The Wombats on 'Method To The Madness' and playing The O2: “It's going to be an amazing night”

The Wombats have told NME the full story behind their new single ‘Method To The Madness’, and how they’re gearing up for the biggest gig of their career at The O2 Arena next year. Watch our video interview above.

The Liverpool band promise to play “all their hits” at the mammoth show next year, which sees them tackling the South London venue on Friday April 15.

But the one-off date will also see them offering a glimpse at new material, having debuted their latest single ‘Method To The Madness‘ last week.

Describing the track, frontman Matthew ‘Murph’ Murphy told NME: “When that song came around, we thought it was so special, a different change of pace and a different style for us. You know, as soon as we’d released the demo we just thought it was a song we could release out of the blue at any time and make a really cool visual to go alongside it.

“It was an oddball song for us and something that could stand alone, so that’s how we’ve treated it.”

He added: “It’s a nice weapon to have in our arsenal, and taking people by surprise is something you want to implement when you get to your fourth or fifth album.”

The band initially recorded the track’s demo at Murph’s LA home studio in 2019, but the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that bandmates Tord Øverland Knudsen and Dan Haggis were ultimately forced to record their parts remotely in London over the last year.

“It’s been pretty mental, but I was out here in LA with an engineer and Dan and Tord were in London. We recorded it in 2019, but we’ve kept a lot of elements from the demo and that meant it was one of the easiest songs to do,” said Murph.

And as for that show at The O2, The Wombats say that they’re planning to pull out all the stops for their biggest show to date.

“We’re gonna have to make sure it’s very special and it’s going to be an amazing night. It’s a great achievement, but one that feels deserved,” he said. “At Wembley [their 2019 show] we flew our tour manager off the stage in a Wombat suit, so we’ll have to find a way to outdo that.”

The show will come 15 years after their 2007 debut ‘A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation’, but Murph says that the band’s constant touring and work ethic has allowed them to progress to big arenas.

“We’ve always had great people around us and we always went pretty hard outside the UK and you need support to be able to do that around the world,” he said. “The second thing is that we’re very determined, almost to our detriment sometimes. We can block the world out and there’s that element of hard work.”

He continued: “I’d like to think there’s something weird about the lyrics and melodies I write too, which stood us apart from the other bands and acts that we came up with. I’ve never really tried to dumb it down for the sake of commercial success.

“The way I see everything now is that commercial success is great, but I want us in ten years to be a band like the Pixies, where it’s going to be around for a long time.”

The Wombats play The O2 Arena on April 15, 2022. Tickets are on sale from 9am on Friday June 11 and will be available here.