RELEASE NEW SINGLE ‘BLOOD ON THE HOSPITAL FLOOR’
FROM SIXTH STUDIO ALBUM OH! THE OCEAN
OUT 21ST FEB 2025 – PRE-ORDER HERE
ANNOUNCE EU TOUR DATES
UK TOUR SET FOR MARCH 2025 TICKETS HERE
The Wombats today unveil their new single ‘Blood On The Hospital Floor’ out now, with an impressive James Slater (Sam Fender, CMAT, Jamie T) directed video. The track, which premiered at Reading and Leeds festival this summer is the second offering from the chart-topping, Platinum-selling indie heroes’ sixth studio album, Oh! The Ocean, out 21st February 2025 via AWAL Recordings. Alongside the new track, the band are also announcing a huge 14 date European Tour. These shows follow the 7 previously announced UK arena shows starting in March 2025, which includes a night at The O2, London.
‘Blood on the Hospital Floor’ is a driving future-rock classic dappled with intergalactic noises, like cruising Saturn’s rings with the top down. It serves as a note-to-self for frontman Matthew “Murph” Murphy not to catastrophize situations, as he explains:
“The idea behind ‘Blood On The Hospital Floor’ is that things that might seem difficult in life can often have a simple resolution. Things are not always as bad as they first may seem. The analogy of mopping up blood from the hospital floor – cleaning up the mess and keeping going.”
Two years since scoring their debut UK #1 album with Fix Yourself Not The World, The Wombats are back and bigger than ever. Oh! The Ocean trembles with the confessional emotional honesty that makes the Liverpool band’s music as cathartic and relatable as it is catchy and playful, to their continuously growing young fanbase.
The three piece took 50 new songs to Echo Park, LA, in July 2024 for six weeks of sessions with new producer John Congleton (St Vincent, Wallows, Death Cab for Cutie) to create their most sonically adventurous album yet. The title is inspired by a revelatory trip to the beach Murph took on a family holiday.
Speaking on the experience, Murph says: “I’ve been to many beaches and seas and coasts over the years but for some reason it felt like the first time I had ever seen it and was truly present. There was this revelation that I had been living a life caught up in my own head, or in some kind of racing helmet or with blinkers on. It was really a potent experience. I felt like I saw everything new for the first time, and was aware that I had been so selfish to not take in how crazy the world and life is. I’d been caught up in my own BS for way too long. The album offers up some internal questions like: why are my head and body disconnected all the time? Why am I incapable at times of seeing any form of beauty in the world or in others? Why do I expect the world to conform to my will? Why do I never stop and smell the flowers?”
The Wombats will be setting out on their biggest ever UK Arena Tour a month after the album
release, kicking off in Nottingham on March 18th, and then onto London, Manchester, Cardiff,
Glasgow and Leeds. They then cross the channel for 14 dates across France, Germany, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Luxembourg and Belgium. Artist presale tickets for the European dates go on sale on Wednesday 27 November, with general sale on Friday 29 November.
Since they emerged as leading lights of the late-‘00s indie rock scene with 2007 debut A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation, Murph, bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen and drummer Dan Haggis have maintained an incredible upward momentum. 2011’s electro-flecked second album This Modern Glitch made them Top Ten regulars; 2015’s third Glitterbug saw them embraced by the TikTok generation, with ‘Greek Tragedy’ a viral hit several times over. By 2018’s Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life they’d stepped up to arenas and 2022’s Fix Yourself, Not the World consolidated their unstoppable rise with the band’s first Number One album, seeing them reach over 2.5 billion streams. Headline shows at Crystal Palace and The O2 followed amid the band’s biggest touring cycle so far, taking in arenas across the globe and culminating at Reading 2024, where the band headlined a rammed Radio One tent overspilling with crowds of 18-24-year-olds that remain their core audience twenty years into their career.
With Murph now feeling the benefits of his fresh perspective, Oh! The Ocean represents a line in the sand from which The Wombats are sprinting onwards into a mature new phase.
The Wombats – Oh! The Ocean Tracklist:
Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want To Come
Can’t Say No
Blood On The Hospital Floor
Kate Moss
Gut Punch
My Head Is Not My Friend
I Love America And She Hates Me
The World’s Not Out To Get Me, I Am
Grim Reaper
Reality Is A Wild Ride
Swerve (101)
Lobster
The Wombats – UK Tour Dates:
18 March – Nottingham, Motorpoint Arena
19 March – London, The O2
21 March – Cardiff, Utilita Arena
22 March – Manchester, AO Arena
23 March – Hull, Connexin Live
25 March – Glasgow, OVO Hydro
26 March – Leeds, First Direct Arena
The Wombats – EU Tour Dates
28 March – France, Paris, Le Trabendo
30 March – Netherlands, Tilburg, 013 Tilburg
31 March – Netherlands, Amsterdam, Paradiso
01 April – Germany, Cologne, E-Werk
03 April – Germany, Munich, Theaterfabrik
04 April – Switzerland, Zurich, Komplex 457
05 April – Czech Republic, Prague, Archa +
07 April – Germany, Berlin, Columbiahalle
08 April – Germany, Munster, Jovel Music Hall
10 April – Norway, Oslo, Rockefeller Music Hall
11 April – Denmark, Copenhagen, Pumpehuset
12 April – Sweden, Stockholm, Vasateatern
15 April- Luxembourg, Luxembourg City, Den Atelier
16 April – Belgium, Brussels, Botanique
EU TOUR POSTER
‘OH! THE OCEAN’ ARTWORK
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