In their 25th year, German electro-industrial steamrollers Rammstein remain *der Goldstandard* for New German Hardness, with their mix of industrial sternness, techno hedonism, and metal aggression. Their seventh album lands somewhere between Faith No More and Franz Ferdinand, taut grooves meshing with bludgeoning riffs and disturbing stories. Lead single \"DEUTSCHLAND\" is scabrous, politically volatile doom-disco laying out conflicted feelings about living in their homeland, even tweaking the verse of the national anthem used in the country\'s fascist past. The rest follows the chug and bombast of albums like 2001\'s *Mutter* and 2009\'s *Liebe ist für alle da*: \"RADIO\" is like a heavy metal Kraftwerk, \"SEX\" is snaky glam-sludge, and \"PUPPE\" is a creeper with a coming-undone performance from lead singer Till Lindemann.
We’re calling it: In the rock ’n’ roll history books, Gary Clark Jr. will have two eras: before *This Land* and after it. Just get a load of the fire and fury that opens the title track: “F\*\*k you, I’m America’s son/This is where I come from,” he snarls. Clark’s rage is partially directed at his racist neighbor in Austin, Texas, who can’t seem to accept Clark’s sprawling 50-acre ranch, as well as a few experiences from his childhood. “I had a few situations down there with some racism, and some Confederate flags, and people calling me out of their trucks, all that kind of stuff,” he told Beats 1 host Zane Lowe. “I had a beat that I laid down but didn\'t have any lyrics over it and it just came to me. I just went in there and fired off.” But it\'s also, more broadly, aimed at President Trump for fanning the flames of racism across the American South. He’s pissed off, and finally speaking out. *This Land*, which Clark produced himself, confronts these realities head-on, including stressful community divisions (“What About Us”), touring fatigue (“The Guitar Man”), and political activism (“Feed the Babies”). In an effort to find some common ground, he reminds us why we came to his music in the first place: its soulful, spontaneous spirit. The rallying *wooo*s and rip-roaring guitars on the standout “Gotta Get Into Something” recall Stiff Little Fingers as much as they do Chuck Berry. And like any rousing punk anthem, it’s its own form of protest song: a thunderous, gritty alarm that dares you to sit still.
It\'s hard to imagine Bruce Springsteen describing a project of his as a concept album—too much prog baggage, too much expectation of some big, grand, overarching *story*. But nothing he\'s done across five decades as one of rock\'s most accomplished storytellers has had the singular, specific focus and locus, lyrically and musically, as this long-gestating solo effort—a lush meditation on the landscape of the western United States and the people who are drawn there, or got stuck there. Neither a bare-bones acoustic effort like *Nebraska* nor a fully tricked-out E Street Band affair, this set of 13 largely subdued character-driven songs (his first new ones since 2014\'s *High Hopes*, following five years immersed in memoir) is ornamented with strings and horns and slide guitar and banjo that sound both dusty and Dusty. They trade in the most familiar of American iconography—trains, hitchhikers, motels, sunsets, diners, Hollywood, and, of course, wild horses—but aren\'t necessarily antiquated; the clichés are jumping-off points, aiming for timelessness as much as nostalgia. The battered stuntman of “Drive Fast” could be licking, and cataloging, his wounds in 1959 or 2019. As convulsive and pivotal as the current moment may feel, restlessness and aimlessness and disenfranchisement are evergreen, and the songs are built to feel that way. In true Springsteen fashion, the personal is elevated to the mythical.
Sometimes an album just names itself. “We were in the studio and reading the local news in Nashville,” The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “They executed the first prisoner in 16 years in Nashville the week we were recording. They asked for his final words and he said, ‘Let’s rock.’” There isn’t a lot of overthinking on The Black Keys’ first new record in five years. It’s the sound of the duo kicking out the jams in Nashville. Topics of escape and confusion are seeded in Auerbach’s dueling guitar overlays and propped up by Patrick Carney’s steady hands. Songs recall the joy of traveling up and down a transistor radio dial in the ’70s; there are nods to Stealers Wheel (“Sit Around and Miss You”) and The Amboy Dukes (“Every Little Thing”), as well as dips into glam and Texas boogie-woogie. Carney digs for “When the Levee Breaks” bedrock on “Go.” Then “Lo/Hi,” “Fire Walk With Me,” and “Get Yourself Together” are classic Black Keys, complete with strutting backbeat and Leisa Hans and Ashley Wilcoxson’s backup vocals, which are so key to their chemistry and continuity.
