''Signed and Sealed in Blood'' is the eighth studio album by the

Dropkick Murphys Dropkick Murphys are an American Celtic punk band formed in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1996. Singer and bassist Ken Casey has been the band's only constant member. Other current members include drummer Matt Kelly (1997– ), singer Al Barr (199 ...

. The album was released on January 8, 2013 on the band's

Born & Bred Records Dropkick Murphys are an American Celtic punk band formed in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1996. Singer and bassist Ken Casey has been the band's only constant member. Other current members include drummer Matt Kelly (1997– ), singer Al Barr (199 ...

label. The album debuted at No. 9 on the ''Billboard'' 200 albums chart, the third highest debut for the band. The album has produced four singles including "

Rose Tattoo Rose Tattoo are an Australian rock and roll band, now led by Angry Anderson, which formed in Sydney in 1976. Their sound is hard rock mixed with blues rock influences, with songs including "Bad Boy for Love", "Rock 'n' Roll Outlaw", "Nice ...

" and "The Season's Upon Us", a Christmas themed song that became one of the band's more successful charting singles. "The Boys Are Back" and "Out of Our Heads" (which was also used as the theme song for the television show, ''

Boston's Finest ''Boston's Finest'' is an American reality television series on TNT which chronicled the daily operations of the Boston Police Department. The series was green-lit on May 11, 2012, with the premiere on February 27, 2013. It was announced in May 20 ...

'') were also released as singles. A special 2013 charity version titled "Rose Tattoo" featuring

Bruce Springsteen Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer and songwriter. He has released 21 studio albums, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Originally from the Jersey Shore, he is an originat ...

was released in response to the

Boston Marathon bombing The Boston Marathon bombing was a domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, w ...

. The single reached #25 on the

Rock Songs Hot Rock & Alternative Songs (formerly known as Rock Songs and Hot Rock Songs) is a record chart published by '' Billboard'' magazine. From its debut on June 20, 2009, through October 13, 2012, the chart ranked the airplay of songs across alterna ...

chart. "Prisoner's Song" has been heavily featured in commercials for Captain Morgan's liquor and in July 2017 it was used in the season 8 trailer for '' The Walking Dead''. It was also the final album to feature Scruffy Wallace on Bagpipes and Whistles.

Background

On August 31, 2012, the band announced the album's title and first single, "

" through their

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page. The title of the album is taken from lyrics in "Rose Tattoo". The band asked fans to tattoo themselves with the new logo from the album's cover and send photos and videos to their web site by September 19, 2012. The images were used in the packaging for the CD and vinyl album. The album has sold 106,000 copies as of Sept. 10, 2013.

Musical style

Where "Going Out in Style" told the story of a fictional character named Cornelius Larkin—complete with an obituary written by

Michael Patrick MacDonald Michael Patrick MacDonald (born March 9, 1966) is an Irish-American activist against crime and violence and author of his memoir, ''All Souls: A Family Story From Southie''. He helped to start Boston's gun-buyback program, and founded the South B ...

for the liner notes -- "Signed..." has no such constraints. "This is just the opposite of that," bassist

Ken Casey Kenneth William Casey Jr. (born April 15, 1969) is an American musician who is a bass guitarist, primary songwriter, and one of the lead singers of the Boston Celtic punk group the Dropkick Murphys. Casey was one of the original members, sta ...

explains, "just us having fun and making the most catchy, singalong kind of songs we can. It's not that the last album wasn't fun. It was. 'Going Out in Style' is one of the records I'm most proud of, of anything we've done. But it gave me a couple migraines along the way, getting through that because everything was so connected. This time we cut loose." But he does feel that "Signed..." is also "almost a continuation of ('Going Out in Style'), in a musical sense. There's an upbeat, party vibe to it. A lot of these songs, we were having such a good time writing them and just enjoying the writing process. It's the quickest we've released an album, ever, after another." The group previewed some of the songs on the album during its Halfway To St. Patrick's Day U.S. tour. Casey described the final track, "End of the Night," as "the closing time, kind of loser's anthem, about people who don't want to go home." The album also features a holiday song called "The Seasons Upon Us," which Casey promised "is definitely not some cheesy Christmas tune. It's about a dysfunctional family."

Critical reception

''Signed and Sealed in Blood'' was well received by music critics. The album holds an average critic score of 77/100 at Metacritic, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Gregory Heaney of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

gave the album four out of five stars called it "an album that's sure to please Murphys fans both old and new". At ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'', Hermione Hoby gave the album two stars out of five, criticising it as 'hearty but slightly absurd'.

Track listing

Fans who pre-ordered the album through the band's website received

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download of the song, "The Season's Upon Us" as well as a digital download card with their order which included three exclusive songs. "The Season's Upon Us" was also released as a 7" single in special colors of red, green and white with the non-album b-side "AK-47 (All I Want For Christmas Is An)".

Personnel

;Dropkick Murphys *

Al Barr Alexander Barr (born January 21, 1968) is an American musician. He has been the lead singer of the Dropkick Murphys since 1998. He was also a founder and lead singer for The Bruisers, which he helped form in 1988 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Hi ...

–

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of t ...

*Tim Brennan –

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

bouzouki The bouzouki (, also ; el, μπουζούκι ; alt. pl. ''bouzoukia'', from Greek ), also spelled buzuki or buzuci, is a musical instrument popular in Greece. It is a member of the long-necked lute family, with a round body with a flat top and ...

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

whistle A whistle is an instrument which produces sound from a stream of gas, most commonly air. It may be mouth-operated, or powered by air pressure, steam, or other means. Whistles vary in size from a small slide whistle or nose flute type to a larg ...

, vocals *

– lead vocals,

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

Jeff DaRosa Jeffrey DaRosa (born July 31, 1982) is an American musician who is a multi-instrumentalist and a member of the Boston-based Dropkick Murphys. Early life and career Growing up in Watertown, Massachusetts (a suburb of Boston) and Somerville, Mas ...

–

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

, bouzouki,

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

mandola The mandola (US and Canada) or tenor mandola (Ireland and UK) is a fretted, stringed musical instrument. It is to the mandolin what the viola is to the violin: the four double courses of strings tuned in fifths to the same pitches as the viola ...

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

, piano,

autoharp An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. The term ''autoharp'' was once a trademark of ...

, vocals *Matt Kelly –

drum The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...

s, vocals * James Lynch –

s, vocals *Scruffy Wallace –

bagpipes Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, No ...

, whistles ;Additional musicians *

Winston Marshall Winston Aubrey Aladar deBalkan Marshall (born 20 December 1987) is an English musician and podcaster. He is best known as the former banjoist and lead guitarist of the British folk rock band Mumford & Sons. Prior to this he was in the bluegrass ...

- guest banjo on "Rose Tattoo" *

Michelle DaRosa Michelle DaRosa (née Nolan) is an American musician, formerly of the band Straylight Run, for whom she was a vocalist, guitarist, and pianist. Biography Michelle DaRosa was born Michelle Nolan on September 13, 1980, in Rockville Centre, N ...

- vocals on "Rose Tattoo" and "The Season's Upon Us" *Parkington Sisters - strings on various songs, vocals on "End of the Night" and "Shark Attack" *Niki Cremmen - vocals on "Rose Tattoo" *So Many Close Friends - additional gang vocals on various songs

References

{{Authority control 2013 albums Dropkick Murphys albums Albums produced by Ted Hutt