Flogging Molly to play Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton

US band Flogging Molly are set to bring their distinctive brand of Celtic-infused punk to Wolverhampton's Wulfrun Hall in November.

The concert is on Tuesday November 29, 2011. Tickets priced £15 are available from Friday July 1 at Midland Box Office: 0870 320 7000 or online at www.wolvescivic.co.uk

The band will be touring to promote their latest album, Speed Of Darkness, which was created during and chronicles the effects of the worldwide financial collapse on ordinary working people.

"It wasn't the album we set out to write," vocalist/guitarist Dave King says. "It became the album we had to write."

Speed of Darkness was written over several months when the band would descend into the basement of King's Detroit home—a home he shares with his wife, Flogging Molly fiddler, Bridget Regan - they maintain dual residences in Ireland and Detroit, where Bridget was born and raised.

As America struggled to stay afloat, the songs evolved into odes to the working man and battle cries against the elite establishment that so quickly and callously cast him aside.

"I write from my surroundings," King says. "I wanted people who've lost their jobs to know I was paying attention. We're singing for them, all of these good people brought to their knees."

Founded in Los Angeles in 1997, Flogging Molly infuse punk rock with Celtic instruments—violin, mandolin and the accordion—and they merge blues progressions with grinding guitars and traditional Irish music, the music of King's youth.

"We're not a traditional band," explains Dublin-born King. "We are influenced by traditional music and inspired by it, but without question we put our own twist on it."

Whether it's a driving anthem like Black Friday Rule or the upbeat duet with Lucinda Williams, Factory Girls, the band's only criteria for its music is simple and bone-deep: that it matter.

Official Website: www.floggingmolly.com