Classic Rock's 50 Best Rock Albums of 2022

If it wasn’t obvious, the title of Def Leppard’s 12th album—which steals a lyric from T. Rex’s 1971 glam-rock hit “Bang a Gong (Get It On)”—nods to the music the band grew up on. It’s also a long-running reference between singer Joe Elliott and guitarist Phil Collen. “We always referred to the era that we got baptized into music as ‘hubcap diamond star halo’ because it’s kind of a ludicrous line from that song,” Collen tells Apple Music. “We didn’t really know what it meant, but we also knew *exactly* what it meant.” As such, *Diamond Star Halos* harks back to England’s classic glitter-rock bands. “I remember seeing David Bowie on *Top of the Pops* when I was 14,” Collen recalls. “That was the moment that life went into technicolor. It changed everything.” Below, he comments on each song. **“Take What You Want”** “Because of the intro, it actually sounds like the start of an album, so it became an obvious track to open with. \[Bassist\] Rick Savage pretty much done all the music for this one, and I think had the title—and then Joe wrote the lyrics. It represents the rock side of Def Leppard that came a bit later. I want to say that I almost hear the New York Dolls in there as well.” **“Kick”** “I wrote this one with a friend of mine, David Bassett. It was influenced by The Glitter Band and T. Rex and Slade, but we originally wrote it with a female artist in mind. Then I played it for Joe, and he said, ‘Are you insane? This is obviously a Def Leppard song.’ We’d actually finished all the other songs for the record at that point, so this was the last one to come in. My demo guitars and demo backing vocals are on there, so there’s this rawness.” **“Fire It Up”** “I wrote this one with a guy called Sam Hollander, who’s the most amazing songwriter. He did ‘High Hopes’ by Panic! At the Disco. Again, it wasn’t originally meant to be a Def Leppard song, but we were trying to write fist-in-the-air stadium rock, somewhere between ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me,’ but they’re really hard to write. When I suggested it to the band, they felt it was obviously a Def Leppard song. Our producer, Ronan McHugh, really put his magic touch on this one.” **“This Guitar” (feat. Alison Krauss)** “My friend C.J. Vanston and I wrote this song 17 years ago. Every five years or so, we’d revisit it, but the general consensus—well, mainly from me—was that it sounds a bit country for Def Leppard. We’ve delved into that before, the way the Stones could do country or the Eagles could do country, and obviously we’ve worked with Tim McGraw and Taylor Swift, but this song was slightly different. This time, Joe asked me to make an acoustic demo for him to sing over, and I think his lead vocal is from the demo. Then Joe was talking to Robert Plant, and Alison come up. Robert knows she’s a huge fan, so Joe asked if she’d want to sing something on the album. Her duet with Joe is just beautiful. She’s a goddess on vocals and just an amazing person.” **“SOS Emergency”** “I started writing this one a few years ago, around 2014. I had the music and the chorus, and to me it sounded like a blend between latter-day Police and the Foo Fighters. That was the vibe, melodically. Then I sent it to Joe, and he just couldn’t stop writing lyrics. He took the chorus and made it something completely different. It’s got an energy that’s different to the rest of the album, and I just love that.” **“Liquid Dust”** “I’ve traveled to India a bunch of times, and I’ve always had melodies floating through my head. So, I kind of annexed this rough idea of a melody, and I wanted to have some almost Indian percussion and mix it with trap and hip-hop drum loops—which I did. It’s about coming towards the end of your life and realizing that you need more time. What happens after that? So, it’s about self-reflection and wondering whether there’s reincarnation.” **“U Rok Mi”** “The song is about being inspired—it’s not a reference to a person. The spelling could be from a text message, but it’s also something that Prince used to do all the time as well. My daughter wanted a ukulele a few years ago, so I got her one—and then we all got ukuleles on tour. So, I ended up playing one pretty much every day, and this idea came out. It starts as, like, a folky-type thing that sounds like it should be on *Zeppelin III*, but then I used these hip-hop drum loops, and it explodes into this big rock chorus.” **“Goodbye for Good This Time”** “Joe and me, our favorite Bowie album is *Aladdin Sane*. That’s where we first heard Mike Garson, who played piano with Bowie from that album until he died. Joe had been doing some birthday tribute celebrations for Bowie with Mike, so he knew him. Joe had written two great piano ballads that reminded me of early Elton John, like *Madman Across the Water* era, so he asked Mike, ‘Would you?’ The next thing you know, we’ve got our favorite pianist on the album! He really added another dimension to this song as well. In the middle, I play a Spanish acoustic guitar solo that’s a tribute to Bowie’s guitar player Mick Ronson.” **“All We Need”** “This is a real hopeful song, a kind of celebration. It was one of the first ones that me and Joe wrote during the pandemic, when we were sending ideas back and forth to each other and talking about the album as we went into lockdown. He was in Dublin, I’m in California, so we’d each wake up to the other’s new ideas. I really enjoyed that process of writing and recording. I done all my guitars and vocals on a laptop, and Joe did some of his vocals on his laptop with a real cheap little microphone. It sounds great, and I’d hate to go back to the other way of recording.” **“Open Your Eyes”** “This was the very first one that Joe and I did during lockdown, and we realized that working this way was a total energy-saver. I had ordered this Squier bass and wrote the opening riff straight out of the box. I sent it to Joe and before you knew it, we had a song. Rick Savage replaced my bass with a killer sound he had at home—a bass he pulled out of his closet—and boom! We sent our demo over to Ronan McHugh, our producer, engineer, and out-front live guy, and he put it all in a session and made it sound incredible.” **“Gimme a Kiss”** “This one’s got some Johnny Thunders and some Chuck Berry inspiration. All my demo guitars are on it, so it’s got a rawness that’s cool. It’s just a fun, smash-you-in-the-face rock song that’s not to be taken too seriously. It’s pretty hefty-sounding, I think, because we kept so much of the demo. We added to it, obviously, with proper drums and Sav playing bass and Vivian on guitar. We all sung on it, but we kept the original spirit of it, which was really important.” **“Angels (Can’t Help You Now)”** “Mike Garson is on this one as well, and it’s just a beautiful song. Joe wrote this and felt that, perhaps, it wasn’t a Def Leppard song because of the piano. But I said, ‘Why not? Why can’t we do what we want at this stage?’ And of course, when Mike played it, it took on a different dimension again. Songwriting-wise, it reminds me of Elton John again. But by the time we get to the last chorus, it sounds like Pink Floyd, from *Dark Side of the Moon*.” **“Lifeless” (feat. Alison Krauss)** “Again, I started this one almost like when the Stones do country, and I was trying to find a way where Def Leppard could do it. I think if U2 were country and Def Leppard was playing the song, it would sound something like this. I had the chorus and sent it to Joe. He came back the next day with the whole thing. We always say we can finish each other’s sentences, but we can also finish each other’s songs. Alison added all these harmonies and countermelodies that were just like, ‘Wow!’ It’s like a beautiful choir of one of our favorite singers.” **“Unbreakable”** “Joe had the idea for this one a while ago—I remember him playing bits of it when we were on tour last. We initially tried it like a rock thing—it almost sounded like AC/DC—but it wasn’t working. So, we shifted tracks and almost took on an element of INXS—not that we’re trying to copy Australian bands, but it sounds better with this vibe. We used a whole different palette of guitar tones because the standard ones weren’t working. Joe had already written the lyrics, but he then presented them in a different way, almost like an actor choosing a role.” **“From Here to Eternity”** “This is a Rick Savage song. It’s very different to everything else on the record, but we were working on the lyrics and the phrase ‘film noir’ came up. With that image, we were able to finish the lyrics and, all of a sudden, we knew what the song was going to be. It took on a little bit of a Queen direction. It’s the longest song, so it was obviously going to be at the end of the album, and it’s probably my favorite guitar solo that I’ve done on the record.”

Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge was in a Seattle bookstore in 2014 when he came across what would become the theme for the Swedish occult rockers’ fifth album, *IMPERA*. “I saw this book called *The Rule of Empires*,” he tells Apple Music. “I’ve always been quite interested in history and politics, but you don’t need to be an expert to know that every empire eventually ends. Right then and there, I knew that at some point I was going to make a record about the rise and fall of empires.” At the time, Forge was already planning to make a record about the bubonic plague, which became Ghost’s startlingly prescient 2018 album *Prequelle*. “I felt like those two subjects represented two completely different threats of annihilation,” he says. “One feels a little bit more divine, and the other a little more structured and fabricated. So I compartmentalized the two themes and made two different albums.” Below, Forge details some key tracks from *IMPERA*. **“Kaisarion”** “The story this song tells, or the perspective it shines light onto, is basically stupid people destroying something that they don\'t understand with a frantic smile on their face. This has happened many times and unfortunately will probably happen many times in the future, because unfortunately things that we don\'t understand or that we cannot control have a tendency to arouse those feelings. We want to kill it. We want to destroy it.” **“Spillways”** “In ‘Kaisarion,’ we have the en masse, frenetic, frantic buzz of being in a group. In ‘Spillways,’ we have a very internalized pressure that builds up to the next song, which is a distant call that ends up being a voice in your head—the insulated person who’s being communicated with from a higher power. That’s loosely how we move geographically between these three songs. If the leads remind you of Brian May, that’s because I like stacking solos and adding harmonies, which automatically puts you in Brian May territory.” **“Call Me Little Sunshine”** “This is similar to our song ‘Cirice’ in the sense that you have this betraying hand that leads you into the night pretending to have a torch in the other. Which is interesting, because we’ve placed ourselves in the devil’s corner, pop-culturally, so it becomes this paradox. Myself and other peddlers in the extreme metal world use a lot of biblical or diabolical references, and up until recently we felt we were doing it with a distance from history—like this was in the Old World, when people were stupid. But no—this is real. This is now.” **“Hunter’s Moon”** “This song was written specifically for the *Halloween Kills* soundtrack, which made it so much easier to write because I knew the context. If ‘Call Me Little Sunshine’ is a voice inside the head that’s actually coming from outside, ‘Hunter’s Moon’ is inside the empire of the brain of a maniac: ‘I’m coming to get you because you belong to me. Can’t you see I’m doing this as an act of love?’ It’s absolutely illogical, but if you place yourself inside the head of a maniac, it makes sense. It’s burning love.” **“Watcher in the Sky”** “This reverts back to the imperial world of Flat Earth Society members, basically. The narration is calling upon the scientific community to use whatever science we have here within this empire to stop looking at the stars and look for God instead. Can we reverse the tools that we have to watch the stars to communicate with the Lord? And is there any way to scientifically prove that the world is actually flat? Because it looks awfully flat from where we\'re standing. So it’s a song about regression.” **“Twenties”** “This is a machine disguised as a leader talking to liberal persons because we need their manpower, and without them there is no society. So it’s this cheer about the twenties, saying that it will lead to an even more hopeful thirties—but 1900s-style. It’s meant to give people hope, if you’re bent that way. It’s similar to our song ‘Mummy Dust’ in that both are more primally aggressive and have an element of greed.” **“Grift Wood”** “I love Hollywood rock like Van Halen and Mötley Crüe, and it just feels fitting to have an uplifting track towards the end of the record. Musically, one thing that inspired the more Sunset Strip elements of the song was knowing that it was going to throw you off with a really long curveball that felt like something no Sunset Strip band has ever done. And that enabled the more glossy bits to be even more in line with the traditional elements of an early-’80s Sunset Strip song.”

“We were not thinking about making a new album at all,” Scorpions vocalist Klaus Meine says of the fateful day in 2018 when Germany’s biggest rock band decided to do just that. “We have such a huge back catalog, so we could probably be touring forever and ever.” Then a longtime friend—and diehard Scorpions fan—from Athens, Greece, encouraged them to write something in the anthemic, MTV-storming style of their ’80s classics *Blackout* and *Love at First Sting*. “He said this is what the fans want to hear from us,” Meine tells Apple Music. “We thought, well, that’s 40 years ago—come on! But he threw this challenge at us and then we decided, okay, let’s go for it.” The result is *Rock Believer*, their first new studio album in seven years, which recaptures their triumphant ’80s sound amazingly well. It’s also their first album with all-star drummer Mikkey Dee, formerly of Motörhead. “Having Mikkey in the band was really like a shot of fresh energy and great fun,” Meine says. “We recorded the basic tracks all together in one room, and I think it shines through when you hear the songs.” Below, he discusses each song on *Rock Believer*. **“Gas in the Tank”** “Usually, \[guitarist\] Rudolf \[Schenker\] sends me some demos and I start writing lyrics, but this time I started writing lyrics first, so it was all upside down. I sent them to Rudolf when he was down at his studio in Thailand, and he would come back with some killer riffs. It was like, ‘Hey, there’s still gas in the tank, my friend!’ So we rocked through this very difficult lockdown times.” **“Roots in My Boots”** “With the new songs, we wanted to go back our roots. We simply wanted to reactivate the original Scorpions DNA—great riffs, strong melodies. We tried to bring that feeling into the studio by playing all together in one room. We’re so connected with our music still, after so many decades, and this is the most important part. This is ‘Roots in My Boots.’” **“Knock ’Em Dead”** “This is about when we played in the US for the first time back in ’79. For a German band like us to play in the US was like a dream, you know? Our first time was in Cleveland at a huge stadium show with so many great bands—Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Journey. We were the first band early in the morning, and our manager said before we walked out, ‘Guys, go knock ’em dead.’ We had only 30 minutes, but it was a magic moment for us.” **“Rock Believer”** “Over the years, again and again, we heard them say rock is dead. But there\'s still millions of rock believers around the world that prove them wrong. Our fans are the best in the world, and when you think about shows like Hellfest in France, where we\'re booked for this year, there are more than a hundred thousand tickets sold already. Wow. So that means rock is very well and alive. So this album is dedicated to all the rock believers out there.” **“Shining of Your Soul”** “There is a reggae kind of feel to some of this, and when it came up, of course it reminded us of ‘Is There Anybody There?’ from the \[1979\] *Lovedrive* album. Someone asked me who the reggae guy is in the band, and for sure it’s Rudy who came up with this. The song is very hooky, and it’s one of the very few love songs on the album. Sometimes a person enters a room and you can feel how the atmosphere is changing, you know? It feels like the shining of a soul. That’s what the song is all about.” **Seventh Sun** “When our friend from Athens said in 2018 that we should make another album like *Blackout* or *Love at First Sting* or *Lovedrive*, automatically you think about songs like ‘Animal Magnetism’ or ‘China White.’ They’re very heavy, but they have this kind of laidback feeling. So we were focused on this, and then Rudy came up with this heavy riff in ‘Seventh Sun’ that carries the whole song. It’s in the best tradition of those big classic songs.” **“Hot and Cold”** “This is one of the songs \[guitarist\] Matthias Jabs came up with, and I think it’s a cool uptempo rocker. The song takes you to a strip joint on the dark side of town, where you come down with a crazy fever, hot and cold, because you cannot stop thinking of all the craziest things she might do onstage swinging around the pole. The connection to write those lyrics came from when we would go to strip clubs in the ’80s, and many girls would dance to Scorpions songs. One of their favorites was always ‘The Zoo,’ but we never thought about strip clubs when we were writing that song.” **“When I Lay My Bones to Rest”** “This is a fast rocking track, and it has really great power. I think Mikkey was in a Motörhead mood on this one. It’s a song about my songwriting partner Rudy and myself, after all these years of Scorpions. It’s a song that proves we are still rocking like hell. I think it’s one of the songs on the album where our fans will be surprised that we came up with something in the best tradition of songs like ‘Can’t Get Enough,’ for example.” **“Peacemaker”** “I was just playing with words, and I came up with the line ‘Peacemaker, peacemaker, bury the undertaker.’ In times when so many people are dying because of the worldwide pandemic, devastating war, and other crimes—the scenarios we see in Belarus, Ukraine, and Afghanistan—it seems like the undertaker is working overtime, you know? But we think the peacemaker should rule the world. And it’s all up to us to support the peacemaker in order to make the world a better place.” **“Call of the Wild”** “That’s a bluesy song that makes you feel the heat of the night on your skin. It’s got a heavy guitar riff and a groove. It’s another love song, but it’s more of a sexy love song. ‘You’ve got the funky rhythm, girl. I got the rocking drive.’ Nothing more to say. I think you got it.” **“When You Know (Where You Come From)”** “This is the only ballad on the album. The song is saying that it’s important to be true to yourself. If you reach out for the stars on your way up, you should never forget where you come from. Travel the road of respect and laughter and you always know where you’re going. This actually started out as an acoustic song—the acoustic version is on the deluxe version of the album—but we liked it so much we made a rock version.” **“Shoot for Your Heart”** “This was really the song that I wrote first, back in 2019. It kicked off the process of writing lyrics. And in this case, I wrote the music as well. It’s another fan-related song in the tradition of ‘Can’t Live Without You.’ We can’t live without our fans. When we’re on the road, our only goal to achieve every night is to have a place in your heart.” **“When Tomorrow Comes”** “It’s a very uptempo song with unusual lyrics. It was our producer’s idea to record the vocals in the verses so it almost feels like a megaphone. It’s very much an environmentally inspired song—the dirty ocean, climate change, so many wildfires and disasters around the world. Some of it was written during the lockdowns, and it is directed to the young generation to take good care of our planet. You hold the key for the future and hopefully you’ll be smart.” **“Unleash the Beast”** “That’s a crazy little song that was very much inspired by going from lockdown to lockdown. We were in our own little bubble in the studio here, trying to get away from the cruel reality of the pandemic. ‘We keep dancing in the dust until the super-spreader kills us all’ is one of the lines there. It sounds like a bad movie from the ’80s, but I’m afraid this is 2022, and this is the world we live in.” **“Crossing Borders”** “This is another song Matthias came up with. In the world of music and the world of emotions, there are no borders. When we’re rocking the global stage, we’re crossing borders every other day, leaving our comfort zone. But this song is more about sex and rock ’n’ roll, I think. This is another bluesy type of song, and Mikkey and our bass player Pawel came up with a great rhythm for this.”

