Cardinal Black

How many bands take 16 years to craft their debut album? This one did...

- BY JONATHAN GRAHAM

2025 IS SHAPING up to be a banner year for Cardinal Black. After dropping their highly anticipated sophomore album, Midnight at the Valencia, the Welsh trio are gearing up for their first-ever U.S. tour - a spiritual homecoming, as guitarist Chris Buck tells Guitar World. "Most of our influences, in some way or another, either come from America or broke in America," he says. And, as it happens, a "good word" from none other than Slash helped make these North American dates a reality.

A new band in name only, Cardinal Black's story began 16 years ago. Long before the sold-out shows and social media acclaim, Buck, frontman Tom Hollister and drummer Adam Roberts were just three friends from Wales, gigging under the name TH3. They played weddings, pubs, funerals - anything that paid. After a few years of slogging it out with mixed success, they split to pursue other projects. As the world was emerging from lockdown, the trio reconnected, renamed themselves Cardinal Black - and after an overwhelmingly positive response to a self-titled debut EP in 2021, released a stellar album, January Came Close, the following year.

"Our manager joked it was a greatest-hits album of songs nobody had ever heard," Buck says. "Some of the tracks were weeks old; others dated back to 2009. It's a weird Frankenstein." The new record, though, is a snapshot of the group today.