Beth Hart is as real as it gets. In a music industry full of glossy production and airbrushed photoshoots, this is one artist who throws down her cards, shares her darkest secrets and invites you to join her for the ride. "More than any record I've ever made, I'm more open to being myself on these songs," Beth explains. "I've come a long way with healing, and I'm comfortable with my darknesses, weirdnesses and things that I'm ashamed of – as well as all the things that make me feel good." War In My Mind also wraps up a frustrating strand of unfinished business for Beth. Back in 2003, the heavyweight producer Rob Cavallo (Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Dave Matthews Band, Goo Goo Dolls) was in the frame to mix the singer's Leave The Light On album. "But the producer I was with at the time," recounts Beth, "went ahead without my approval, turned the mix in to Rob – and he passed." Fast-forward 15 years, and at a chance dinner party attended by Cavallo, fate intervened. The host encouraged Beth to play one of her new songs. “After I'd played them,” she remembers, “Rob came up and said, 'You've grown a lot as a songwriter – and I want to record these songs with you'. And he turned out to be one of the coolest people that I've ever worked with."
We could keep agonizing over why TOOL took so long to release *Fear Inoculum*, or to put their catalog onto streaming services, or all the ways the world has changed since the alt/prog-metal band’s last album came out in 2006. But we just spent 13 years doing all that. Instead, put on the best headphones you can find. It’s time to explore the 87 minutes of music we waited thousands of hours to hear. Whether or not this album is the “grand finale… swan song and epilogue” that Maynard James Keenan alludes to in “Descending,” the first thing to say is that *Fear Inoculum* will not disappoint. On their longest-ever album (despite only containing seven songs, broken up by three brief ambient interludes), TOOL refines and expands on their greatest strengths to create a meditative, intensely complex album that may, in terms of sheer musical skill, be their most impressive yet. Danny Carey’s extraordinarily creative and technical approach to rhythm takes center stage, from assaultive double pedaling to atmospheric tablas and electronic tinkering, heard best on “Chocolate Chip Trip,” a five-minute, multidimensional percussion solo. Guitarist Adam Jones unleashes more jams and solos than ever, particularly on the 15-minute opus “7empest,” which begins by sounding like the most traditionally TOOL song of the lot—but it sure doesn’t end that way. (Plus, Jones apparently wrote part of it in 21/16 time.) Justin Chancellor’s bass riffs are hypnotizing and powerful, unique in their ability to be both repetitive, even monotonous, and completely engulfing. Keenan’s lyrics—layered, poetic, often elegiac—are as fun to analyze and interpret as ever. And though the album is easily their most drawn-out and ambient, it’s also immensely heavy. The balance is calculated and sublime. So, what’s *Fear Inoculum* actually about? Keenan deliberately evades explanation, allowing the listener to find their own meaning. But in the most lyrically lucid moments, you’ll find reflections on life, growing up and facing your fear (he’s stated it could mean giving in to *or* becoming immune to it). There’s no pretending that 13 years haven’t passed—on “Invincible,” he sings: “Age old battle, mine/Weapon out and belly in/Tales told, battles won… Once invincible, now the armor’s wearing thin.” Still, there’s no sign of weakness, just acceptance and the kind of wisdom that comes with age. “We’re not buying your dubious state of serenity,” he knowingly roars on “7empest.” “Acting all surprised when you’re caught in the lie/It’s not unlike you… We know your nature.”
After five albums in 15 years, Alter Bridge quickly exited nervy adolescence (remember “Metalingus”?) and has comfortably matured. Their sixth album *Walk the Sky* shows their updated priorities, from banging heads to moving hearts. Yes, the curling, snarling guitars that permeate “Native Son,” “Pay No Mind,” and “Wouldn’t You Rather” speak to their sharpened metal pedigree. But it’s singer Myles Kennedy and lead guitarist Mark Tremonti’s melodious thunderstorm that is both crushing and refreshing; songs like “Godspeed,” “Forever Falling,” and the album closer “Dying Light” firmly secure their place in the melodic hard rock universe.
