Sports Team – Bang Bang Bang
Today, Mercury Prize-nominated British band Sports Team released new single, “Bang Bang Bang,” a blazing rock track with western inspired touches. The single which they had already planned to release, shares their reflections on the gun culture of America.
Its release feels predestined given the band were involved in a shocking incident in late 2024 when they were robbed at gunpoint in the Bay Area outside a Vallejo Starbucks. As reported by LA Times, Billboard, VICE, Stereogum, and CBS News when someone alerted them that their tour van was being ransacked and robbed, the band attempted to intervene but were met with a gun being brandished and took cover. Undeterred, they continued the tour and received hundreds of offers of support alongside interest from right wing media.
On the song, which Sports Team had already planned to release first in 2025 before the incident happened, stated and their thoughts following the incident, “We toured America a lot when we were working on the third album, and you would see the AR-15 logo used on coffee bags, hats, t shirts, bumper stickers,” guitarist and lyricist Rob Knaggs explains. “You’d stop for petrol, and alongside the snacks and neon drinks there’d be racks with tourist souvenirs; a Mickey Mouse hat, pet rocks, some postcard of a local landmark, then an AR-15 thermos cup. That’s where the seed of the lyrics came from. Seeing that silhouette used like it’s just any other American icon. Then across the time we spent in America I was fleshing the lyrics out. There was a story I saw about NRA robocalls after the Newtown shooting, and it’s horrific. The immediate PR damage control machine that clicks into action.”
He added, “I think what was most shocking was how resigned to it people seemed. You’re queuing for coffee. And then you’re trying to negotiate somebody waving a pistol around. The staff come and lock the doors, tell you to step away from the windows. You’re thinking about barricading yourself in the toilet and they’re still doing the squirty cream on the drinks.”
The track will feature on their upcoming studio album, Boys These Days, out May 23 on Bright Antenna Records / Distiller Records. Alex Rice, Oli Dewdney, Al Greenwood, Rob Knaggs, Ben Mack, and Henry Young, recorded Boys These Days with producer Matias Tellez (Girl In Red, CMAT, Gracie Abrams) in his Bergen Norwegian studio. They spent an extensive period working on the album. The band thrived with a daytime recording schedule and outdoor subzero hiking exhibitions which nearly ended in disaster.
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