BUTCHER BABIES have released "Leaving California", the fifth single from "Nightbloom", the album the Las Vegas band puts out on October 2 through Judge & Jury Records. Howard Benson produced it, as he did the rest of the record.
The song has a date attached to it. Vocalist Heidi Shepherd began writing it in July 2020, watching the industry, her friends and her family leave California one household at a time — a place she had assumed would keep her permanently.
"I built my life there," she said. "I traded in my 20-year comfort of sandy beaches, ocean air, and the walk of fame for the big unknown. During that time, I wasn't only breaking up with California, I was moving on from a life that I am so grateful to have experienced, but needed a change. I was leaving a relationship that gave me so much for so many years, but had run dry."
The chorus turned up in the car on the way out. "On the drive out of town, I found myself humming this chorus melody into my voice notes, documenting in real time, my shedding of that skin," she said. "'Leaving California' is about that bittersweet moment where new beginnings seem daunting, yet, oh so, exciting."
Benson, whose credits run from MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE to SKILLET, went straight at the lyric rather than the hook. "I really relate to Heidi's lyrics on 'Leaving California'," he said. "It's very of the moment and timely, but the lyrics are also deeply personal. On the track, the band captures the conflicting emotions of the lyrics with their scorching performance!"
"Nightbloom" is closer to an autobiography than a concept record. When the band announced it in August Shepherd framed the whole thing as a look back across twenty-five years — the relationships, the heartbreaks and the lessons that came out of them — rather than a record about suffering. "Leaving California" sits ninth of ten, between "Songbird" and closer "Black Dove", downstream of earlier single "Blame It On The Wind".
BUTCHER BABIES formed in 2009 and have spent the years since welding thrash and groove metal to melodic hooks and a punk delivery, building most of their reputation on stage. They are in the middle of a United States run with Chad Gray that carries into the autumn, and play Louder Than Life in Kentucky.
"Nightbloom" track listing:
- Lost In Your Touch
- Sincerity
- Blame It On The Wind
- Broken & Beautiful
- Are You Waiting Up?
- Black Clouds Over Georgia
- Fever In My Neck
- Songbird
- Leaving California
- Black Dove