Alter Bridge expand their musical creativity on their latest release Walk The Sky! For over 15 years, Alter Bridge has been a band known for blurring the line between hard rock and heavy metal. Building upon the sound that has won the band worldwide critical acclaim and a devoted global fan base, the band returns with their sixth studio album, Walk The Sky. The fourteen-track opus marks a creative highpoint for the quartet comprised of Myles Kennedy on vocals/guitars, Mark Tremonti on guitars/vocals, Brian Marshall on bass and Scott Phillips on drums. Walk The Sky is a complete career retrospective drawing upon elements from each of the band’s previous releases to create something new from the band. Recorded in a way never done before, the album was born from complete song ideas created by Kennedy and Tremonti. These songs would then be worked on by the entire band to create the fourteen songs that would make Walk The Sky the listening experience it is. This varies from the band’s previous method going back to their sophomore release Blackbird where Kennedy and Tremonti would combine individual ideas and riffs alongside producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette to form some of the band’s most revered songs. From the opening vocal melody on “One Life” to the moving finale of “Dying Light,” Alter Bridge have created a formidable addition to their music catalog. Songs like “God Speed,” “Native Son” and “Walking On The Sky” are sure to be early additions to the live set. The first single “Wouldn’t You Rather” is quintessential Alter Bridge and “Forever Falling” also marks a lead vocal return from Tremonti with Kennedy taking the chorus as done previously on the Fortress favorite “Waters Rising.” Alter Bridge will be heading out on a worldwide tour beginning in September in the United States before heading over to Europe to close out 2019. © NAPALM RECORDS
As aggressive and intense as Slipknot looks and sounds, their approach to creating music is as tender and nurturing as a doe’s love for her fawn. For their sixth studio album, *We Are Not Your Kind*, the Iowans took their time—four years—working on their communication and brotherhood. Most of all, they responded with force to a world in crisis. Slipknot percussionist Clown (aka #6, government name Shawn Crahan) has noticed that fans (lovingly called “Maggots”) constantly praise 2001’s *Iowa*, but he encourages them to read the room. “I always have to stop and remind them of the temperature of the world at that time,” he told Apple Music. “And then they step back a little and realize that the world was upside down, and you needed music to get through. We feel that the world\'s like that again.” On this album, anti-authoritarian anthems (“Birth of the Cruel,” “A Liar’s Funeral”), martyrdom (“Unsainted”), and heady meditations (“Insert Coin,” “What’s Next”) are dropped into the band’s swirling circle pit of electronic-tinged thrash metal. Clown took Apple Music through *We Are Not Your Kind* track by track. “We gave the music and ourselves a deep breath,” he explained. “Everybody\'s all in.” **“Insert Coin”** “It\'s a way of saying, ‘I\'m here waiting for everybody else. And here they come.’ It\'s like being on a foothill overlooking the ocean, and just seeing everybody making their way through rough waters. It\'s an aligning. Insert the coin. Let\'s go.” **“Unsainted”** “The whole album has that theme where you look at a song, measure by measure, beat by beat. And you wonder just how much color, temperature, and love you can give it. And it was an amazing experience, and it fit perfectly. And it was the mentality of the album. When that song came about, years ago, I do remember hearing the guitar riff and the chorus. And I can remember just being like, ‘This is the first song on the album.’ It was just magical. This is new, this is us, this is where we\'re at.” **“Birth of the Cruel”** “That’s one of my favorites. It shifts. It\'s intense. It\'s driving. We\'ve had it for a while. Corey Taylor says, ‘I\'m overthrown/I\'m over your throne.’ These plays on words I just live for.” **“Death Because of Death”** “That\'s another example of what life is. It’s very atmospheric, making you question things. It\'s another little puzzle piece. It\'s like a snake that creeps up on you, and it\'s gone before you realize what you can do. They may be short, but it may be very venomous. And that may affect you in a way you didn\'t seek, if you give in to it.” **“Nero Forte”** “I challenge myself personally. I\'ve learned a lot from people that have been in this band. Just being out on the road, the peers that I\'ve been around, and the respect level that I have for these people, I recognize it\'s so beautiful. I wanted to take everything I\'ve learned to write a little cadence—the breakdown area that you hear was really important to me. And the chorus just blows me away. The falsetto—20 years in the gig and Corey Taylor’s singing falsetto. What’s better than that? Talk about evolution and still taking chances, and just loving music. It\'s like hitting the beach running for your life.” **“Critical Darling”** “This one draws a lot of reaction. The vocal melody is my favorite. I