200 Million Thousand, the band’s third Vice full-length album (fifth overall) adds a new slew of raucous rock nuggets to the Lips catalog, each bolstered by some of the band’s strongest songwriting to date. The album is currently streaming in its entirety on AOL Spinner.

The Lips recently premiered the video for Short Fuse, which was directed by their own Joe Bradley and animated by Chris Taylor. The video is a schizophrenic fit filled with explosives, mustachioed baddies, and a cameo from a cracked-up Humpty Dumpty.

If this wasn’t enough to get you excited, the band’s US tour kicks off on Thursday in Birmingham. Check here for all Black Lips tour dates.

Dear fans,
Unfortunately, we have had to flee the country of India due to having our whole tour canceled and having to escape being held by police for indecent exposure during our most raukous set in Chennai at the Campus Rock Idol showcase.  After the fiasco, which the kids seemed to like, the financial backers of the event were furious and threw us off the tour. They tried to get security to restrain us until the Tamil police arrived. We locked the door while they were kicking and banging on it. Meanwhile, we slipped out the other emergency exit.

When we got to the hotel our tour guide informed us that the that the Campus Rock Idols sponsors were pressing charges and that the police would make their arrest. At that point our tour driver informed us we would have to drive six hours to get to the next town and cross state lines where we would be out of the Tamil authorities jurisdiction, because apparently the jail in Chennai is no joke. Word on the street said that it was teeming with tuberculosis, violence and live maggots so instead of risking going there we fled the scene. The drive ended up taking 10 hours because of a horrific accident on the road. We were also informed that all of the shows on our tour had been canceled effectively fucking all funds for the trip. This was a cultural clashing shit storm.

When we got to the next hotel a mysterious man and someone who worked for our Indian booking agency tried to run off with our passports they got to the car when we caught them. That’s when our VBS.tv documentarian Rob went postal on them. We surrounded them until they gave back our passports. After that we booked the first flight to Berlin to instead work with another Indian, King Khan, on an upcoming EP. We are flying out as soon as sunrise hits this far away land and we have to have the US embassy’s phone number on hand in case any more troubleshit starts popping at the airport or something. We would like to thank the four Hindi speaking tour guides, and Rana Ghose for helping us get through these enormous trials and tribulations, and for future reference we really enjoyed the people of India and we hope western rock bands will be able to tour there in the future.   – The Black Lips

The Black Lips are now safe and back working on their upcoming album, 200 Million Thousand due out February 4^th on Vice Records.  Check out Short Fuse a track from the Black Lips’ soon to be released album.

Take A Listen: Short Fuse by Black Lips

Download: Short Fuse (Right click on link and select “Save Target As” in IE or “Save Link As” in Firefox)

Black Lips – MySpace
Check out an interview with the Black Lips about the debacle.