanovas founder Tommy Boyce explains, the song reaches back to his teenage influences, and touches on one of his fascinations. It is perhaps the heaviest track these hardcore rock’n’rollers have ever laid down: “I’m pretty sure this was the first song I wrote for this album. Musically it’s kind of a mixture of sounds that I loved as a kid like Black Sabbath and early Metallica. The main riff in the verses is a bit Metallica whereas the chorus is very Sabbath, as is the outro section. So basically an exercise in extreme heaviosity. At the time I was down a YouTube David Icke/Ancient Aliens rabbit hole. I love the idea that our planet is ruled, behind the scenes, by a race of extra dimensional, malevolent reptilian aliens that are worshipped by the ‘elites’ who make up the so called ‘illuminati’. I mean if it was real it’d be terrifying but without proof it seems unlikely to be true but still makes for an awesome story. There have been a few movies/TV series’ that have used this concept, e.g. ‘They Live’ and ‘V’, a scene from the latter being the inspiration for our album cover design. The lyrics also reference the Dogon tribe of Mali, West Africa who acquired knowledge of the dwarf planet Sirius B before having had any contact with western civilisation. Sirius B is invisible to the naked eye. The Dogon claim an alien race from Sirius B came to them and bestowed this knowledge upon them.”
The new single comes on the back of great international press for the new album, especially from Europe, which the band would be touring around about now if not for the plague.
The new album is a refinement of what the Casanovas have always been about. Pure hard rock’n’roll, with influences coming from punk, blues and mid-’70s heavy metal. And great, classic soulful guitar sounds; the sort of sounds which must’ve taken Opitz back to when he was working alongside Vanda & Young. As the band told The Music.com – “Great rock’n’roll has rock and roll, it has light and shade, it’s gritty but it has finesse and musicianship, it’s tough and mean but is not afraid to be sweet sometimes, it has melody, it has groove, it’s honest but it has humour, it’s fun, and it doesn’t slavishly try to fit into any kind of category. The Casanovas are a rock’n’roll band and ‘Reptilian Overlord’ is an unselfconscious expression of our love of rock’n’roll in all its glorious forms.”