Now well into his seventies, Ozzy Osbourne is metal’s unlikeliest survivor. After decades of hard living, tragic band member deaths, and numerous health scares, the Prince of Darkness delivers his 13th solo album fast on the heels of his 2020 mainstream smash *Ordinary Man*. Like its predecessor, *Patient Number 9* was produced by multi-instrumentalist Andrew Watt and boasts a head-spinning array of guest stars—including return appearances from Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith alongside Metallica bassist (and Ozzy’s former sideman) Robert Trujillo and late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins (in one of his last recording sessions). But it’s stellar guitar cameos from the likes of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, and Ozzy’s longtime collaborators Tony Iommi and Zakk Wylde that really give the record a varied, multigenerational feel, as each guitarist lends his signature sound to the respective tracks. “Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck are megastars,” Ozzy tells Apple Music. “I didn’t think they’d want to play on my album. But they both did.” The tasteful tonal differences between singles “Degradation Rules” (featuring Iommi), “Nothing Feels Right” (featuring Wylde), and the title track (featuring Jeff Beck) help make *Patient Number 9* one of Ozzy’s most diverse albums yet. “I’ve been doing it 54 years,” he says. “If I don’t know what I’m doing now, I shouldn’t be doing it.”

For their seventh album, rock troupe Alter Bridge decided to take a different approach from that of their 2019 full-length, *Walk the Sky*. “Before we embarked on the songwriting process for *Pawns & Kings*, we agreed that it was time to pull back a bit on the production relative to our recent recordings,” vocalist/guitarist Myles Kennedy tells Apple Music. “With that said, it was paramount that the riffs and melodies were strong enough to carry the weight without a lot of layers. This approach ended up making the record a little more direct and, to some degree, more aggressive.” You can hear what he means on bombastic opener “This Is War” and the towering, staccato riffs of “Silver Tongue,” among others. “There are still moments where we take advantage of the sonic density multitracking can bring to the equation,” Kennedy points out. “Aspects of ‘Fable of the Silent Son,’ among others, utilize this approach. But we were always cognizant of making sure we brought the arrangement style back around to the parameters established at the beginning of the process.” Below, Kennedy and guitarist/vocalist Mark Tremonti comment on the songs. **“This Is War”** Myles Kennedy: “This came from a dream. It was like the universe dropped it on me. It really pertains to struggles from the inside, like self-doubt, anxiety, or tension. You’re waging war within yourself.” Mark Tremonti: “The riffs, the melodies, and the lyrics are just striking. Since it’s heavier, everybody assumes it was one of mine, but that started with Myles.” **“Dead Among the Living”** Mark Tremonti: “This was one of the songs I brought to the table. I wanted to go back to a ‘Come to Life’-style song. When I think of Alter Bridge, I think of a bunch of different flavors. One of them is a riff-driven, empowering track. It’s important for us. If you’re having a bad day, maybe it gets you motivated or helps you feel better.” Myles Kennedy: “As soon as Mark sent it, I thought it was really groovy. Lyrically, it’s about somebody who gave up on life. This person fails to see his true potential, so you ultimately challenge him to live again. Our fans like this theme, and we’ve had a few of these ‘rock ’n’ roll Tony Robbins’ moments over the years.” **“Silver Tongue”** Myles Kennedy: “This is a theme I’ve touched on a few times in the past because it fascinates me. It’s about a charismatic figure who’s capable of seducing people with what he says. This figure knows he won’t be held accountable because he talks others into doing things and taking the fall.” **“Sin After Sin”** Mark Tremonti: “This is one of my favorites. It’s a captivating story that sets a powerful mood. It started with the drum loop, and I wanted to write a moody and gloomy riff over it. That’s how it came together.” Myles Kennedy: “It’s a journey. It basically calls out someone for hiding their dark character flaws behind a virtuous facade. I’ve had enough situations in my many years on this planet to come across this sort of thing and the hypocrisy of it. The lyrical concept matched the depth of the music.” **“Stay”** Mark Tremonti: “I heard this chord progression in my head. I wrote it down and started singing over it. Myles added the bridge. It has a ‘seize the day’ message between two people.” **“Holiday”** Mark Tremonti: “This was one of the tracks that Myles brought to the table, and I think it’s one of the coolest vocal performances. It has a lot of personality. It’s a fun, upbeat rock tune. It was necessary to lighten the mood here and there.” Myles Kennedy: “When we messed around with it, it became appropriate for this record. From a lyrical standpoint, watching The Great Resignation might have inspired it. After 2020, it seemed as if folks weren’t as interested in going back to the way things were. They were chilling out. A lot of people were asking themselves if there’s more to life than a living. Being a complete workaholic, I can’t say I’d totally abide by the song.” **“Fable of the Silent Son”** Myles Kennedy: “You can hear somebody being honest about past mistakes and saying, ‘Don’t make those mistakes.’ It’s imparting those lessons learned through struggle to someone else, so they don’t have to endure the same pain. It’s just heavy.” **“Season of Promise”** Myles Kennedy: “This has a ’90s vibe to it. It’s the idea of passing on wisdom again. It’s knowledge learned from previous generations being fostered and passed on throughout human history. It’s important. In Western culture, I feel like younger people should listen to the older, wiser folks who have been on the planet a little longer and maybe heed their advice. I’m saying this as an old guy.” **“Last Man Standing”** Myles Kennedy: “From a guitar perspective, this one is really fun. Mark and I got into new territory, and there’s an odd time signature happening. \[Lyrically\], it’s basically about the ambitions of someone who’s willing to sell his soul for material gain. You see it all the time, unfortunately. Once they’ve reached the summit and the pinnacle of life as the last man standing, was it worth it? That’s the theme.” **“Pawns & Kings”** Myles Kennedy: “This is a battle cry for the underdog. You’re not only going to face what could be considered the ultimate challenge, but you’re also going to overcome it. It’s a David versus Goliath story.” Mark Tremonti: “We were blown away when Myles showed it to us. It takes so many twists and turns. We put an Alter Bridge spin on it, but the genius of it came from Myles. It could be the best song on the record, and it’s perfect that \[as the lead single\] it will be the first thing everybody hears.”

Physical editions available here: lnk.to/PawnsAndKings/napalmrecords "Since 2004, ALTER BRIDGE has been one of the most consistent bands to successfully represent the rock and metal communities with their driving melodies, blazing guitar riffs and topical lyrics that resonate with fans around the globe. Their seventh album, Pawns & Kings, continues that trend with 10 unforgettable new additions to their catalog. Coming off the launch of what was shaping up to be one of the band’s pinnacle moments with Walk The Sky (#1 US Billboard Top Albums, #1 US Current Rock and Hard Music, #4 UK Official Charts, #1 UK Independent and Rock/Metal, #5 Official German Album Charts), everything came to a halt as the world would forever be changed due to the events of a global pandemic. The time the members of ALTER BRIDGE spent apart sparked a new fire and heaviness when the quartet comprised of Myles Kennedy on vocals/guitars, Mark Tremonti on guitars/vocals, Brian Marshall on bass and Scott Phillips on drums would reconvene for what would eventually become Pawns & Kings. Teaming with longtime producer and collaborator Michael “Elvis” Baskette, the album shines with massive, menacing arena-ready production while emerging as another sonic testament to the seasoned Kennedy/Tremonti songwriting dream-team. The band deliver three epic anthems, including two that clock in at over six minutes – the reflective and absolutely epic title track “Pawns & Kings”, grim-riffed, progressive influenced “Sin After Sin”, and the emotive eight-and-a-half minute journey “Fable Of The Silent Son.” “Silver Tongue” is backed by a punishing intro riff that gives way to one of the band’s most infectious choruses as Myles Kennedy sings, “Truth of a crime. You can’t outrun. Under the spell of my silver tongue,” while tracks like “Holiday” and “Season Of Promise” ebb and flow within the trademark multi-faceted metallic rock attack that has enchanted ALTER BRIDGE fans for a generation. Songs like “This Is War,” “Dead Among The Living” and “Last Man Standing” showcase the heavier side of a band firing on all cylinders, with soaring leads, hair-raising vocals and introspective lyricism abound. Mark Tremonti helms lead vocal duties on the uplifting track “Stay” – an interchanging of skills that first debuted on the band’s fourth album, Fortress, and continues to this day. Nearly 20 years into their celebrated career, one thing is for sure – Pawns & Kings offers a musical snapshot of a band that shows no signs of slowing down and continues to push itself creatively for the whole world to see. "

On his fourth album with Alter Bridge vocalist Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators, Slash delivers what he describes as their most spontaneous collaboration yet. The perpetually top-hatted guitarist brings some of his inimitable Guns N’ Roses grit to lead single “The River Is Rising” while unleashing hooky, soaring hard rock on “Call Off the Dogs.” Elsewhere, the sentimental “Fill My World” might seem like it’s about a romantic relationship between humans, but Kennedy actually wrote the lyrics from the perspective of his beloved Shih Tzu, Mozart.

