We’re only a few days from setting off on our first full tour of the European mainland and we’re having a frenzied rush to get everything together on time. Beal has all the toothpaste and shower gel we could ever need. Draper has high-vis safety vests and a breakdown warning triangle. Jim has jump leads and an air compressor. Biff has a safety checklist. Not sure what Oli has, probably some tinnies.

We’ll be hitting Germany, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Italy, France and Spain. There’ve been a few small amendments to a couple of shows so make sure you check the dates below.

We’re also having some lovely new shirts printed for the tour, designed by twoducksdisco. You can see the design over on our Facebook page if you want. And please, if you’re in the UK, we’d love to see you at our last show for a while at The Vic Inn, in Derby. A Facebook event thing for it is here.

Excited!

Sat Nov 12th – DE, Menden, The Rehearsal Room
Sun Nov 13th – DE, Mannheim, Juz
Mon Nov 14th – DE, Berlin, About:Blank w/ Mats Olson Trio
Tue Nov 15th – CZ, Prague, Chapeau Rouge
Wed Nov 16th – SW, Porrentruy, House Show
Thu Nov 17th – IT, Milano, Cox 18 w/ Verme
Fri Nov 18th – IT, Rome, Traffic w/ Gazebo Penguins
Sat Nov 19th – IT, Forli, Circolo Valverde w/ Distanti
Sun Nov 20th – IT, Torino, Blah Blah w/ Verme
Mon Nov 21st – IT/FR, Day Off – Contact with offers
Tue Nov 22nd – FR, Toulouse, Caravan Serail
Wed Nov 23rd – ES, Getaria, Gaztetxe
Thu Nov 24th – FR, Paris, L’International
Sun Nov 27th – UK, Derby, The Victoria Inn w/ Voo, Algiers

We’re putting this little shindig on in our hometown to wrap up what’s been a pretty satisfying year for us. Point your internets to the facebook event and click “Yes mate”.

Voo are from Liverpool and make stupidly good heartfelt indie-rock that harks back to the good old days when The Lemonheads and REM were taking the world by storm with stonewashed denim and loose-fitting blouses. They’ve been going for ages and we’re lucky enough to have played with them a few times in previous bands. You should check out their new album, it’s a proper stormer.

Algiers are a couple of chaps from Sheffield who have been kicking out the jams for a year or two. For just a drummer and a guitarist they make a sound that is so direct and righteous that you kinda forget that that there’s only two of them. I think one of ‘em used to be in Dartz. They have a few tracks on their souncloud page but you really, really, really should watch this amazing video for their song ‘Uncover Me’. Bloody lovely. They kinda remind me a little of later-era Promise Ring / Maritime but I’m shit at descriptions so don’t trust that at all.

Anyhow, come along. It’s going to be a beast and it’ll be the last show we’ll play for a while so we can focus on getting some new stuff nailed. It’s also the first time any of us will have played The Vic for bloody ages and we’re quite excited about that. That place was the centre of our universe when we were growing up.

Crash of Rhinos – Lifewood from Steven Haddock on Vimeo.

Apologies for the quiet. We’ve been shacked up in our practice room writing blissed-out funk jams for the next record.

We’ve got a shedload of gigs coming up in October and November, including our first ever full European tour. This means that three of us will get to fulfil our life-long dreams of driving a long-wheelbased vehicle on the wrong side of the road. We even get to have a trip on the autobahn. Scary shit.

We’re throwing a party in our hometown of Derby the day after we get back. It would be awesome to see you there.

In other vehicular-based news; Biff recently bought himself a rather nice Peugeot 206 Estate. It was a devastating day for Vauxhall.

Dates below:

OCTOBER:
Tue Oct 11th – London, The Old Blue Last w/Joeyfat, Nitkowski
Sat Oct 15th – Folkestone, The View w/ Great Ancestors, Yes We Canada
Sun Oct 16th – Manchester, The Castle Hotel (Matinee)
Sun Oct 16th – Sheffield, Red House w/ RVIVR, Dauntless Elite, Fashanu + more
Fri Oct 21st – Nottingham, Chameleon Arts Cafe w/ Well Wisher, Some Skeletons

NOVEMBER (EUROPEAN TOUR):
Sat Nov 12th – DE, Menden, The Rehearsal Room
Sun Nov 13th – DE, Mannheim, Juz
Mon Nov 14th – DE, Berlin, About:Blank w/ Mats Olson Trio
Tue Nov 15th – CZ, Prague, Chapeau Rouge
Wed Nov 16th – SW, Porrentruy, House Show
Thu Nov 17th – IT, Milano, Cox 18 w/ Verme
Fri Nov 18th – IT, Rome, Traffic w/ Gazebo Penguins
Sat Nov 19th – IT, Forli, Circolo Valverde w/ Distanti
Sun Nov 20th – IT, Torino, Blah Blah w/ Verme
Mon Nov 21st – IT/FR, Day Off – Contact with offers
Tue Nov 22nd – FR, Toulouse, Caravan Serail
Wed Nov 23rd – ES, Getaria, Gaztetxe
Thu Nov 24th – FR, Paris, L’International
Sun Nov 27th – UK, Derby, The Victoria Inn w/ Voo(TBC), Algiers

We’re a few days away from announcing our full European tour that we’ll be galavanting off on in November, but the Italian shows have all been announced online anyway. Plus, Jacopo from Fine Before You Came designed this awesome series of posters. He’s a stupidly good designer for such a stupid guy. Click HERE for his site.

