Black Country, New Road have released a new concert film chronicling three shows at London’s Bush Hall last December. The performances were made up of entirely new material, written after frontman and co-founder Isaac Wood left the group early last year. Each night featured a different visual theme and corresponding stage sets, inspired by school plays, pastoral scenes, and a fictitious, haunted pizza parlor called I Ain’t Alfredo No Ghosts. The film was directed by Greg Barnes and mixed by John Parish. Check it out below.

The new material is the band’s first since releasing Ants From Up There shortly after Wood’s departure. The eight new songs were written and composed by the remaining members: Tyler Hyde (bass, vocals), May Kershaw (piano, vocals), Jockstrap’s Georgia Ellery (violin, vocals), Lewis Evans (saxophone, vocals), Luke Mark (guitar), and Charlie Wayne (drums).

“We didn’t want to do a studio album,” Kershaw said in a press release. “We wrote the new tracks specifically to perform live, so we thought it might be a nice idea to put out a performance.” Mark added:

We had concerns from live sessions we’ve seen or done in the past. They are very obviously clumped together visually from multiple performances. That can take you out of the performance and make it seem artificial and like it’s not actually live. So we came up with the idea to make the three nights look visually distinct from one another. To scratch the idea of trying to disguise anything. We wanted it to be very honest and let people know that we had three goes at it. This isn’t just us playing the whole thing nonstop.

Discussing the decision to create distinct visual sets, Mark wrote: “We thought: if we’re gonna do a film, then make it personable. And a lot of our fans, especially when we were putting this stuff together, played a huge part in spreading the songs which meant that people could listen to them without us putting them out in the first place. It felt good to do the film in a way that involved the people who’ve been vital to keeping the whole thing afloat.”

“We came up with fake plays,” Evans said, adding that the band “wrote a fake synopsis, dressed as the characters, and made programs and sets for each play. It was really exciting and made it a lot more fun.”

Read more about Ants From Up There in “The 38 Best Rock Albums of 2022.”