“One more time, for whatever reason, the universe saw fit to inject this band with another giant shot of plasma,” Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis tells Apple Music. “Left to our own devices, we probably would\'ve withered on the vine somewhere along the line, as we all do at some point. But it wasn\'t quite time for us to do that yet.” The shot of “plasma” that Kiedis is referring to is, in large part, the (second) return of guitarist John Frusciante, after roughly a decade away. You can immediately hear the difference—in the aqueous funk of “Poster Child,” the stadium-ready swings of “These Are the Ways,” or the acoustic phrasing of “Tangelo,” the album’s delicate closer. “It\'s so clear when he writes and when he plays,” Kiedis says of his bandmate, whose guitar work proved galvanizing on career highlights like 1991’s *Blood Sugar Sex Magik* and 1999’s *Californication*. “It\'s really fun to listen to because it’s sound and emotion and color. He\'s not trying to play the right notes—he\'s just trying to play the notes that are truly him.” Also back in the fold: producer and honorary fifth Chili Pepper Rick Rubin, who—absent on 2016’s *The Getaway*—accompanied Kiedis to Kauai for a songwriting retreat that was unexpectedly extended by lockdown. “Nobody could come, nobody could leave,” Kiedis says. “It was six months of being in the land that time forgot.” For the five of them, the aim was simple: Be together, play together, and, in Kiedis’ words, “write and write and write and write. Maybe we\'ll keep all of it, maybe we\'ll keep some of it. The process that it had to go through to become this record was very democratic in the sense that we all voted, including Rick.” The result is 17 songs that pay tribute to the veteran outfit’s chemistry and affection for one another, a magnetic coming-together that’s apparent anytime they play. “We\'re older and different, and enter *Unlimited Love*, a really fun and wild experience,” Kiedis says. “We accept each other and we love each other and there is an endless friendship going on there—which is not to say that we want to hang out every day. It\'s nice to go away from it and come back to it, go away from it and come back. But it never dies.” Here, Kiedis takes us inside a few highlights from the album. **“Not the One”** “This idea came out from ‘I think I know who you are, but maybe I don\'t. You think you know who I am, but maybe you don\'t.’ Especially in intimate relationships, we all present something and people always have an idea, but what would happen if we just showed each other our very worst from the very start? Like, not trying to impress each other, or just ‘I’m kind of a fuck-up and here\'s my weak suit and my flaws.’ And then we would never have to discover that down the line and go, ‘What?’” **“Poster Child”** “I didn\'t think that the music from ‘Poster Child’ was going to survive, because Flea brought in two painfully funky basslines on the same day, and they weren\'t similar, but the way I was hearing it was like, ‘I have to choose. My plate\'s too full.’ And so I chose the other one, which ended up becoming a song called ‘Peace and Love’ that didn\'t make the record. The one that I thought was the superior funk was not the superior funk, and then it just took me a long time of living with this music before I found my place. I can\'t say that any of them were really a struggle or a battle, but it’s the one that I was surprised came to life.” **“These Are the Ways”** “That\'s a song that John brought—the arrangement and a version of that melody. I’m never able to recreate his melodies perfectly—he\'s just on a different melodic level—so I usually put it through a simplification machine. I didn\'t overthink it. It was the first idea that came to my mind when I heard that arrangement, which is very bombastic and almost like a huge classical orchestra, exploding and then going way back. It was a reflection on life in America, but not a good or a bad reflection—just, this is it. We might be bloated, we might be overloaded with more than we can handle, and let\'s just take a step back and rethink it just a little bit. But it’s not ‘this is wrong and that\'s right.’ It\'s just ‘this is who we\'ve become.’”

Unlimited Love is Red Hot Chili Peppers' twelfth studio album, released on April 1, 2022 and coming six years after their previous full-length effort, The Getaway. The record also marks the return of two key figures in the band’s history: guitarist John Frusciante, who re-joined RHCP in 2019 and scores his first contributions since the band’s 2006 LP Stadium Arcadium, and long-time producer Rick Rubin, who returned to work with the group after a whopping eleven years (since I’m With You came out in 2011). RHCP started recording and working on the album in 2021, at Rubin’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu: a initial selection of around 100 tracks was trimmed down to slightly less than 50 recorded songs, 17 of which would eventually make the cut for the album’s final tracklist, while “Nerve Flip” would be the bonus track added to the Japanese Import of the album.

For the title of their 11th album, British rock powerhouse The Cult took inspiration from a festival they played in Finland back in the mid-’80s. “It was in the summer, when the sun doesn’t go below the horizon,” vocalist Ian Astbury tells Apple Music. “I was walking around at 4 in the morning, and the sun was still in the sky. People were hanging out, making out, drinking—everyone was very connected. It was such a beautiful scene and an incredibly halcyon moment.” Lyrically, Astbury approached the songs on *Under the Midnight Sun* from a Buddhist perspective on the world’s intense social and political divisiveness. “One of our only options is to go inward and rewire ourselves because the old system obviously isn’t working,” he observes. “Language is broken, communication is broken. We have to forget what we know because the past is binding us, holding us back.” Below, he details each song on the album. **“Mirror”** “In many ways, this is a karma mirror, which you acquire through your life. It’s a reflection of your life and choices you’ve made. And karma is neither good nor bad—it’s just accumulated. The idea of a karma mirror comes from a Japanese haiku written by a samurai. He talks about the karma mirror being shattered at a certain age. I think the haiku says 47 years or something like that—shattered with a single hammer blow. It also has to do with Tarkovsky’s *Mirror*, a film that deals with mortality and contemplation, which we were all coping with during the pandemic.” **“A Cut Inside”** “This is similar subject material to ‘Mirror’ in that it deals with mortality. We all have moments of struggle and contemplation. There are roses, but then there are the thorns that go with them. And, of course, life isn’t simply all about you. But perhaps mortality is one of the core themes of that song.” **“Vendetta X”** “This one came out of a breakbeat, a rhythmic cadence. It has themes of peeling away the layers and self-discovery, maybe like a private revenge against yourself, in some ways, like taking your life back from poor choices you’ve made. It’s all an internal, existential struggle. We’re trying to learn to be better human beings and integrate that into our creative processes, so perhaps that human struggle, as well as the spiritual struggle, arrive at ‘Vendetta X.’ Perhaps that’s where they cross, and the intersection is the X.” **“Give Me Mercy”** “The way we communicate needs to be recalibrated. Give me mercy in a new language, the song is saying. You have certain events in your life that blow the doors off—a relationship breaks or there is death around you—and we’re not well-equipped to deal with that in the West. We like an easy fix, a pill or something. But ultimately, you’ve got to sit in it and practice radical acceptance. And that takes some training, a little bit of effort. That’s taken a lot of discipline over the years, and it’s an ongoing process.” **“Outer Heaven”** “The title is from Hideo Kojima, who’s a video game designer. He designed a series of games called Metal Gear Solid, which are incredible. The song’s themes are quite dense, but it’s this idea of Nirvana or a place of solace that’s outside of the self, outside of the ego. I kind of appropriated the idea and put it in a Buddhist context, but it exists in different religious and philosophical disciplines as well. And I think that was Hideo Kojima’s intention in the game as well—to create an alternate reality. But in many ways, the alternate reality is as real as the one we’re actually in.” **“Knife Through Butterfly Heart”** “This is about a loss of innocence. Trying to assimilate to a new culture and fit in wasn’t happening for me as an immigrant kid when my family moved from England to Canada—so many of my friends were indigenous kids and kids from other countries. So, I was experiencing other cultures, and new music became so important. Around that time, I was hit by a car going about 40 miles an hour. I bounced off the car and cracked my head open. ‘Knife Through Butterfly Heart’ is about this vision I had during this time. The title is influenced by a quote from William Rees-Mogg, who made this comment about Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones when the Stones were arrested: ‘Who would break a butterfly on a wheel?’ He’s talking about crushing a creative spirit.” **“Impermanence”** “During the pandemic, the biggest questions that came up were about what was happening societally with all the conflicting, polarized viewpoints—and the whole idea of impermanence. Mortality has a louder voice in the room now. We tend to talk around this in the West. There’s plenty of meditation and plenty of yoga, but finding good teachers is really hard. So, to put it plainly, ‘Impermanence’ is about impermanence, but from the Buddhist perspective.” **“Under the Midnight Sun”** “It’s about everything—every molecule of experience, memory, potential integration, sensuality, math, physics. It’s all included in that song. One of the opening lines is, ‘Under the midnight sun/With creatures of the wild.’ I get images of the Buddha and contemplating his enlightenment, contemplating the profoundness of being, and it all appears in this anomalous moment—this moment we’re all in right now. But ask me a different day, and I’ll probably give a different answer.”