love his headspace. Corey\'s my favorite singer of all time because he\'s able to delve so deep into his own self and bring up this personal stuff that most people may not want to do for themselves. But he does it for himself and all of us. It\'s very different for us, but at the same time, it’s exactly us. I think it really helps the other colors of the album.” **“A Liar’s Funeral”** “These sorts of tunes can be very difficult for many different reasons. It starts off with a demeanor that you think you know what\'s going to happen, but you realize this is the heaviest you’ve heard Corey sing so far on the album. It gets to a place you find yourself still in the chair with a stare. And this is one of those songs that I battled personally for and the song got its due. Everything got dot-crossed, and here it is: ‘Burn, burn, burn, liar!’” **“Red Flag”** “That\'s your traditional Slipknot feeling right there. It\'s got a very thrash feel. It\'s fun, it swirls, and it’s not like ‘Get This (Or Die)’ or ‘Eeyore’ different. I believe it\'s much needed in the temperature and the ingredients of the album.” **“What’s Next”** “Intermission is a nice way of saying it. I mean, I\'ve never really thought of it that way, but maybe that\'s why it falls into the slot that it does. Innately, we don\'t have these ideas about how to get people back into the reality of the music, and not get caught up and giving their dog some water or something. This sort of vibe is so us and where we\'re at, and even where we’ve been from 1998 to here. So, yeah, ‘What\'s Next’ is like ginger—it\'s like resetting the palate, countered with a potentially condescending notion. It\'s a nice little trot.” **“Spiders”** “‘Spiders’ is an anomaly—the song everybody thinks they understand and has something to say about. We\'ve been talking about this quote that gets passed around: ‘It\'s easy to make something simple sound crazy, but it\'s almost impossible to make something crazy sound simple.’ Listening to ‘Spiders,’ it sounds simple, but it goes into some weird places. It’s a pivotal part of our career, because we\'re always searching ourselves. We\'re always gaining further and further as artists, because music\'s God to me. So I don\'t shame anything we make. In the end, it\'s got to have everybody and it\'s got to be Slipknot. And ‘Spiders’ is as Slipknot as it gets. ‘Spiders’ is coming for you.” **“Orphan”** “A very, very heavy, heavy song. ‘Orphan’ was the very first song that we had arranged and figured out early. And then we got away from it forever because everything else came in. Corey came in about a year and a half after some things were written, and ‘Orphan’ was one of those songs that he had been given to write lyrics to. I can\'t remember what it used to be called. He texted me and said that he was naming it ‘Orphan’—I knew it was going to be really heavy-duty personal. And just that word, orphan, creates a color in one\'s mind that is, for me, very gray, numb, just monotone and unable to move. I remember staring at my text. Then Greg Fidelman, the producer, looks over at me. I\'m like, \'This song\'s going to be called \"Orphan.\"\' We\'re all just like, ‘Whoaaaa.’ So it\'s a very deep song with a traditional sort of feeling for us.\" **“My Pain”** “‘My Pain’ has been around for a second. And again, it\'s all about communication. That is a very, very important song for the world, for individuals. We have songs like that: ‘’Til We Die,’ ‘Heartache and a Pair of Scissors,’ ‘Skin Ticket,’ ‘Prosthetics,’ ‘Danger - Keep Away.’ We have this otherworldly source that we go to. And I think this is one of those songs, but it\'s a little more focused into its own reality.” **“Not Long for This World”** “It draws heavy imagination. It paints pictures in my brain. It’s like we’re taking you to *Fantasia*—the Walt Disney movie. Mickey goes in to mess with the wizard’s wand, and he gets into these brooms while getting water. I’m 49, but as a kid, that was frightening. This song paints the end of the world not to be contrived. It’s very important in the steps of the album. You start on step one, and you work your way to the end, till you\'re at the top. You either jump or you go back down. You could say it\'s setting up ‘Solway Firth.’ I don\'t know if it\'s a concept, because everything we do is a concept. I could cite that everything from \'98 till now has been a concept, because art is heavy with us—in the music, in everything.” **“Solway Firth”** “When I heard Corey at the end say, ‘You want a real smile? I haven\'t smiled in years,’ I cried. I hurt. I hurt for me. I hurt for my family. I hurt for people around me. I 190% hurt for him. I hurt for whoever he was talking about. I hurt for everyone. And it was like: This will be the last song on the album. Nothing can follow that line. Anybody who\'s going through shit on this planet, that\'s a way of saying it, ending it, getting up, and changing your potential immediately. And there\'s this little false ending before it. So you\'re like whisked away for a moment, and then it\'s like, bam! You get the biggest smack in the face, and it\'s up to you to get up and believe that you have control to change your destiny.”
