Since their inception in 2015, Giovannie and The Hired Guns have made a blockbuster career out of wildly defying expectations. With a visceral sound that merges alt-metal, Red Dirt country, Latin pop, Americana, and much more, the Stephenville, Texas-based five-piece have ascended from playing local honky-tonks to taking the stage at major festivals and arenas across the country, drawing an ardent crowd ranging from cowboys to metalheads to skate punks. As they continue their colossal rise—a journey that’s included scoring a No. 1 radio hit with their smash single “Ramon Ayala” and winning the 2023 iHeartRadio Music Award for Best New Artist in Alternative & Rock—Giovannie and The Hired Guns now return with their new album Land of the Lost: a body of work that pushes the boundaries with even more intensity, matching its explosive riffs and unforgettable hooks with the band’s most brutally honest songwriting to date.
Produced by Johnny K (Megadeth, Sevendust, Plain White T’s), Land of the Lost marks the fourth full-length from Giovannie and The Hired Guns (frontman Giovannie Yanez, guitarists Carlos Villa and Jerrod Flusche, bassist/tuba player Alex Trejo, and drummer/pianist Milton Toles) and second LP since signing with Warner Music Nashville through a first-of-its-kind partnership with Warner Music Latina. While the band have always brought a powerful emotionality to their lyrics, the album embodies an unfiltered urgency that has much to do with Yanez’s processing a number of life-altering troubles in real-time, including the death of a close friend and his own relapse into addiction. Recorded at the famed Sonic Ranch (a residential studio near the Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas), Land of the Lost ultimately supplies the kind of catharsis that can only come from exorcising your demons and bravely moving toward a better future. “When I first listened back to this album I realized I wasn’t all there for some of the songs; I was so blinded by the suppressants that I thought were helping me out,” Yanez admits. “But it feels good to look back and know that I made it out to the other side. I hope it ends up helping people realize that there’s always hope no matter how bad things seem. There’s always a tomorrow.”
The follow-up to 2022’s Tejano Punk Boyz, Land of the Lost finds Giovannie and The Hired Guns doubling down on the freewheeling attitude they first embraced in their earliest days as a band, back when Yanez was working the counter at a nearby pawnshop. “From the beginning I told the guys not to worry about sounding too rock or too country on this record,” Yanez recalls. “We just went in there and had fun and didn’t let anything hold us back, and because of that the album shows the full range of what we can do as a band.” Immediately delivering on that promise, Land of the Lost opens on the galvanizing rhythms and throat-shredding vocals of “Cheap Tequila”: a ferocious yet fun-loving track that speaks an unvarnished truth about their shared life experience. “I wrote that song thinking about us in our younger days, when we were all broke and working these mid-paying jobs,” says Yanez. “There’s a feeling of not really caring what’s going to happen next—you’re just living for today, waiting for your next paycheck so you can go out and get drunk again.”
Throughout Land of the Lost, Giovannie and The Hired Guns reveal their rare ability to channel painful self-reflection into songs with all the raw exuberance of a fist-pumping party anthem. On “Quitter,” for instance, Yanez closely details the confusion and loneliness of dealing with addiction (“Something’s really wrong with me/And I don’t wanna talk about my history/Just crush ’em up so we can live happily”), but brilliantly twists the mood at the track’s sing-along-ready and strangely carefree chorus (“I’m not a quitter/But I wish I was”). “Everything kind of clicked for this album after we wrote ‘Quitter,’” Yanez points out. “Jerrod came up with a riff and I just jumped in and started singing those opening lines: ‘Here we go again/Pass me a Xan.’ It was exactly what I was going through at the time, but I didn’t even mean for it to come out.”
An album rooted in the band’s fearlessly candid storytelling, Land of the Lost takes its title from one of its most poignant tracks—a thundering but undeniably tender expression of longing and self-doubt. “‘Land of the Lost’ is about being out on tour all the time and never getting to be at home, and also feeling like you don’t deserve the person who’s back at home waiting for you,” says Yanez. Another track informed by all-consuming regret, “Letcha Down” unfolds in soulful guitar work as Yanez confesses to certain missteps in his past. Meanwhile, on “Pineapple Sunshine,” Giovannie and The Hired Guns bring breezy reggae beats and bright acoustic strumming to an unguarded meditation on the destructive effects of trying to hide your pain (from the chorus: “Wearing my fake prescription smile/So my friends’ll think that I’m alright”). “That song’s about feeling like you can’t talk to anybody about your problems, because you’re worried they’re just going to judge you,” says Yanez. “It’s such a huge problem in today’s world but it’s still something I really struggle with, so the only way I knew how to tell the truth was in a song.”
Although Land of the Lost includes plenty of heavy-hearted moments, Giovannie and The Hired Guns let loose with absolute abandon on tracks like the lust-crazed “Talk Dirty” and the luminous and groove-heavy “Chiquita” (a blissed-out track featuring the smoldering saxophone work of guest musician Frankie Hill). “‘Chiquita’ happened in the moment in the studio,” Yanez notes. “I asked Milton to play a disco beat and the words just fell out, and it turned into something that’s disco but with a Latin feel.” On “Never Change,” the band slips into a wistful but shimmering piece of funk-pop lit up in the gorgeously sweet backup harmonies of singer/songwriter Cameron Jayne. And on “You,” Land of the Lost drifts into ballad territory as Giovannie and The Hired Guns present a heart-on-sleeve love song graced with lush strings and beautifully cascading guitar lines.
Like all of their work thus far—including their 2017 debut Bad Habits and 2020 self-titled sophomore effort, both self-released—Land of the Lost fully echoes the singular collision of elements that makes their live show so glorious: the force-of-nature energy, formidable camaraderie, and passionate refusal to stick to any particular style or sound. A self-driven musician who got his start gigging in dive bars while working at a nearby rock quarry, Yanez grew up on such wide-ranging genres as outlaw country, classic alt-rock, hip-hop, and Mexican folk music and deliberately assembled a lineup with similarly eclectic sensibilities. Thanks to word-of-mouth praise for their frenetic and party-like live show, Giovannie and The Hired Guns quickly made the leap from can’t-miss regional act to a fast-rising sensation playing sold-out shows all over the Lone Star State. Fueled in part by their phenomenal performance on streaming platforms, the band soon broke onto the national scene and achieved such triumphs as opening for country superstar Jason Aldean before a crowd of 36,000 at Globe Life Field (a stadium in Arlington, Texas). Prior to signing with Warner Music Nashville, they also shattered records with the meteoric success of “Ramon Ayala”—a 2021 release that marked the first time in over 15 years that an artist’s first career-charting radio single reached the No. 1 spot on both the Active Rock Radio Chart and the Alternative Radio Chart.
Looking back on the making of Giovannie and The Hired Guns’ most personal album yet, Yanez reveals that Land of the Lost helped to clarify his overall mission and vision for the band. “This record made me want to keep putting out songs that are fun and serious at the same time,” he says. “I want to show everyone that it’s okay to feel sad and out of place, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time—it’s all a part of being human. We just want to be real with our fans and let them know we’re all different and a little off-the-wall too. And when they come out to the shows, I try to make them feel like they’re just as much a part of the band as my guys are. We’re all connected, and without them we’d never be where we are now.”