WITH an album which has been 36 years in the making, power-rockers Spear of Destiny are set to take over Dunfermline's PJ Molloy's next month.

After forming 40 years ago, the band's newest release, Ghost Population, acts as a comment on society – from politics and history to ideas behind existence itself.

Kirk Brandon, the group's founder and songwriter, explained: "The album title came about because of a piece I read online where scientists were researching the available DNA samples from human history — Denisovans, Neanderthals etc. It became clear to them from fragments in the DNA that there was another race back then.

"They haven’t found out who these people were as yet but they nicknamed them a ‘Ghost Population’.

"I applied this in my non-scientific way, and thought of how social engineering has marginalised so much of society, not acknowledging the disenfranchised and writing them out of existence.

"When someone is no longer talked about, eventually they no longer exist."

The album includes songs written as far back as 1986, prior to the band's reformation in the late '90s, as well as others penned during lockdown.

One track, 'Ballad of the Dog', follows a "true story of a piratical burial at sea", while another, 'Pilgrim', is autobiographical and was inspired by Kirk's mum merging tales of Jack and the Beanstalk and Dick Whittington.

Spear of Destiny will perform at the Canmore Street venue on December 16 before winding up their tour in Manchester the next day.