Taylor Hawkins Forms New Group The Birds of Satan

(center) Taylor Hawkins with The Birds of Satan.

Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins has teamed up with bassist Wiley Hodgden and guitarist Mick Murphy to form hard rock trio the Birds of Satan. The group will release their eponymous debut album on April 15th.

Fellow Foos Dave Grohl and Pat Smear will both appear on the album alongside keyboardist and Foo associate Rami Jaffee, who played on 2005’s In Your Honor, 2007’s Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace and 2011’s Wasting Light.

The seven-song album opens with the 10-minute prog-metal track “The Ballad of the Birds of Satan” before veering into hard rock (“Pieces of the Puzzle”) and power ballads (“Raspberries”). The group, tongue firmly in cheek, described one song, “Wait Til Tomorrow,” as having “the first documented recorded Van Halen style guitar solo of this decade.”

Foo aficionados will recognize Hodgden and Murphy’s names as Hawkin’s co-conspirators in Chevy Metal, a a self-described “70s dirt rock cover band [that] play deep cuts off albums by Sabbath, Van Halen, Queen and The Stones” (sometimes with Rolling Stone members themselves).

The group released a perversely uplifting promo video to support the album. In the one-minute clip, empty beer cans litter a pool while a disheveled, coke-snorting man (band percussionist Drew Hester) contemplates his life after a divorce. Sporting a makeshift crop top T-shirt and robe, Hester pulls back a window curtain to reveal the band, bathed in sunlight and led by a smiling Hawkins.

Hawkins is hardly giving up his day job yet, though. Last year, Dave Grohl told ROLLING STONE that the band had started recording their upcoming eighth album, stating, “We’re doing something that nobody knows about, it’s fucking rad. We’re doing it in a way that no one’s done before and we’re writing the album in a way that I don’t think has been done before.”

The Birds of Satan is now available for pre-order at iTunes.

Track List

1. The Ballad of the Birds of Satan
2. Thanks for the Line
3. Pieces Of The Puzzle
4. Raspberries
5. Nothing at All
6. Wait Til Tomorrow
7. Too Far Gone to See