The Vamps say their new album signifies their "rebirth".
The British band – made up of Bradley Simpson, James McVey, Connor Ball and Tristan Evans – are gearing up to release their fourth studio album, ‘Cherry Blossom’, in October this year, and have said they came up with the name during a relaxing trip to Japan, where they were inspired by the Sakura trees.
In Japanese culture cherry blossoms can be used as a metaphor for destiny, and so The Vamps say they chose the name to reflect their decision to move in a new direction with their sound.
Frontman Bradley explained: "The album name came very …. We’d finished the world tour last year and me and James stayed in Japan. It was the best, the most beautiful place. We had a week where we turned off our phones and chilled out, and the album name came whilst we were there.
"The idea is of it being rebirth, but not dismissing anything that we’ve done. Of being like, we’re so proud of everything that we’ve done as a band in the past eight years, but now we wanna move into this place of trying new things and releasing new music."
The band say all 10 songs on their new album are unlike anything they’ve ever released before, and are keen to hear fans’ reactions to their new "collective of songs".
James said: "We wrote 10 songs for it, actually 11 because there’s a bit of an intro type thing, but it’s 10 songs we’ve never done before, and because there’s only 10, the whole album is a body of work like we’ve never done before. So there is like a real start, middle, and end. It’s a collective of songs that for me, are equally as important as the other ones."
And Bradley says he specifically wants fans to listen to ‘Glory Days’, as it’s currently his favourite song on the album.
Speaking during an appearance on the ‘Ash London LIVE’ podcast, he said: "I think at the moment [my favourite is] ‘Glory Days’. It changes like every week, but I think ‘Glory Days’, because it’s got a sense of hopefulness and I think everyone at the moment needs a bit of that."