As mentioned, West Coast melodic hardcore band Triggerman (who shared members with Ignite, No For An Answer, and Social Distortion) are gearing up for their first album in nine years and first album of original material since the ’90s, A Place in the Sun. It’s a double concept album and they’re rolling the album’s four sides out one at a time. They recently released the four songs of side one, and here are the four songs on side two, including “Dissolve,” which features guest vocals by Peter Cortner, who sang for Dag Nasty in the late ’80s (and now sings for Dag Nasty offshoot Field Day).

“Getting Peter Cortner for some guest vocals on ‘Dissolve’ was a real feather in the cap for me,” said vocalist Joe Nelson (also previously of Ignite). “The Dag Nasty Wig Out at Denkos album is one of [guitarist] Gavin [Oglesby] and my all-time favorites.” Speaking more about the album overall, Joe said:

Gavin and I got together 5 years ago around May 2016. The idea was just to have some fun writing a few songs together as Triggerman again. The next thing you know we’re making a 16 song concept album about a 1951 movie called A Place in the Sun, yet also touching on the Westernized human experience of today. That lead to us rework songs both lyrically and musically so they would connect as a one single piece. Every song probably went through 3-4 revisions and multiple mixes. At times I was worried we were so far off the range we might be entering Chinese Democracy territory.

We didn’t start off trying to make a double concept album. Once we got into a groove though it just sort of came to Gavin and I to take a swing for the fences and try and make something that was completely outside our comfort zone. It wasn’t premeditated, until it was.

The challenge to take this old movie and cut up the dialogue so that it told a single continuous story when mixed with the songs was really appealing to me. It was like building a giant puzzle trying to make all these individual songs work together as one lyrically and yet still make sense individually.

All 16 songs are meant to be listened to in a single setting. They all connect as one piece both musically and lyrically. They tell a single linear story. However that’s a big ask of people so we decided it was probably best to just drop 4 songs at a time.

Joe also previously told No Echo that they “took the approach of ‘what kind of hardcore music should dudes in their late 40s write?'” and you can hear that coming through in these songs, which have some clear elements of classic hardcore but branch out into other musical territory too. All four of them find this veteran band in fine form. Listen below.

A Place in the Sun comes out May 14 via Programme Skate & Sound in the US (pre-orer) and CoreTex Records in Europe (pre-order).

And here’s side one…

 

Triggerman is:
Brett Rasmussen (Ignite) – bass
Gavin Oglesby (No for an Answer) – guitar
Joe Nelson (Ignite) – vocals
Derek O’Brien (Social Distortion) – drums