The cover art for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ 17th album couldn’t feel more removed from the man once known as a snarling, terrifying prince of poetic darkness. This heavenly forest with its vibrant flowers, rays of sun, and woodland creatures feels comically opposed to anything Cave has ever represented—but perhaps that’s the point. This pastel fairy tale sets the scene for *Ghosteen*, his most minimalist, supernatural work to date, in which he slips between realms of fantasy and reality as a means to accept life and death, his past and future. In his very first post on The Red Hand Files—the website Cave uses to receive and respond to fan letters—he spoke of rebuilding his relationship with songwriting, which had been damaged while enduring the grief that followed his son Arthur’s death in 2015. He wrote, “I found with some practise the imagination could propel itself beyond the personal into a state of wonder. In doing so the colour came back to things with a renewed intensity and the world seemed clear and bright and new.” It is within that state of wonder that *Ghosteen* exists. “The songs on the first album are the children. The songs on the second album are their parents,” Cave has explained. Those eight “children” are misty, ambient stories of flaming mares, enchanted forests, flying ships, and the eponymous, beloved Ghosteen, described as a “migrating spirit.” The second album features two longer pieces, connected by the spoken-word “Fireflies.” He tells fantasy stories that allude to love and loss and letting go, and occasionally brings us back to reality with detailed memories of car rides to the beach and hotel rooms on rainy days. These themes aren’t especially new, but the feeling of this album is. There are no wild murder ballads or raucous, bluesy love songs. Though often melancholy, it doesn’t possess the absolute devastation and loneliness of 2016’s *Skeleton Tree*. Rather, these vignettes and symbolic myths are tranquil and gentle, much like the instrumentation behind them. With little more than synths and piano behind Cave’s vocals, *Ghosteen* might feel uneventful at times, but the calmness seems to help his imagination run free. On “Bright Horses,” he sings of “Horses broken free from the fields/They are horses of love, their manes full of fire.” But then he pulls back the curtain and admits, “We’re all so sick and tired of seeing things as they are/Horses are just horses and their manes aren’t full of fire/The fields are just fields, and there ain’t no lord… This world is plain to see, it don’t mean we can’t believe in something.” Through these dreamlike, surreal stories, Cave is finding his path to peace. And he’s learned that he isn’t alone on his journey. On “Galleon Ship,” he begins, “If I could sail a galleon ship, a long, lonely ride across the sky,” before realizing: “We are not alone, it seems, so many riders in the sky/The winds of longing in their sails, searching for the other side.”
On album seven, Volbeat solidifies their long-term infatuation with rockabilly and hard rock. The Copenhagen quartet elevates their ambitions—and volume levels–with guests ranging from vocalist Mia Maja and Clutch’s Neil Fallon to saxophonist Doug Corcoran, pianist Raynier Jacob Jacildo, and the Harlem Gospel Choir. “Pelvis on Fire” is what Volbeat does so well, all greaser swagger with Marshall stacks. “Die to Live” has a sustained over-the-top energy that equally recalls Jerry Lee Lewis and The Misfits. “The Everlasting” skews toward the metal edge, and “Cheapside Sloggers” features a killer solo from Exodus/Slayer guitarist Gary Holt. But for all the good times on *Rewind, Replay, Rebound*, the quartet can also examine deeper subjects like innocence (“When We Were Kids”) and mortality (“Last Day Under the Sun”), offering perspective as well as perspiration. The deluxe version includes five demos and three bonus tracks.