For the title of their 11th album, British rock powerhouse The Cult took Inspiration from a festival they played in Finland back in the mid-'80s. "It was in the summer, when the sun doesn't go below the horizon vocalist lan Astbury tells. "I was walking around at 4 in the morning, and the sun was still in the sky. People were hanging out, making out, drinking-everyone was very connected. It was such a beautiful scene and an incredibly halcyon moment." Lyrically, Astbury approached the songs on Under the Midnight Sun from a Buddhist perspective on the world's intense social and political divisiveness. "One of our only options is to go Inward and rewire ourselves because the old system obviously isn't working," he observes. "Language is broken, communication is broken. We have to forget what we know because the past is binding us, holding us back." Below, he details each song on the album. "Mirror" "in many ways, this is a karma mirror, which you acquire through your life. It's a reflection of your life and choices you've made. And karma is neither good nor bad-it's just accumulated. The idea of a karma mirror comes from a Japanese haiku written by a samural. He talks about the karma mirror being shattered at a certain age. I think the haiku says 47 years or something like that-shattered with a single hammer blow. It also has to do with Tarkovsky's Mirror, a film that deals with mortality and contemplation, which we were all coping with during the pandemic." "A Cut Inside" "This is similar subject material to "Mirror" in that it deals with mortality. We all have moments of struggle and contemplation. There are roses, but then there are the thorns that go with them. And, of course, fe isn't simply all about you. But perhaps mortality is one of the core themes of that song." "Vendetta X" "This one came out of a breakbeat, a rhythmic cadence. It has themes of peeling away the layers and self-discovery, maybe like a private revenge against yourself, in some ways, like taking your life back from poor choices you've made. It's all an internal, existential struggle. We're trying to learn to be better human beings and integrate that into our creative processes, so perhaps that human struggle, as well as the spiritual struggle, arrive at "Vendetta X Perhaps that's where they cross, and the intersection is the X." "Give Me Mercy" "The way we communicato needs to be recalibrated. Give me mercy in a new language, the song is saying. You have certain events in your life that blow the doors off-a relationship breaks or there is death around you-and we're not well-equipped to deal with that in the West. We like an easy fix, a pill or something. But ultimately, you've got to sit in it and practice radical acceptance. And that takes some training, a little bit of effort. That's taken a lot of discipline over the years, and it's an ongoing process." "Outer Heaven" "The title is from Hideo Kojima, who's a video game designer. He designed a series of games called Metal Gear Solid, which are incredible. The song's themes are quite dense, but it's this idea of Nirvana or a place of solace that's outside of the self, outside of the ego. kind of appropriated the idea and put it in a Buddhist context, but it exists in different religious and philosophical disciplines as well. And I think that was Hideo Kojima's intention in the game as well-to create an alternate reality. But in many ways, the alternate reality is as roal as the one we're actually in "Knife Through Butterfly Heart" "This is about a loss of Innocence. Trying to assimilate to a new culture and fit in wasn't happening for me as an immigrant kid when my family moved from England to Canada-so many of my friends were indigenous kids and kids from other countries. So, I was experiencing other cultures, and new music became so important. Around that time, was hit by a car going about 40 miles an hour. I bounced off the car and cracked my head open. "Knife Through Butterfly Heart' is about this vision I had during this time. The title is influenced by a quote from William Rees-Mogg, who made this comment about Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones when the Stones were arrested: "Who would break a butterfly on a wheel?' He's talking about crushing a creative spirit." "Impermanence" "During the pandemic, the biggest questions that came up were about what was happening societally with all the conflicting, polarized viewpoints-and the whole idea of impermanence. Mortality has a louder voice in the room now. We tend to talk around this in the West. There's plenty of meditation and plenty of yoga, but finding good teachers is really hard. So, to put it plainly, "Impermanence' is about impermanence, but from the Buddhist perspective." "Under the Midnight Sun" "it's about everything-every molecule of experience, memory, potential integration, sensuality, math, physics. It's all included in that song.

Over the course of 30 years, Eddie Vedder has evolved from wild-eyed spokesperson for a generation to spotlight-allergic grouch to, slowly but surely, one of rock’s elder statesmen—a guy who can comfortably share a stage with Bono, The Boss, and JAY-Z. And though his second solo outing (2011’s aptly titled *Ukulele Songs*) showcased his gentler side, its follow-up is more diverse: a panoramic sprint through blistering punk (“Power of Right”), classic pop (the Elton John-enriched “Picture”), road-ready anthems (“The Dark”), and the sort of tender ballads he’s penned for Pearl Jam this side of the ’90s (“The Haves”). Most of all, Vedder—long seen as self-serious by some—sounds like a kid in a garage here, calling out to ground control from the cockpit on “Invincible” or shooting himself out of a cannon on “Try.” It sounds like he’s having *fun*.

Lzzy Hale started writing Halestorm’s fifth album in the period she calls “B.C.”—Before Covid. When the pandemic hit and the world shut down, the guitarist and vocalist found herself having an identity crisis. “I went from being Lzzy Hale, the rock star onstage, to Elizabeth Hale in my pajamas for three days, sitting on the couch, not knowing what the future holds,” she tells Apple Music. “What I don’t think I realized before is that all of the things I do with the band—traveling, live shows, writing songs—are the forward movement of having a mission. When all that is stolen, you look in the mirror and ask, ‘Who am I without all of this?’” Despite the deep anxiety and unease that question presented, Hale persevered and wrote her most revealing album yet. “I had to kick myself in the butt and write my way out of it,” she says. “There’s something that happens when you write a song that helps you work through those issues. It’s truly a form of therapy. And now when I hear it, I realize I wasn’t alone in those feelings. My most personal album also became our most universal.” Below, she discusses each song on *Back From the Dead*. **“Back From the Dead”** “This is the song that blew the doors open for this album. We\'d written some others, and we liked a lot of them, but this one became a keystone. It became the road map for the other songs. But it’s really a song of survival. It’s a war cry. It’s about that bravery you have to have in order to get yourself out of that dark place, to pull yourself out of that grave you’ve been digging for yourself. I’m singing the craziest I’ve probably ever sang. My little brother is going nuts on the drums. Everyone is on 11.” **“Wicked Ways”** “This is probably one of the heaviest songs on the record. It’s about acceptance, but not just acceptance of the things you like about yourself. It’s also about acceptance of your dark side. Something that I realized over the past couple years is that I can be really mean when I want to be, and I make huge mistakes. And I say things I don\'t mean. Does that make me evil? Probably not. But in seeing both sides of myself, I can form a truth. I can accept those two sides of myself and not pretend I have everything figured out.” **“Strange Girl”** “This song was directly inspired by a conversation that I had during lockdown with a young fan, about 15. She ended up coming out to her parents shortly before lockdown and they were not having any of it, so it was really hard for her to be stuck there with people that weren’t supportive of her being her truest self. I took this conversation into one of my writing sessions and wrote her an anthem. Not a ballad, but an anthem saying that she could wake up every morning and just be proud of her most authentic self.” **“Brightside”** “Ironically, this is probably the darkest, most sarcastic song on the album. It was kind of a boiling point for me. It was written during the pandemic that we’re still going through, and it’s just me looking at the world and seeing that there’s so much hate for hate’s sake. There’s so many people arguing over petty bullshit that doesn’t matter. And then there’s personal questions like, ‘Are we ever going to go out again?’ It all boiled down to, ‘I’ve got to keep looking on the bright side because it only gets darker.’” **“The Steeple”** “With this song, I’m trying to recreate that fellowship and that community that I love so much about the live show and just being surrounded by people. We all get to put our fists in the air and celebrate together, and what’s going on in the outside world doesn’t matter for that moment. I just really wanted to create this celebratory song that we could all sing together—that’s why there’s so many voices on it. I wanted it to be like we’re all part of the same choir. Basically, I’m creating the church for the Devil’s music.” **“Terrible Things”** “The first version of this was ‘I Am Terrible Things,’ and I was talking about all these things that I find disparaging about myself. Then I had this moment when I decided it wasn’t about me. And also, I don’t want to have a song reminding me of all my past mistakes. So, it became about me looking at the world we live in and asking how you maintain hope in humanity when you see so much destruction and war and people starving. I feel like we’re taking these huge steps backward in evolution. So, it’s hard to maintain that faith in humanity, but I have to. Or else what am I doing this for?” **“My Redemption”** “When I wrote this song, I had made some mistakes. I had done some things I said I’d never do, and I was having a hard time forgiving myself. This song needed to happen in order for me to get over that. One thing I learned through writing this song is that I am still the only person in this world that will truly ever be in my way, and I’m also the only person that can save me. I can’t just sit around and wait for someone to tap me on the shoulder and tell me, ‘Everything’s going to be OK’—I have to do that myself. So, this was, indeed, my redemption song.” **“Bombshell”** “This was one of the earliest demos we put together for the album. When we were making the *Reimagined* EP a couple of years ago, one of the guitar techs broke the Les Paul my guitar player, Joe \[Hottinger\], was playing. The high-E tuning mechanism failed, but Joe was still plugged in and started playing the limp string as a joke. It sounded gnarly, and he recorded it on his phone. That’s what the intro is based on. We used the double meaning of ‘bombshell,’ as far as it’s a girl but it’s also an explosive. It’s one of my favorites.” **“I Come First”** “OK, this started out as a sex song, but then I decided that some of the lines were really cheesy. I had whips and chains in there at one point, and I was like, ‘Man, I can’t do that.’ So, I decided to take all the sex lines out, and all of a sudden, it revealed itself as a self-love song. It’s saying you can’t give to anybody else until you fill your own cup first. I still kind of think of it as the sex song because that’s where it started, but it doesn’t have to be that. Unless you feel so inclined…” **“Psycho Crazy”** “Apparently, this is my dad’s favorite song on the album, which surprises me. I’m like, ‘Dad, are you all right?’ But I’ve been told many times over the course of my life that I’m crazy for doing this, or crazy for being gung-ho about the band and the music or myself—that I’m too passionate about certain things. And in those moments, I’m like, ‘Well, this isn’t even my crazy. If you really want me to go there, I can.’ It’s about taking the negativity that people offer you and using it as your superpower.” **“Raise Your Horns”** “A few years ago, my friend Jill Janus from the band Huntress committed suicide. I felt very helpless about it. When you know someone who does that, you think, ‘Could I have done something? Maybe I should have reached out.’ On a whim, I put together this hashtag, #RaiseYourHorns, and I basically said, ‘If you’ve been touched by mental illness or know someone who is, take a picture of yourself and raise your horns.’ It was this grand effort in real time to show everyone that they’re not alone. And it took off like gangbusters. So, I wrote this song as a way to say the same thing—that we’re not alone in our struggles.”

