The Chats Half Cut Album Arrives With Aussie Tour

The Chats Half Cut is the Sunshine Coast punk band's next chapter, announced on October 28 with a new single already out and a run of small-room Australian shows booked before the record arrives. The album is due on March 5, 2027, and the band will play a 17-date tour across Australia in November and December. The opening track, Off It, arrived with a video on the same day as the announcement, giving listeners a first taste of a record the band describes as more open than past work while keeping the blunt humour that made the trio known far beyond Australia.

The band is vocalist and bassist Eamon Sandwith, guitarist Josh Hardy and drummer Matt Boggis. The Chats broke through in 2017 with Smoko, a song about a cigarette break that spread online and turned a Queensland pub-punk trio into an international touring act. The last album, Get Fucked, came out in 2022 and reached number two on the ARIA Albums Chart, winning an ARIA Award for Best Hard Rock or Heavy Metal Album. Since then the group has toured extensively, sharing stages with Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters and The Hives, and earning praise for a set at Coachella earlier this year. The Chats Half Cut follows that run.

A more open record, recorded in Los Angeles

The Chats Half Cut was recorded at Maple Sound Studio in Los Angeles with Jay Whalley of Frenzal Rhomb. According to Happy Mag, Sandwith calls the record a fun rock and roll album that opens up the songwriting compared with earlier releases. He hesitates to call the change maturity, describing it instead as progression, a distinction that suits a band whose appeal has always rested on direct language and everyday observation rather than polish. The track titles keep that directness intact, with Half Arsed, Hanging Shit and Brown Bottle Flu among the songs on the record.

Off It sets the tone as the album opener. According to Tone Deaf, the single landed on streaming services alongside a video on announcement day, and the track carries the chunky guitar sound that has long defined the band. The new songs on The Chats Half Cut move into more personal territory as well, with writing that touches on hangovers, confrontation, reconciliation and rehabilitation. That mix of rough edges and frank subject matter is what separates Half Cut from a simple repeat of the last album, even though the humour and the short, sharp songwriting remain recognisable.

Small rooms before the album lands

The Chats Half Cut tour puts the band back in rooms where the audience is close enough to feel every chord. It starts with two nights at Crowbar in Brisbane and finishes with two nights at the Rosemount Hotel in Perth. In between, the run includes multiple nights at Crowbar in Sydney and the Tote in Melbourne, plus stops in Frankston, Hobart, Launceston, Adelaide and Scarborough. Tickets are on sale now through the band's website, and the choice of smaller venues is deliberate, giving Australian audiences a chance to see the group up close before the album cycle moves to larger stages.

For Australian listeners, the timing matters. The Chats Half Cut tour is built around that idea. The band will reconnect with home crowds first, rather than launching the record from overseas, and the November and December shows give fans a live preview of songs that will not be widely available until the album release. The approach also fits the band's history: The Chats built a following in pubs and small clubs before festival stages and international support slots, and returning to those rooms keeps that connection intact at a moment when the group could easily have chosen bigger venues.

Virgin Records will release The Chats Half Cut, the band's third studio album. The record follows a long gap between albums, a period spent largely on the road, and it arrives with the band now in its late twenties rather than the teenage years when Smoko first spread. That passage of time shows in the writing, which keeps the jokes and the Australian vernacular but leaves more room for songs about getting older and dealing with consequences. Listeners who know the band only from the viral hit will hear a group that still sounds like itself, only with a wider view of the world it sings about.

Source reporting: Australian music coverage and Happy Mag covered The Chats Half Cut announcement, the single and the tour dates. Related site coverage includes music stories and a recent album preview.