“Love is so much more powerful than hate. Hate is destruction and love is production.” Lynval Golding.

Following the release of their eighth studio album Encore last year to critical acclaim, the band comprised of Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter, hit the road again. Having enjoyed a successful 2019 with the release of the critically acclaimed “Encore”, their first (EVER!) number 1 album, they’re back with their brand new album “Protest Songs – 1924 -2012”.

Out September 24^th through their new label Island Records, the album features twelve takes on specially chosen protest songs from across almost 100-years.

The genius of the Specials is that they are still observers, not commentators and they know what pop music is. Influential, important and exhilarating live, they are a band embedded in this country’s DNA. It is impossible to envisage the musical landscape without them, from the startling, angular Gangsters in 1979 to their swan song, the epoch-making Ghost Town in 1981. They infused ska with punk, homegrown political anxiety with wider issues. The skill of re-contextualising what has gone before and writing new songs that fuse this heritage with all that is current. Throughout the decades the Specials’ influence has never gone away. And we need it.

“I’m aware our work has been out there for forty years and I’m so grateful for what we’ve done, I pinch myself sometimes,” says Lynval. “I can pat myself on the back now, and say ‘Well done,’ because that what my father says to me. As a band, making this record, it was the closest we’d ever been.”

“That’s the thing with the Specials,” says Horace. “We are three very different people, but you put us together and we become the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world, as far as I’m concerned. Something remarkable happens.”