The Sheepdogs’ music has always had a time-traveling quality, their Southern-styled riffs and shaggy grooves instantly placing you behind the wheel of a Camaro en route to some all-night bonfire party circa 1976. And in the wake of the pandemic, their desire to live every day like it’s *Dazed and Confused* has only intensified. The Sheepdogs’ seventh album, *Outta Sight*, was conceived as a cure-all for the COVID blues, a classic-rock booster shot loaded with twin-guitar boogie, sunny soul, and a have-a-good-time-all-the-time bonhomie. Whether it’s staking out the middle ground between Skynyrd swing and Thin Lizzy leads (“Find the Truth”), doling out Doobie-worthy harmonies (“I Wanna Know You”), or firing up the drum machine like Eric Clapton busking with a boom box (“So Far Gone”), *Outta Sight* wholly succeeds in its mission to make you forget the early 2020s ever happened.

“Belly fat in the bio bin/The penis now sees the sun again.” This soon-to-be-immortal couplet comes from “Zick Zack,” the hilarious plastic-surgery send-up and single from *Zeit*. Given the decade-long gap between Rammstein’s untitled 2019 album and its predecessor *Liebe ist für alle da*, the relatively quick appearance of their eighth record comes as quite a surprise. Clearly, the German industrial overlords took advantage of the enforced downtime every touring artist was saddled with during pandemic lockdown and emerged with their famous sense of humor intact. *Zeit* (German for “time”) boasts plaintive yet soaring piano ballads (“Schwarz,” the title track), odes to big boobs (“Dicke Titten”), and even a raucous cock-rock-style banger in “OK.”

“It was nice to actually find something that we weren\'t good at, and actually try and get really good at it,” Muse singer Matt Bellamy tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “Because metal, it turns out these metal players are absolute geniuses.” He is, of course, referring to “Kill or Be Killed,” arguably the heaviest track in the English rock band’s 28 years and nine studio albums. In many ways, it sets the tone for *Will of the People*, Muse’s ninth full-length and first LP in four years: They needed to sound louder and angrier than ever before, because they’re no longer writing about future anti-utopias—the struggles are here, now. “It feels a bit closer to reality this time,” Bellamy says. “I think in the past, a lot of our stuff\'s kind of delved into fictional dystopia, like George Orwell.” Now we’re in it, and so are the songs: The Queen-esque “Compliance” takes aim at a culture of bad-faith actors; “Liberation” is glam rock against disinformation. Frustration abounds, and the band has never sounded so large. “If I had to pick one thing that I\'m fighting for, it\'s can we create a revolution? Can we create change here, where it isn\'t violent and it doesn\'t lead to an authoritarian vision? We\'ve still got ideas and things we want to do that we haven\'t done yet. So we\'re excited for the future.” Below, Bellamy talks through some of the tracks on *Will of the People*. **“Will of the People”** “Our generation has seen this huge change. Something’s going on in the West—a kind of collapse, a kind of division has been emerging. And now we\'re dealing with real external threats. We just feel like we\'re a part of this generation where something\'s going to go down in a major way.” **“Liberation”** “It’s idealistic, but I always try to have some hope that these two schools of thought, which are opposing each other in the US right now, can come together. The question is, is there any common ground here that can be found to bring these people together? I think the common ground is that there\'s a need for systemic change, like in the way politics is done, potentially. I think the democratic structure is amazing in \[the US\], but as everyone knows, the lobbyists, there’s so much corruption there.” **“Ghosts (How Can I Move On)”** “That one is an unusual one for us. I was surprised that \[drummer\] Dom \[Howard\] and \[bassist\] Chris \[Wolstenholme\] even wanted that on the album. During the pandemic, I did a couple things on my own, just on the piano, acoustic. This song was in my mind in that world: me on the piano, singing alone. It really is a direct expression of that loneliness, and also the tragedy of what was happening for so many people.” **“Kill or Be Killed”** “It\'s the first death growl ever on a Muse record. Well, the \'ugh!\', it just came out like a high-pitched falsetto wail. Whenever I go loud, that’s where it goes. That is us going, \'Okay, if we\'re going to go heavy, let\'s go heavy.\' Dom had a different kit for everything, pretty much. But I was really pushing him on the double bass drum stuff.” **“We Are Fucking Fucked”** “That\'s the anxiety. Right there. There you go. That song literally sums them all up, I think. I don\'t have it very often, but if I did ever have a moment where, late at night, I can\'t sleep, and all those thoughts start going around, like, \'What\'s going on? All these natural disasters, all this stuff that\'s happening, civil unrest, blah, blah, blah.\' It puts you into a panic. That song was written literally at that moment.”

When Ian Anderson began work on the first Jethro Tull album in over two decades, he started by writing a list of words that corresponded to strong human emotions. On the positive side, he listed love, compassion, and loyalty, among others. On the negative side, anger, rage, jealousy, etc. “I had 12 words for 12 songs, and it occurred to me that those words feature heavily in my memory of reading the Bible,” the renowned vocalist, guitarist, and flautist tells Apple Music. “So I reviewed some biblical text as a little reminder of where those words would’ve first appeared when the printing presses began to roll in Europe. It served as a useful reference point in writing the lyrics, but I never set out to illustrate the Bible as such. It’s really just taking those words and relating them to the present day.” Below, he discusses some key tracks on *The Zealot Gene*. **“Mrs Tibbets”** “One of the words that I wrote was ‘retribution,’ which was visited upon the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah by the angry God, Yahweh. Lot and his wife escaped, but she turned around to look at the destruction behind her and was turned into a pillar of salt, according to biblical tales. That brought up the inevitable comparison with someone turning to face a 2,000-foot air burst above Hiroshima. So I decided to write an analogous song based on the visitation of Little Boy, dropped by the air crew captain Paul Tibbets, son of Enola Gay Tibbets.” **“Jacob\'s Tales”** “Apart from the Jacob in the title, it\'s really a song about envy and jealousy in the sense of sibling rivalry, and the idea that brothers and sisters don\'t always get on. And when it comes to the inevitable passing on of family assets and treasures, things can get a little difficult. The fact of taking an element from the Bible as a parallel is not very evident in any of the lyrics, but that was among the references. So, I set out to write the song, but keep it well outside any biblical context.” **“The Zealot Gene”** “It’s about the polarization of opinion-making in contemporary society, largely through social media, but also through—quite rightly in a democratic world—freedom of speech, the right to express your opinion. But these days that opinion reaches further and faster and in more forcible terms as a result of social media—and can be used in a way that is often very hurtful, very cruel, very socially divisive. And whether it\'s at the hands of politicians or people in the world of sport, or media, or arts entertainment, it\'s heavy-handed. It often is, perhaps, a result of a spontaneous outburst that finds its way onto Twitter or Facebook—and then, the next morning, after the three glasses of chardonnay have worn off, people might think, ‘Whoops, did I really say that?’” **“Shoshana Sleeping”** “This is a slightly erotic observation of the human form, but in a respectful and hands-off kind of a way. Hopefully you would get the impression in the lyrics that the person singing the song is already in some kind of a relationship with the person that he\'s observing sleeping. In terms of biblical references, I read some verses from the Song of Solomon. In the original text, sometimes it takes on a pretty macho and unpleasant form—the biblical format is not terribly woke. Nonetheless, there are parts of the Song of Solomon which are very moving and spiritually generous.” **“Sad City Sisters”** “It has a parallel in biblical text, but more than anything it was conjured by visions I have often witnessed on a Friday or Saturday night, mostly in the UK, when I\'m walking from a concert hall back to a hotel somewhere after a show. Inevitably, you see late-night city life and the behavior of relatively young people going on a mindless bender to see how much they can consume in the way of drink and drugs wearing impossibly skimpy clothing and getting themselves into potential serious danger. As a father of a daughter—I also have one granddaughter—you tend to hope and pray that this danger won’t be part of your own family’s experience.” **“Where Did Saturday Go?”** “Again, it could be seen as a reference to waking up and not being able to remember what you did on a weekend. But there’s obviously the reference of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the Saturday following Good Friday—before Easter Sunday, the resurrection day. In this story, Saturday is very rarely mentioned. And in this 24-hour period you have to wonder what was happening in the minds of those followers of Jesus after his death but before his resurrection. But it\'s never discussed to any degree in the Bible, so I\'m just pondering that notion of a missing day in the narrative of Jesus.” **“The Fisherman of Ephesus”** “In that particular song I do stay more closely to the biblical stories of what happened to the disciples of Jesus. I\'m talking primarily about John, and he being the only one not to die a gory death. And so the song is about guilt survival, something I know from talking to veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, who lost their buddies, and who were scarred for life as a result of surviving when others around them died. And that happens, obviously, in car crashes, plane crashes, and probably in terms of COVID mortalities. There\'ll be people who survived alone in a family and the rest died from COVID before vaccination. So guilt survival is applicable right across the board. And that\'s essentially the message of the song.”

