KIDDERMINSTER-BORN musician Nick J.Townsend is celebrating the launch of his band's debut full studio album.

Currently the rock band Weak13 is based in the Black Country, but it was first founded in the Wyre Forest hometown of frontman and guitarist Townsend in 1999.

And now, after three years of work, album They Live will be launched at Plug nightclub, in Digbeth, Birmingham, on Friday.

Engineered by John Stewart of Coventry progressive metal band Eight Great Fears and mastered by Henry Smithson, who has worked for The Stereophonics, 2 Unlimited and the Foo Fighters, They Live has been the largest project the band has undertaken.

The band began recording the album in 2012, Townsend, the original founding member of the group, revealed.

He said: “We wrote about 40 songs in the entire time we did recording sessions and picked the ones we thought would be good for a debut.

“A few of the songs chosen for the 'They Live' album were ones that I started writing lyrics for during the time I lived in Kidderminster not long after the millennium, others were more recently written. It's a solid sounding album and my time living in Kidderminster was a rich experience for me. I had good times and bad times there but it shaped me positively as a musician.

“The wonderful people from Kidderminster who hung around me back in the early days of the band may recognise the odd riff here and there on the album as I was probably partying round their houses years ago strumming it to them on old beat up guitar or they were at mine and I was yelling a chorus line at them.”

The album is being independently launched by the band in Birmingham on November 6 at Plug nightclub in where they are ensuring that limited edition signed hard copies will be available after a live set.

Stars such as Pandora Rox of Eddies Rock Club will be doing a DJ set of tunes from the band and songs from artists who have played or supported the music of Weak13 over the years.

The band consisting of Nick J Townsend on vocals and guitars, Wesley Smith on bass guitar and Neel Parmar on drums, has also enlisted Kidderminster-based film maker Thomas Lee Rutter to film on the night; a music video will be shot during the celebrations.

Tickets for the show cost £4, but fans wearing an official Weak13 t-shirt will get in for free.

For more info on the band, visit weak13official.com.