There I was, dicking around in the Obelisk group on a certain corporate social media platform, and lo, it’s a post from The Kings of Frog Island! Well hey, that’s pretty sweet. It’s been a minute, etc. Their last record was 2021’s VII (review here), which offered hooks and lysergic expanse in kind, and apart from the ongoing quality of their work, they’re a sentimental favorite of mine for, well, over two decades now, as it turns out. Their self-titled debut, which set the whole numerical sequence in motion, came out 21 years ago. On Elektrohasch, no less.

But it wasn’t just the band saying hi. It was the band saying hi we have a new song, which is what brings us here. “The Future Doesn’t Just Happen” would seem to have been recorded in the band’s studio space — Amphibia West, it would seem to be called — on June 18 of this year. It’s mostly acoustic and they’re generally pretty mellow anyway, but it’s not the only new song they’ve posted from the apparently-in-the-works VIII LP. Some minute digging on their YouTube channel and I found a fully-plugged rendition of a song that at the time seems to have been called “The Witcher” — I don’t know if they’re gamers or not, but remember it was/is also a tv show — and that also has its own acoustic version under the title “Waiting So Long.” I didn’t include that here because, 1: it looked weird and confusing in the post with so many embeds and 2: maybe it’ll encourage you to seek it out there. As surprised as I was to find the new material, I was even more surprised to learn I hadn’t subscribed to them on YouTube. Error corrected.

I have no information on when the next The Kings of Frog Island album might be released, or how. You’ll recall VII was on Kozmik Artifactz, but whether or not that association continues is yet to be revealed. “We’ll see?” and a shrug are kind of the best I have to offer — to wit, my comment on their post in the group was “WHAAAA???” — but the point isn’t what might at some point be so much as what now is, and that’s these videos. They’ve never been a touring band or done a ton of live stuff, and especially considering that, having this kind of intimate performance captured feels all the more precious. Dudes in a room? Yeah, it is, but the point is the song, the fact that they’ve got something new in the works and that they believe in it enough to present it in as barebones a fashion as possible, which is to say unplugged.

More to come? With a fan’s greed I hope so, both as regards videos like this and the actual record, but they’re not the kind of band you want to rush, either, even after five years. They’ll take the time they want/need to take and whenever it surfaces, VIII will have been accordingly worth that wait. For now, I hope you enjoy “The Future Doesn’t Just Happen” below and “Waiting So Long” near the bottom of this post:

The Kings of Frog Island, “The Future Doesn’t Just Happen” acoustic clip

The Kings of Frog Island: The Future Doesn’t Just Happen Acoustic 18062026

Relaxing Psychedelic Space Rock, Stoner and Drop Tuned Rock.

Recorded at Amphibia West

The Kings of Frog Island are:

Mark Buteux
Gavin Searle
Lee Madel-Toner
Phil Moorhouse

The Kings of Frog Island, “Waiting So Long” rehearsal clip

The Kings of Frog Island on Bandcamp

The Kings of Frog Island on YouTube

The Kings of Frog Island on Facebook

Tags: Leicester, The Kings of Frog Island, The Kings of Frog Island VIII, UK, VIII

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2026 at 7:17 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.