After the release of their 2016 album *Dystopia*, metal masters Megadeth went through some drastic lineup changes. First, session drummer Chris Adler (formerly of Lamb of God) was replaced by longtime Soilwork drummer Dirk Verbeuren. Then, Megadeth ringleader Dave Mustaine fired longtime bassist Dave Ellefson and brought in Testament’s Steve DiGiorgio to play on *The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!* “Having a new rhythm section doesn’t affect how I approach things, but it certainly changes the way things are approached,” Mustaine tells Apple Music. “When you have different people involved, there’s going to be different recording techniques and different psychology involved. In that situation, communication is one of the most important things.” Below, he comments on each song. **“The Sick, the Dying ... and the Dead!”** “The lyrics are about the Black Plague and how critters on a boat brought the disease onshore. It\'s also about that really morbid child\'s nursery rhyme, ‘Ring Around the Rosie’: ‘Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies.’ The ‘rosies’ were the scars on your face from the disease, and the posies were to cover up the stench of all the dead bodies everywhere. The end of it, ‘Ashes, ashes, they all fall down’: Well, everybody\'s falling down because they have the plague, and you have to burn the bodies. So, that sweet little nursery rhyme isn\'t quite so innocuous.” **“Life in Hell”** “The title ‘Life in Hell’ was tongue-in-cheek about *To Live and Die in LA*. I liked that movie, which was about somebody who was so self-absorbed that all they think about is themselves. This song ended up not being even close to what the movie is about, but \[that was the initial inspiration\].” **“Night Stalkers” (feat. Ice-T)** “This song was written about the helicopter special ops forces up in Fort Campbell. Some friends of mine were pilots there—they have since retired, but they were really important in a lot of the rescue missions and famous raids. It\'s a great inspiration to see people who can endure life-threatening situations and basic training that’s basically a freckle away from torture. It’s a different breed of person that’s able to endure it. Ice-T is a part of the song because he was in the military, too. When I first met him, he told me he was a ranger. I thought that was pretty badass.” **“Dogs of Chernobyl”** “It\'s basically about a relationship that ends, and the person is going through the feeling of abandonment. One moment, he\'s in a relationship. The next moment, the significant other is gone out of his life forever and there\'s no explanation. Essentially, that\'s what I felt when I watched the specials they had on Chernobyl. One was a sci-fi movie about these four kids that go to see the nuclear meltdown site, and they come across these dogs. I just thought about how awful it must have been to be a dog in that situation, where your caretakers just leave them. What do they do? I wrote down, ‘You left me like the dogs of Chernobyl,’ and that was the germination for the whole song.” **“Sacrifice”** “Years ago, I went to an after-hours party in Los Angeles. There were some famous musicians there, and one of them was wearing these expensive sunglasses. I don’t know how they ended up on the ground, but I remember seeing another guy go over and step on them. I remember thinking, ‘That’s so uncool.’ And this guy who had the sunglasses was like the Michael Jordan of guitar players, so obviously the other guy felt threatened or intimidated. ‘Sacrifice’ was inspired by a song that the guy with the sunglasses wrote many years ago.” **“Junkie”** “This song is about somebody who has character traits that lead them to live their life in excess. When you\'re just starting out in life and you get around the wrong people, you start having some areas of your life ruined. When I was little, my mom would say, ‘Show me your friends and I\'ll show you who you are.’ I thought, ‘Mom, stop.’ But when I looked at that sage advice from my mom, there were a lot of friends I had that needed to go. Once you make some of the necessary changes that you need to make, it makes things way better.” **“Psychopathy”** “‘Psychopathy’ and ‘Killing Time’ are a one-two punch. The beginning of ‘Psychopathy’ is obviously about a psychiatrist talking about the dangers of mental illness and how often people will get misdiagnosed. I’ve had a lot of things said about me because of my health when I got cancer, when I got married, when I got saved, and I\'ve just grown accustomed to the fact that whatever I do, people are going to talk.” **“Killing Time”** “If I\'m in a relationship with somebody, they\'re always going to put their best face on when we first meet. But then when stuff starts to get a little sticky, you start to see who people really are. ‘Killing Time’ has nothing to do with killing—it’s about procrastination. It’s about people who are lackadaisical and waste their time. But time is the most valuable thing we have in this world. How many beats of the heart do I have left? How many breaths I am going to take before my last? How many times will I get to say ‘I love you’ again to my wife, to my kids, to my fans? I don’t know, but I’m going to cherish every moment.” **“Soldier On!”** “If you look at the lyrics on this, it clearly tells you who it is \[about\]. If you\'re part of the inner circle here, if you know what\'s been going on over the past 10 years, you\'ll be able to recognize some of the shenanigans that were taking place in the band and in our presence, and sometimes behind our backs, too. ‘Soldier On!’ was one of those things where I knew that in order for me to continue to experience any happiness in the world, I was going to have to walk away from the relationship that I had. It was much like ‘Tornado of Souls.’ If I told you ‘Tornado of Souls’ is a failed relationship song, most people would say, ‘Wow, I didn’t get that,’ but it’s the truth.” **“Célebutante”** “I had heard Yngwie \[Malmsteen\] when he first came over to the United States—he was an artist that Mike Varney had signed. Back in the Metallica days, James \[Hetfield\] and I went over to Varney’s house to go meet this Yngwie dude. He wasn’t there, but his cabinets were. He had ‘666’ painted all over his cabinets, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy.’ I ended up meeting him later, and I think he’s a brilliant guitar player.” **“Mission to Mars”** “This was inspired by all the sage wisdom from TED Talks and a lot of other discussions about space travel. I remember going down to NASA in Houston because the Japanese had sent a professor into space to blow bubbles to see if bubbles were capable of being blown in zero gravity. I said, ‘You\'re kidding. You\'re spending 15 million fucking dollars to send a scientist into space on our space shuttle to blow bubbles?’ One of the astronauts’ wives heard me on the air and took exception and invited me to come down there. I don’t really know much about what I saw, but it looked like there was a bunch of stuff going on that we couldn’t even fathom. It’s exciting, the space race.” **“We\'ll Be Back”** “This is about persevering in the end. You know you can\'t hold me down, and no matter what, I am not going to give up. The things you can count on in this world are death, taxes, and Dave Mustaine coming through any kind of hardship.”

The wildest times call for the freest of voices. After selling millions of records, playing to countless fans, and fronting some of the most influential rock bands in history, award-winning songwriter and vocal dynamo Joe Lynn Turner speaks his mind as loudly as possible on his eleventh full-length offering and Mascot Label Group debut, BELLY OF THE BEAST. Joining forces with iconic producer Peter Tägtgren [Hypocrisy, PAIN, Lindemann], the New Jersey-born powerhouse conjures up the kind of heavy metal that not only makes you throw your fist in the air, but also makes you think. “Belly Of The Beast is a phrase we’ve heard over and over again in history,” he observes. “You can trace the cults and corruption all over the world back to prophecies in the Bible. It feels like it’s coming to fruition these days. When you look at the book of Revelation, there it is. I’ve always dipped into esoteric knowledge, Hermeticism, Occultism, Bible research, Eclectic philosophy. I’ve been fascinated with discovery of hidden mysteries. We are in a true spiritual war right now. It’s Good versus Evil. We’ve all got an Angel on one shoulder and a Devil on the other. We’re in the Belly of the Beast, trapped in the System, and there’s no way out of it. The album addresses this.”

