Roi De LHerbe

Description

Following on from last years acclaimed R.O.I. album, Manchesters favourite sons Aerial Salad are set to return to the fray with a brand new 5-track EP titled Roi de lherb to be released June 27th via Venn Records.

Having released their Dirt Mall album during lockdown, which was a pretty grim time to put an album out, the release still eventually opened up some exciting doors for the band and captured Aerial Salad at their most Aerial Salad; loud, brash, silly and emotive. This led swiftly to 2024s R.O.I. album that marked a real evolution in the bands sound and songwriting.

R.O.I. is a concept album but rather than being about a band, its from the perspective of an individual pushed to the brink of insanity by the ever-present quest from commercial success, explains singer and guitarist Jamie Munro. The idea came from my job; Ive been working in the tech industry in sales. Return on investment was probably my most uttered phrase for a few years, I was sick of it, sick of having no positive impact on the world and sick of the tech bro, double espresso, thirsty thursdays, work hard play hard bollocks culture that comes with it. R.O.I. is me saying know what, you can actually earn a lot of money in life, even without the fallacy of educational infrastructure and financial privilege, however, it comes at the cost of your soul, time and energy. R.O.I. is called such because its in the opposite pursuit, its not about a return on a financial investment, its about doing something with your life thats enjoyable.

This brings us crashing into 2025, no longer in the same line of spirit destroying work, with some seriously exciting gigs on the horizon, Aerial Salad wanted to kick off the next era of the band with a short, fast and hard EP and have served up 5 absolute bangers that sit somewhere between Dirt Mall and R.O.I. The EP is called Roi de lherb because of the track King Of The Grass: We tour and play a lot in France, weve played most of our best gigs in France, so out of curiosity I wanted to see if the title would translate well, naturally, when the translation contained both ROI and lherbe I though, fuck it, thats about as spot on a title for this EP as we can possibly muster.

King of The Grass is about the bands bassist Mike Wimbo who works for Rochdale council on the greens team, which means he spends his life in the pouring rain chopping down overgrown hedges and mowing lawns. Elsewhere on the EP, Inject Your Blood is another romantic love song inspired by the TV series True Blood (Id inject your blood, into mine just to feel you close), Wires rages against the world of AI and GPT, whilst the EPs opening track My Girl is a chaotic, high energy catchy punk song, nothing profound, nothing complicated. Its a punk song as god intended, a few chords and a load of shouting.

The EP is like the teaser for whats next, summarises Jamie. The overall hook for this EP is one of hope, that by sticking to what you believe in you can do anything.

Taking a bold step has paid off; R.O.I. has taken Aerial Salad from plucky underdogs to genuine contenders. Kerrang!

This is an astounding leap forward from their debut and places them firmly on the Manchester music map. Louder Than War