It’s not as if Iggy Pop has ever really needed to prove anything. If 2016’s *Post Pop Depression*—which he made with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Dean Fertita, and Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders—showed that he could still cause a ruckus, *Free* shows he’s still more than capable of keeping his audience on its toes. Iggy has always attempted to strike this balance between music for the body and music for the mind: As far back as The Stooges’ first albums in the late ’60s and early ’70s, a meditative raga like “We Will Fall” would counter the scrappy, visceral force of “No Fun,” or a track like “Fun House” would tack left with Ornette Coleman-inspired saxophone runs. *Free* finds him tapping those exploratory instincts even more deeply. “I wanna be free,” he says with a matter-of-fact inflection as a cinematic trumpet glistens over the moody, beat-less composition that opens the 72-year-old artist\'s 18th solo studio LP. That title track clearly sets the album\'s goalposts—or lack thereof. With the assistance of co-producers and collaborators Leron Thomas and Noveller, Iggy experiments with all kinds of new depths, playing with jazz, rock, electronics, dissonance, poetry, and even a little of the camp he embraced on 2012\'s *Après*, his collection of loungey pop interpretations. “Sonali,” one of *Free*\'s most robust, complex songs, juggles atmospheric synth notes with some inhumanly quick, off-kilter drums while Iggy softly croons lyrics that would almost sound like a stream of consciousness were it not for the fun images that emerge from his linguistic puzzles. (Enjoy untangling “To park the car, we must find parking/Or spend the day on the freeway/Stay in your lane/It\'s what you want/And yes, I approve/\'Cause if I run out of gas/You\'ll be my excuse.\") Though tracks like “Glow in the Dark” and “We Are the People” keep the arrangements to a minimum, there’s an incandescence to Iggy’s performance that’s full of energy—a spark of giddy excitement, as if he’s asking, “What’ll happen if I turn *this* knob? Say it *this* way?” It’s all a lead-up to his fantastic recitation of Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” For someone who kicked off punk five decades earlier, and who has hardly let up for a moment in the intervening years, the line “Old age should burn and rave at close of day” basically belongs to him now.
In his second outing under the moniker Jeff Lynne’s ELO, the mastermind of ’70s symphonic rockers Electric Light Orchestra offers another recreation of that band’s glory days. *From Out of Nowhere* follows the format of his last album, 2015’s *Alone in the Universe*, where Lynne himself plays most instruments, sings most vocals (even backing himself up with his trademark falsetto harmonies), and of course writes and produces each track. The sounds are lush but synthetic, recalling the drum machines and synths of the band’s ’80s albums *Time* and *Balance of Power*, but in true ELO style, there are still Beatlesque harmonies (“Down Came the Rain”) and Roy Orbison-worthy ballads (“Losing You”).
For their 13th album, Swedish metal titans Opeth did something they’d never done before: They recorded two versions—one in English, one in Swedish. But if you’re hoping for a deep, meaningful reason behind it, you’ll be sorely disappointed. “There is no why,” vocalist, guitarist, and bandleader Mikael Åkerfeldt tells Apple Music. “For the most part, I don\'t know why I do things. The lyrics are very spontaneous and impulsive. I don\'t sit around pondering. The decision was made in the car, taking my daughters to school. It doesn\'t sound cool. I wish I could say I was at the top of a mountain, that I’d just climbed Mount Everest. But I was in my old Volvo.” Meaning or not, there are plenty of layers to *In Cauda Venenum*, a Latin phrase meaning “the poison is in the tail.” “I want music that you can play over and over again and always discover new things,” he says. Below, Åkerfeldt talks through each track on Opeth\'s most dramatic, diverse album to date. **Garden of Earthly Delights** “We used to open our concerts with a piece by a German band, Popol Vuh, who wrote scores for a lot of Werner Herzog films. It’s from *Nosferatu*, one of my favorite films of all time. We used it for many years, and when the guy who wrote it, Florian Fricke, passed away, the publishing was taken over by his son, who wanted a lot of money from us. I wrote ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ trying to almost