Track By Tracks: The Trousers – Necessary Evil (2025)

1. All through the night:

Music: Goes back to the band’s major influences: classic (MC5, The Stooges) and modern (Hellacopters, Turbonegro, Gluecifer) garage rock, with a punkish attitude. Always has to start an album with a fast song.

Lyrics: Bad relationships and conflicts – as we have all experienced them. They got you filled with anger, and a good rock song is the best way to channel these feelings.

2. Restless in peace:

Music: I always liked bands that mixed heavy guitar riffs with melodies and catchy songs, but in a raw way. I would mention Thin Lizzy or early Cheap Trick from the classic age, or The Hellacopters in the 2000s. We try to do the same in a unique way – this song is a good example of that.

Lyrics: Relational and emotional experiences again. After the turmoil, you expect some relief – but you remain restless in peace…

3. Second-hand suicide:

Music: After my brother died in 2022, I started to listen to Alice in Chains and Jerry Cantrell's solo albums intensively, and I realised he is one of the greatest songwriters of our time. This song contains something from this influence, but much more. A complex song, full of anger and sadness.

Lyrics: What is a “second-hand suicide” like? No one knows… But this title messes up your imagination.

4. Laura Palmer:

Music: The garage-rock influences return in this song, fast and rebellious. The refrain is slowing down, but it’s just becoming heavier. The real contrast is the guitar solo part, with some melodic solos – maybe referring to Mick Tayor from the Stones of Michael Schenker for UFO.

Lyrics: Of course, it’s a reference to David Lynch’s classic “Twin Peaks”. A guy’s confession about a girl who is gone forever: “I wanna be your man” – but it’s too late, the hand of fate is on me now.

5. Condemned to be free:

Music: This is the last composition of the virtual “A” side of the record. Slow and majestic with a fuzz-like guitar over the acoustic one. A bit reminds me of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – dark, monotonous and mystical, like a raga. But also contains some catharsis and beauty.

Lyrics: The title refers to Jean-Paul Sartre: man is condemned to be free. It's against determinism. Freedom and responsibility go together. I’m not intending to write poetry, but I think it’s deep: “Call on your angel who will carry you to burn there/in the everlasting night of your darkened soul”. I like it.

6. Necessary evil:

Music: The title track as the first song of the “B side” – just like “Back in Black” by AC/DC. We like mixing genres. The song is an essential hard rock rampage. AC/DC, early Judas Priest, Sabbath, Zeppelin – but the chorus, partly sung by Rita Csányi, is very R’n’B like. I really loved the first album of Black Pumas; it comes from there. Like the Bell Rays from Detroit – mixing garage rock with Motown.

Lyrics: Going through hell sometimes - this is necessary evil. It is something that you must experience, although you can never be sure that you will get out alive. Evil is a part of us, a part of the mystery of life. You cannot escape it. The question is, what will you make out of it?

7. Face from the sun:

Music: The fast Motörhead tempo is checking in - almost every The Trousers album contains a song with a tempo like this. It’s obligatory. The solo is also archaic – just drums, bass and a solo guitar, like we were a power trio form the late 60’s. I don’t know where this song came from - very spontaneous and simple.

Lyrics: Let’s face the fact that sometimes a lyric’s only duty is to serve the song – rhythmically, in sound, etc. This is THAT song on this album, with no deeper intentions. But if you want to, you can find a message in “Shooting myself hiding my face from the sun…”

8. Fall from the pain:

Music: This is a psychedelic blues-rock based song, like “When the levee breaks”, my favourite Led Zeppelin tune. It has slide guitar, mouth harp, Hammond, female backing vocals in it, everything you want. A late 60’s/ early 70’s vibe with a heavier, modern sound.

Lyrics: The bad emotional experiences theme continues here. Same as in “Necessary Evil” - you have to experience pain and suffering. It’s not accidental, it’s existential. You will fall, but you will stand up again.

9. On the river again:

Music: An average song contains five elements: riff, verse, bridge, chorus and a solo. This song is special because it also has a prechorus, so it has a more complex structure. A very good song with strong harmonies and hard riffs, but also a bastard track because it is at the end of the album, so it is likely that fewer people will listen to it or get into it. But we had to choose…

Lyrics: “Rolling on the river again” – is a metaphor for recurring experience- “oh no I’m doing it again”. There is a compulsion to repeat bad experiences again, based on an illusion that this time it will be alright. Not this time, junior.

10. Drive me to the stars:

Music: This song starts as a ballad, but it blows up in the middle. We always try to do something special at the end of the album, something different… I think we will never play it live; it is typically an album track. I think it’s epic and unique.

Lyrics: My brother died of ALS in 2022. Last year, I had a dream that I met some hobos in the US with the same disease, and they told me they were praying to God to take them back to the stars. I heard the song in my dream, so I woke up and completed it by inserting a part from an old song with the same title written by my brother and me. So it is a homage to him.