Having spent the tail end of 2024 revisiting classic 80s works on tour with The Skids, 2025 & 2026 are the years of Janus for Spear of Destiny. The follow-up to 2022’s Ghost Population album, Janus was a project two years in the making and features re-recorded and rejuvenated versions of choice cuts from the band’s two biggest-selling albums: 1987’s Outland and 1988’s The Price You Pay. 24 tracks were re-recorded, re-imagined, and partnered for the first time last year; they were beautifully packaged and presented together on double vinyl, extended double CD, and download.

Janus owes its name to the Ancient Roman god of beginnings and endings, of transitions and time, passages and dualities, and Kirk Brandon is on hand to tell us a little more.

Janus is rooted in duality—looking backward and forward. How has revisiting those two mindsets changed your relationship with the songs today?

It was a different, younger version of KB that wrote those songs. Perhaps more naive, but also seeing the world in his innocence, maybe this gave him a clarity.

Pre www. and AI. Back when the world was real.
Many have pointed out how prophetic some of the songs are. Ironically, it would seem they’re right. I take what I said back then and analyse it, despite the naïveté, it has all come to pass.

When you finally heard these re-recorded versions, did any track feel like it had finally become what it was always meant to be?

In particular, The Jungle. It was an enormous, sprawling fast song that was never played live. On the Janus album, rerecording it, it completely came to life. Like I would have hoped it would have back in the late 80s, but for various reasons it stood overlooked and ignored.

Was there a moment during the process where you thought, "This is the version I’ve been hearing in my head for decades”?

On The Jungle, yes. It’s about the world as my generation knew it being dismantled before our eyes. The old neighbourhoods were bulldozed off the face of the earth for progress. The neighbourhood people were sent to places they never felt were theirs or at home in. Their lives became transient. Their generation was sidelined, silenced, and ignored. Consigned to black and white film footage up at the BBC.

Do you see Janus as closure on that era, or more like opening a new chapter built on it?

I reclaimed the songs from the original recordings. People are sentimental; I’m sentimental, and I do get their attachment to the original sounds of those 2 albums, but for me, it was like the mission was back on to fulfil the original vision. Get rid of the awful programming of Outlands; just play music with the band as should have been. The Price although a great recording, I transposed into what the band would do live. More edge and more immediate.

You’ve been candid about dissatisfaction with the original versions of Outland and The Price You Pay—what frustrated you most at the time?

Principally Outlands programming and a band version with live performance in mind of The Price.

How liberating was it to revisit those songs without the constraints of a major label?

The Outlands programming done on a Fairlight 3 I had no interest in. The management and company were 100% behind doing the album that way. I wasn’t, but it was the ’new way’. Reluctantly I went along with it. Pete Barnacle, who is an incredible drummer who worked with me live, said the machines are more accurate and said I should go with the concept. Looking back, this was a severe mistake. I played a lot of Pool in the studio while a programmer put his head inside a pinball machine and worked away on clicks and buzzes, mapping the arrangements onto a computer. Ridiculous.

Do you think fans sometimes romanticise the original recordings in ways that clash with your own vision?

Hard to say. These albums had their time and place in people’s lives. Music is memory. You hear a song and the old feelings and memories flood back. Music defies time. It’s transcendent.

You’ve described your bandmates as “like brothers”—how has that long-term chemistry reshaped the sound of these songs?

They interpret my vision in a cohesive way.

Each of them has a lifetime of doing this. Not just with me, but The Mission, New Model Army…and many more artists have worked with them in their own journeys. I trust their judgements and abilities.

With such a large catalogue being reinterpreted, how are you approaching set lists for the tour—can fans expect surprises night to night?

There will definitely be surprises, alongside the completely obvious songs to be done. I’m really excited about bringing these songs back to life.

Does performing these songs now feel more like reliving history or reclaiming it?

Interesting. For example,Mickey always brings me to the point of tears. It’s a generational song. The naivety of a young man’s pilgrimage, the journey amongst the turmoil, the blunt nature of war, and, ultimately, understanding, albeit dark and bleak. The nature of war…

Many of these songs seem today ‘prophetic’. It wasn’t meant to be. The future arrives at its destination, but not as you imagined it would or could have. Nevertheless, people see the signposts pointing out the direction.

Those albums balanced introspection with dystopian themes—do those ideas resonate differently in today’s world?

The two albums are of their time. Are we now living the alternate, darker timeline?

Through a glass darkly?

Was there a better or brighter timeline we couldn’t see or were steered away from?

After revisiting the past so deeply, how has the Janus process influenced the way you think about future material?

I acknowledge the breadth and scope of the vision I had. I was younger. I feel now we stand at a crossroads almost daily at the onset of destruction.

Is there time to love and live again in this world? I hope so.



Spear of Destiny - Janus UK TOUR DATES
Monday, 18 May 2026 LONDON 100 club
Tuesday, 19 May 2026 WINCHESTER Railway Live
Wednesday, 20 May 2026 BRISTOL Fleece
Friday, 22 May 2026 STOCKTON-ON-TEES Georgian Theatre
Saturday, 23 May 2026 HITCHIN Club 85
Sunday, 24 May 2026 MILTON KEYNES Craufurd Arms
Monday, 25 May 2026 CAMBRIDGE Portland Arms
Wednesday, 27 May 2026 NOTTINGHAM Rescue Rooms
Thursday, 28 May 2026 ABERDEEN Drummonds
Friday, 29 May 2026 DUNFERMLINE PJ Molloys
Saturday, 30 May 2026 GALASHIELS Mac Arts
Sunday, 31 May 2026 LEEDS Brudenell

Tickets on sale here

New double album Janus out now Order here