We got our cds back from the pressing plant just in time for our last few shows before Beal goes away again. Look, see:

It’s out on Brave Or Invincible Records and will be available to buy online from them sometime in the very very near future. They’re doing a special thing with about a hundred of them. We’ll post photos of that as soon as we see them.

Mate, we’re knackered, but these last couple of weeks have been amazing. Couldn’t have had a better time out with Algernon Cadwallader and 1994!. Seriously think that 1994! are one of the best bands I’ve ever seen, let alone had the privilege of playing with. All round top guys with top tunes. Both bands. Fingers crossed we’ll be doing something with one or (hopefully) both in Das States next spring. In the meantime, just stick on ‘Luke Gone Reidy’ from 1994!’s album FKYRHEAD, and then listen to ‘Chewed Up & Spit Out (In A Bowl)’ from Algernon’s new one. Thrice. And loud.

Beal goes away on Thursday until early October. That month is already filling up with shows, and in November we’re in Europe for two weeks. If you want us to come and play wherever you are, e-mail us at the address to the right of this page.

Beans.

We got some t-shirts done last week. Here’s Draper sporting a white one, medium sized. They’re all gone already. We’ve got other colours in that size and other sizes though. Have a gander at ‘em here.

Sorry to any folks who came out in Manchester to see us on Saturday. Flipping strange day. Started out really well. We had fish ‘n’ chips at Matlock Bath, got to Manchester then it all went pear shaped. Jim popped a tyre, then while we were putting a spare on, a psycho-skinhead threatened the inhabitants of the house we were s’posed to be playing, and also the lives of anyone found to be making any music in the area. So the gig was eventually moved, but we bailed. We’re playing in Manchester again with Lemuria in August though, so we’ll make up for it then.

We’re nearly out of vinyl records, mate. We’ve taken them off Big Cartel so that all the people who’ve said, “I’ll get one off yer at a gig” can do just that. We expect they’ll all be gone after these Algernon shows. Hopefully Triste might have a handful they can send over, but even that might be doubtful. We’re on the lookout for a cheeky little repress, so if you know anyone, give ‘em a nudge…

The master disc went of to the pressing plant this morning for the Brave or Invincible Records CD release of Distal. We’re not promising that we’ll have copies for these upcoming shows, but we’ve got our fingers crossed.

Turrah for now. Since it’s such nice weather, why not go out jumping the fuck out of your community urban environment?

Last night we met three good dudes who run a label called Brave or Invincible. We drank some booze (some of it was free), ate some pizza (brought my own hot sauce, yo) and talked about rockumentaries (mostly Metallica based).

We bandied about ideas for packaging and release formats and gigs and tours, and we’re mega happy to announce that somewhere in the midst of all of this, we agreed that we would work together on a CD release of Distal.

The label is based in Birmingham and is nice and DIY. They’re into making tasty handmade packaging (we’re looking forward to getting our hands dirty with them) and they’ve promised not to screw us over. They seem like trustworthy gents. We couldn’t possibly say no.

We’ll have more news on what the release will look like and details of when it’ll be available soon. We’ll have t-shirts too.

In other news, we’ve got a whole bunch of gigs coming up – take a look to the right. Hopefully one of them is near enough for your eyes and ears to get to. We’re still looking for more though, so send an email to acrashofrhinos@gmail.com.

Finally, the LP is selling nicely. We’ve got about 70 left. Lots of people have said that they will be picking one up when we play Ceolchoirm at Temple Works in Leeds this Saturday (which is incidentally our first gig in over a year). Get one from our big cartel store before they’re gone.

That’s it for now. Until next time, treat yourself to an egg in a bap.

So, we sold out of our first batch of records using an archaic system of email-based back-and-forths. After many hours of meetings with our lawyers, managers, strategists and accountants we’ve gone and sorted ourselves right out with a serious sales platform to lead us into a new era of e-commercial dominance.

In other words, grab yourself a copy of our record from our new BigCartel page at crashofrhinos.bigcartel.com. It smells bloody lovely. This way we don’t have to do any maths. The internet does all of that shit for us. It’s truly magical.

It’s also still available as a pay-what-the-hell-you-want download from our bandcamp page. If you want it for free, just enter zilch point zilch zilch in the price box thing. Spam your mates, they’ll proper love you for it.