GIRAFFE TONGUE ORCHESTRA // Supergroup Reveals Album ‘Broken Lines’

Jun 21, 2016 / WORDS The Editor / So what will Great Teacher Onizuka say about all this

Heavy metal supergroup Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, featuring members from Mastodon, Alice In Chains and Dillinger Escape Plan, has revealed Broken Lines, their debut album due out on 23 September.

Comprised of William DuVall of Alice In Chains, Ben Weinman of Dillinger Escape Plan, Brent Hinds of Mastodon, Pete Griffin of Dethklok and Thomas Pridgen of The Mars Volta, their debut release is set to drop on 23 September through Party Smasher Inc/Cooking Vinyl. Guests on the album include singer and actor Juliette Lewis.

The band’s name shares a history with the now defunct Soundwave Festival.

“During the time Mastodon was there for Soundwave, I was at the zoo in Sydney, Australia and was checking out the giraffes,” says Brent Hinds. “They are amazing animals – one just grabbed a bunch of bananas from my hand with its tongue and peeled them with it as well – by the time the bananas got to its mouth, they were ready to be eaten. I saw Ben who was at Soundwave too and said ‘Man I think I found the name for our band,’ and told him the story.” Ben also says “That giraffe made it happen… like us, he figured it out.”

The band was brought together by friendship and admiration for each other’s work, as DuVall explains. “Writing lyrics for these songs was somewhat like writing for film – the mood shifts rapidly and drastically within a song … sometimes the whole scene changes. There were a lot of times where, if you were trying to impose conventional rock songwriting standards on this, you’d be in a whole world of trouble.”

Giraffe Tongue Orchestra will make their live debut at Reading and Leeds in the UK and will play a number of dates in the US toward the end of 2016.

The band has released a song from the upcoming album, Crucifixion, which you can stream below.