rip them off—to get something that sounded like Popol Vuh, but it\'s ours. It’s supposed to pull the listener into the record, as if you’re about to hear something special.” **Dignity** “When I was working on this piece, I knew I needed something here. I found a speech by Olof Palme, this colorful, controversial politician who led the Social Democratic Party from the ’60s until he was killed. It’s a New Year’s speech to the nation. There’s no political agenda. It’s basically about concerns about the future, the turning of the year. I knew I needed it, but of course you can\'t just put it out or you’d get sued. Eventually I got the number of one of Palme’s sons. I explained what we were doing and sent him a demo. He replied a few days later, saying that it was a beautiful presentation of his dad. Out of all the samples that we had, that was the one I wanted to get cleared the most.” **Heart in Hand** “I wanted a song that began sounding chaotic, but feels calm and nostalgic by the end, like the sun is shining. It sounds straightforward, but it’s written in a weird time signature. I was inspired by pop songs written in odd signatures, like Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Obviously, being Swedish, I grew up with ABBA, but I rediscovered them in the middle of our career and had this epiphany with their music. I heard it differently to when I was a child, when they were just big pop songs. Now, it’s like, ‘My god, it\'s genius.’” **Next of Kin** “The working title for this one was ‘Floyd’—as in Pink Floyd. I was trying to emulate Syd Barrett during the opening part. It took about 10 seconds until I realized that\'s a bad working title—it doesn\'t sound anything like Floyd. It escalated into something that almost sounds like a Broadway musical. People could almost dance to it on a stage.” **Lovelorn Crime** “I wanted to do something heartfelt and beautiful and big, with a nice guitar solo at the end courtesy of Fredrik \[Åkesson\]. I remember playing that song to both my girls, and \[prolific Canadian musician\] Devin Townsend, who was staying at my place one night. He just went, \'I love that one. I love it.’ If you like ballads, especially our type of ballads, you\'ll probably love this song.” **Charlatan** “Both myself and Fredrik played bass for this song; there are no actual guitars on it. We brought the kids into the studio—Fredrik’s daughter and my two—and we asked them big questions. ‘Who is God?’ ‘What happens when you die?’ It was the first time I’d heard them say anything on those subjects—I don’t talk to them about God because I don\'t believe in God. And I edited it because I wanted it to sound eerie and spooky, not cute. But of course it still sounds very cute to me. It’s my children!” **Universal Truth** “This was the first one we finished, and it sounded nice, but there were so many parts in the song, and it didn\'t really make sense to me. So I basically rewrote it, and now it sounds like a prog-rock musical. I really like it.” **The Garroter** “This one could have been absolute shit. When we try a different genre to the one we\'re comfortable in, we want it to sound as authentic as possible. I want to sound like a jazz band, not like some metal guys trying to play jazz. And I wanted it to sound dark, with lots of strings, which is a major part of the whole record. I presented it to the guys in the band and thought they were going to hate it, but they didn’t. I especially remember our bass player—he sat up straight and got really, really excited about how much stuff he could do with this song. Oddly enough, the people that have heard it, even some of the more hardcore metal fans, seem to like this song the most.” **Continuum** “I’m really happy with this song because it’s so different; there are weird chords I never usually use, like major chords. I\'m careful with major chords. I don\'t think I\'ve written anything like it before. The ending really came out nicely too.” **All Things Will Pass** “Out of all the songs, we decided early that it was going to be the last one. I wanted something really heartfelt and epic, with a magical touch. Honestly, I\'m not always a fan of my own music. I like it, but it’s a different thing to me. The songs are not going to open up to me like they hopefully will for other people. But I knew what I wanted with this song, and to me, it’s almost perfect. You never know if you\'re going to do more records. If this is the last record for us—not that I’m saying it is—then this is a nice way to end it.”
