Protest punk band tell fans it 'would be unfair if we were to go through the motions'
The King Blues have split. The highly politicised London ska-punk band, celebrated for their participation in 2009's G20 protests, have "taken things as far as they can go" and will issue one last album in July.
"It is with great sadness and very heavy hearts that we must inform you, that as of today the King Blues are no more," the band said. Although they still plan to release their fourth album, Long Live the Struggle, the group has cancelled all scheduled gigs. "It would be unfair [to] you if we were to go through the motions like so many other artists do," they wrote. "We all believe strongly in what the King Blues stands for."
On Twitter, frontman Jonny "Itch" Fox offered some more parting words. "We weren't here to become pop stars or have 15 minutes of fame," he wrote. "We were here to leave a legacy, too stir it up, to do something of worth … i hope we were more than just a band. I hope we pissed some people off … Just know that we meant every fucking word."
The decision came as a surprise, since the band were gearing up not just for the new album but for a string of summer festival dates. Just last month, Itch gave a video update from the studio in Los Angeles. "Can't wait for you guys to hear [the new album], mad excited about it!" he said. Itch also appeared in a two-hour special on Mike Davies's BBC Radio 1 Punk Show, rambling around LA and premiering a new King Blues track.
The King Blues formed as an acoustic duo in 2004. Their breakthrough came four years later, with the single My Boulder, followed by headlines in 2009, when the band performed a string of mobile gigs at London's anti-G20 demonstrations. Their most recent album, 2011's Punk & Poetry, reached No 13 in the UK charts. "There's no fucking future for anyone but the privileged any more," Itch wrote in December. "All they want us to do is pay our taxes, shut the fuck up and gratefully eat X Factor … Call us what you like, striking workers, protesting students, rioting kids, the 99%, we are who we are, a product of a broken Britain being torn apart and yes, we are fucking angry – is anybody gonna fight back?"