Like most band breakups, The Hellacopters’ 2008 split was meant to be permanent. After all, the Swedish rock battalion had released seven albums in 12 years, toured the globe, and even won a Swedish Grammy. “The band had run its course and I wanted to move on,” guitarist, vocalist, and co-founder Nicke Andersson tells Apple Music. “It probably took a year before people started asking about a reunion show, but I always said, ‘No, we broke up. Let us be broken up.’” As the years passed, Andersson began seeing things differently. In 2016, The Hellacopters played a reunion show to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album. “It felt really nice playing the old songs again,” Andersson recalls. “As we started playing more and more shows, we felt we needed a new album because we’re not old enough to be a nostalgia band.” Enter *Eyes of Oblivion*, The Hellacopters’ first album in 14 years—and their first with guitarist and co-founder Dregen since 1997’s *Payin’ the Dues*. Below, Andersson comments on each track. **“Reap a Hurricane”** “It was actually the last song I wrote for the album. Up until then, we didn’t feel like we had a song that would be suitable for a first song on the album. And loving the album format, the sequencing is really important to me. The first song on any rock album should always be upbeat. The lyrics are talking about how, since industrialization, things have been moving pretty fast in the world—and that doesn’t look very good. But I tried to wrap it in a little bit of humor.” **“Can It Wait”** “I probably wrote this song at least ten years ago, back when I had my other band Imperial State Electric. I remember we all thought that it sounded too much like The Hellacopters. So, when we started talking about recording a new Hellacopters album, this was the first one I showed to the other guys.” **“So Sorry I Could Die”** “This one is also around ten years old, I think. It’s just my Swedish take on American rhythm & blues. Being me, it’s not going to sound like rhythm & blues from the ’60s, but that’s what I had in the back of my head. It’s something we have never tried before, so that was really fun for us. And it got Boba, our keyboard player, to shine a little bit.” **“Eyes of Oblivion”** “I think this is probably the one song on the album that sounds most like The Hellacopters. It reminds me of other songs we have. The lyrics are talking about how the world can be too much sometimes. Russia is attacking Ukraine at the moment and we’re almost over the pandemic and I think a lot of people just want to disappear for an hour or two. You want to escape a little bit. That being said, I don’t want to ignore things around me, either.” **“A Plow and a Doctor”** “The theme for this one is a little bit of a different take on the first song. We’ve gone so far so quickly, but perhaps we should just destroy everything and start from scratch. And then we’d need a plow so we can eat, and a doctor so we don’t get too sick.” **“Positively Not Knowing”** “I’ve written a few songs about religion over the years, and this is one of them. I would call myself an atheist, but I’m also very fascinated how people can be so convinced. And it amazes me that I’m *not* so convinced. And then another guy can believe something completely different and also be so convinced. Maybe I’m right and they’re wrong, or it’s the other way around. I don’t know. So, I’m just having fun with that topic.” **“Tin Foil Soldier”** “I am a big fan of ’70s glam, so this is me trying to channel Sweet and Slade. But then, it’s through the Swedish filter, so it will come out different. But that was the idea when I sat down with the guitar. I had this riff that I thought sounded a bit like it could be from that era. Even on the demo, I put handclaps because a song like that needs handclaps. And then Dregen wrote the lyrics to this one.” **“Beguiled”** “I listen a lot to the Ramones, and sometimes you just want to play something that’s similar. But then, of course, you’re not the Ramones, so it won’t sound exactly like that. But the song is about internet trolls—just me having fun with them.” **“The Pressure’s On”** “That one\'s a little different because Boba, the keyboard player, wrote the music. I wrote the lyrics and the vocal melody and arranged a little bit of it, so that’s the team effort of the album. Lyrically, it’s pretty simple. It’s just about the pressure that’s on everybody these days. It’s coming from all over the place.” **“Try Me Tonight”** “Musically, I think that’s just me trying to channel a little bit of a Stooges/MC5 type thing, but there could also be a little bit of Kiss and Ted Nugent in there. And the lyrics are me having fun with that old phrase, ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover.’ In the narrative of the song, I may look like a geek to you, but just wait and see. Maybe I have a black belt in martial arts. Just try me tonight.”

The years 2017, 2019, and 2021 brought Fantastic Negrito three Grammys for Best Contemporary Blues Album. If 2022 doesn’t provide a fourth for the Oakland-hailing singer and composer, it is only because his *White Jesus Black Problems* isn’t actually a blues album. The project is a concept LP exploring the relationship between Negrito’s seventh-generation white Scottish grandmother, an indentured servant, and his seventh-generation African American grandfather, a slave, in Colonial Virginia. Buried in some wily and operatic amalgamation of funk, rock, blues, gospel, Motown, and country are Negrito’s impressions of the era and the unknowable pressures of carrying on an interracial relationship during that time. For his part, Negrito is able to narrate an impossible sort of existence (“You Don’t Belong Here,” “You Better Have a Gun,” “Register of Free Negroes”) with near-academic resolve, bolstered by grooves too expansive and lively to be reduced to just “the blues.”

On their 10th studio album, Canadian rock band Nickelback set their sights on heavy metal. Opener “San Quentin” is a high-octane moment in the band’s discography, a hulking narrative written from the perspective of an inmate, with a shredding chorus. Released five years after their 2017 full-length LP *Feed the Machine*, an album that doubled as a miracle following singer Chad Kroeger’s vocal cord surgery, *Get Rollin’* is a bold release from a band that’s only more successful than they are divisive. Elsewhere, Nickelback touches on stoner country rock (“High Time”), indulges in screamy gang vocals and hair-metal riffs (“Vegas Bomb”), and delivers on the stadium-sized rock ballads they’re best known for (“Does Heaven Even Know You’re Missing?”). At the emotional heart of the release is “Steel Still Rusts,” an acoustic song that thoughtfully details the challenges combat veterans face when returning to civilian life.

The notion of The Black Keys as some kind of neo-primitive blues machine risen from the swamp to bring you what rock was supposed to be has always been a little overstated: Like The White Stripes, they’ve always been highly style-conscious, not to mention more occupied with simplicity in concept than in practice—they work at it. *Dropout Boogie* feels of a piece with 2019’s *“Let’s Rock”*: catchy, concise, stripped down but polished, with references to glam (“Wild Child”), psychedelia (“How Long”), and post-Stones blues (the Billy Gibbons co-write “Good Love”). With 20 years as a band behind them, they have their story and they’re sticking to it. And the more sophisticated they get, the easier they make it sound.

When Bonnie Raitt was dreaming up *Just Like That...*, her first album in six years, she had a very specific mission in mind: Record the songs she’s always wanted to, and especially the most soulful, funky ones she could find. “I always got my ear cocked for either old soul chestnuts or some obscure album cut off of an artist that I haven\'t listened to for a while,” she told Apple Music\'s Zane Lowe. “I\'m just always hunting.” Some of the songs are covers or tributes inspired by other artists: She fell in love with The Bros. Landreth’s “Made Up Mind,” the album’s lead-off track, when the band opened for her on tour in 2014, while Al Anderson of NRBQ’s “Something’s Got a Hold of My Heart” has been stuck in her head for three decades. Others, like the album’s title track, are new compositions inspired by the legendary singer-songwriter’s own favorite songs and songwriters. “I knew that this time when I wrote, I wanted to write from a third-person point of view,” Bonnie Raitt said. “Either a short story or something that moved me out in the world from somebody else\'s life story, because I\'d really mined a lot of my own personal life. I\'d pretty much covered all the members of my family, my relationships, and I just loved story songs, and I hadn\'t done one except for a song called \'All at Once\' that I did years ago. I love John Prine\'s \'Angel From Montgomery\' and \'Donald and Lydia,\' and I love the music of early Dylan, the first few albums where it\'s just him fingerpicking in a voice unadorned. I wanted a song to tell as a very simple story.” “Just Like That” is both simple and not, in that it touches on deep love, painful truth, and devastating loss—all things that Raitt felt acutely as she worked on the album over the course of the trauma and furious change she witnessed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. “It\'s hard to separate the last couple of years\' COVID experience from the nightmare of the election cycle, and the polarity, hostility, and viciousness that\'s become what our country\'s climate is,” she says. “I just wasn\'t expecting that in this lifetime. It gave me a purpose. I knew that we eventually were going to either get back on the road or I was going to get in the studio, so it felt healing to have something to focus on and pull those songs together and know that people are hurting out there. And I can\'t wait to get on the road—not just to support my band and crew and the groups that I support, but to have some fun again and bring some light.”

Previewed in April with the limited edition single ‘Senses Out of Control’, the new Buzzcocks album is finally unveiled – their first new studio offering since ‘The Way’ in 2014! The legendary Manchester punk band need little introduction. Back in 1977, they gave birth to a generation of independent labels with their debut EP ‘Spiral Scratch’. Thereafter, their melodic punk-pop proved irresistible, leading to hit singles and three landmark albums. They broke up in 1981 but reunited in 1989 and have been going steady ever since. Sadly, singer Pete Shelley passed away in 2018 but founder member and the band’s other singer/songwriter Steve Diggle has kept the flag flying. During the COVID pandemic, Steve and co. (Chris Remington on bass, Danny Farrant on drums) busied themselves with recording ‘Sonics In The Soul’. Recorded at Studio 7in London, the album was co- produced by Steve himself with Laurence Loveless.