Ghinzu shares new single 'Forever'

From selling more than 100,000 copies of their breakthrough second album Blow across Europe, to sharing stages with the likes of Muse, Placebo and Iggy & The Stooges, and seeing their music featured on the soundtrack of the global hit film 'Taken', Ghinzu have long stood as one of Belgium’s most iconic rock exports.

The forthcoming record W.O.W.A, has been a work in progress for some time, with Ghinzu having written almost 90 fully fledged ideas for their new album, before whittling this down to the final tracklisting. “We had all these hard drives everywhere,” recalls Descamps. “We wanted to gather 10 tracks together to really represent all those years of condensed work.”

The results take Ghinzu back to basics, before blasting them into uncharted territories. Their formative influences - the energy and expression of Queen; the raucous grunge noise of Nirvana and The Melvins – remain, alongside their passion for visual art. Name-checking the painters Gerhard Richter and Francis Bacon as points of inspiration, they stepped back from their perfectionist leanings to embrace music at its most raw and powerful.

Sessions took place at a multitude of studios. Ghinzu worked in their native Belgium and across the Atlantic in New York; they secluded themselves in the countryside, and worked at studios overlooking the sea. “Our plan was to drift away, creating ‘evolutive songs’ that could change from one week to another, or simply disappear to maybe reappear. Doubts have less room within such space, as there is nothing to finish. What is left are the survivors of that period, the wild ones who got captured.”

From first to last, these are stories built by older musicians, people with experience and maturity. “It’s about telling very specific stories in a way that is universal,” he says. “There’s an almost confrontational aspect with regards to age. We’re developing an intergenerational feel in bringing these stories out of specific narratives and pushing them into different spaces.”