The Glorious Sons’ 2017 sophomore release *Young Beauties and Fools* was a total game-changer for the Kingston, Ontario, outfit, catapulting them from one of Canada’s most promising rock bands to one of its biggest. Sold-out clubs turned into arenas, and word of mouth gave way to JUNO statuettes and domination of the Canadian airwaves—with a stack of Top 10 singles under their belts (and some encouraging chart success on rock radio south of the border). So when the time came to start thinking about recording a follow-up…well, actually, in between relentless touring, there wasn’t really any time to think about recording a follow-up. It just sort of happened. “We had just come off a headlining tour of Canada, and it was our first time playing arenas, and we just hit a high on that tour,” frontman Brett Emmons tells Apple Music. “After playing for two hours every night, I was getting up and drinking like six cups of coffee and writing tons of songs, and I kind of felt a little bit invincible. We made a decision on that tour where we were like, ‘We’re going to get right into the studio and capitalize on this momentum.’” The band\'s biggest hit to date, “S.O.S.,” is a rousing feel-good anthem about losing your job and getting addicted to Oxycontin. *A War on Everything* heightens the tension between entertainment and inner torment at the heart of The Glorious Sons\' sound. On the opening “Panic Attack,” the first words we hear Emmons sing are ”I want to be normal/I want to be sane/I want to look at you and feel something other than pain”—but they’re delivered with a stomping drum beat and skyscraping chorus that transform his psychosis into celebration. And while the album title may judder with geopolitical implications—with lines like “I’m worried about white kids carrying guns” (“Wild Eyes”) seemingly ripped from the headlines—the romantic, open-road escapism of the title track invites a more personal interpretation. “It’s about being overstimulated and feeling detached from the things you consider to be the real things in your life,” says Emmons. “We’re just being bombarded by information at all times.” That inner struggle reaches its fever pitch on “Pink Motel,” a ’70s-scale piano ballad where Emmons grapples with the realization that all the spoils of being a successful touring musician don’t mean a thing if there’s no one to come home to. After a slow, stately build, the song erupts into an improvised, throat-shredding climax—“I don’t care about anything at all but you!/Fuck the cars and the money!/Fuck all the trappings and the lifestyle!”—where the singer effectively tears the bruised heart out of his chest and offers it up for a permanent blood pact. “That comes straight from personal experience,” Emmons says. “It’s me pleading with someone to look inward rather than outward to solve our problems. It’s basically just like puking on paper!” But for all the intense introspection on display, *A War on Everything* hardly skimps on the sort of pint-spilling barn-burners—like the Foo Fighters-style quiet-to-loud surge of “A Funny Thing Happened” and the swampy Black Keys groove of “One More Summer”—that have made The Glorious Sons the biggest band to break out of Kingston since the hallowed Tragically Hip. That said, for all their old-school affinities, Emmons isn\'t interested in seeing his band held up as the saviors of rock. The soul-shaking power pop of “The Ongoing Speculation Into the Death of Rock and Roll,” with its playful shots at the “trust fund kid with Lennon glasses,” makes their stance on the subject clear: Rock doesn’t need to be saved, it just needs to be less safe. “I think the alternative music scene kind of turned into this acoustic-pop thing, full of guys that Noel Gallagher would say are holding their guitar and not playing anything at all,” Emmons says. “It’s become vanilla, which it never was supposed to be. The song is not necessarily about the death of rock ’n’ roll—I wouldn’t be playing this music and beating my chest for rock ’n’ roll if I thought it was dead. But there’s a reason why there’s not as much integrity in rock radio anymore—and this song is about getting to the bottom of that.”
“It was baby steps—we didn’t say, hey, we’re going to make an album or go on tour,” The Raconteurs co-frontman Jack White explains to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “We just thought, let’s get together and record a couple of songs and see how that goes.” The time felt right for White and Brendan Benson to reconnect following a series of jam sessions with drummer Patrick Keeler, something they hadn’t done in over a decade due to their commitments to other projects. During that time, White pursued his solo career and formed The Dead Weather with Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence, all while running Third Man Records; Benson launched his own record label and released 2012’s *What Kind of World* and 2013’s *You Were Right*. Though their third album touches on the power-pop stomp of *Broken Boy Soldiers* and the country-folk of *Consolers of the Lonely*, the band now seems to have one mission in mind: Play some good ol’ fashioned classic rock that pays homage to their musical roots. White and Benson are both based in Nashville now, but their native Michigan is never far from their hearts. “Well, I’m Detroit born and raised/But these days, I’m living with another,” White and Benson harmonize on the single “Bored and Razed.” The guitars nod to pioneering Michigan bands like Grand Funk Railroad and The Amboy Dukes, while the scuzzy, frantic Stooges-like garage rock of “Don’t Bother Me” features White, unsurprisingly, imploring you to put down your damn phone. But *Help Us Stranger* is not just strut and swagger: From reflective folk rock (“Only Child”) and piano balladry (“Shine the Light on Me”) to heartbreaking blues (“Now That You’re Gone”), White and Benson keep it fresh with their engaging, mood-shifting songwriting. They sound like they’re genuinely having fun, happy that they’re still together after all these years. “We played a show in London with The Strokes, and what struck me was, \'Ah, it’s so great to see any band have the original members they started with even three years later, let alone 15, 20 years later,\'” says White. “Everyone’s for the same goal of trying to make some sort of music happen that didn’t exist before. But the proof is, those same people are in the room together.”
