Kerrang!'s 50 Best Albums of 2024

For their third album, Kentucky hardcore troupe Knocked Loose chose a title that resonated deeply with vocalist Bryan Garris. During an airplane takeoff that triggered Garris’ fear of flying, the woman seated next to him offered the comforting words, “You won’t go before you’re supposed to.” “The line struck him so strongly that it immediately occurred to him that it should be the title,” Knocked Loose guitarist Isaac Hale tells Apple Music. “It also became a lyric in the last song, ‘Sit & Mourn.’ Like the rest of our records, this is a collection of stuff from Bryan’s personal struggles dealing with anger and loss and depression and sadness. It’s a reminder to him—and all of us—that we’re still here. We made it through all the hardships that came with the past four years of writing this.” Musically speaking, Knocked Loose entered the writing sessions for *You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To* with a very different mindset than the one that drove their 2019 breakthrough *A Different Shade of Blue* and revered 2021 concept EP *A Tear in the Fabric of Life*. “There was just way more pressure, and we had way more experience,” Hale says. “Some people view the third album as a make-or-break record. We had pressure from the fans and the outside world, but more so pressure from ourselves. We thought, ‘How can we possibly outdo what we’ve done before?’ It was tough, but I think we were able to come up with a record where every song accomplishes something unique.” Below, he discusses each track. **“Thirst”** “This was written in the first session that we ever had for this record. It was written before *A Tear in the Fabric of Life* even came out. It came from a jam session we were having where we wanted to create a really difficult song on drums to challenge our drummer Pacsun. We wanted something super short, super intense, and we just made it as complex as we could. And to start the record, it’s something we’ve never done before—a super in-your-face jump scare.” **“Piece by Piece”** “This was our attempt at doing kind of a Hatebreed-esque banger. It has a hook to it, but the hook is one of the mosh parts in the song, akin to \[Hatebreed’s\] ‘Perseverance.’ One of the things we wanted to accomplish on this record was to create stuff that was hooky and catchy, but at the same time crazy heavy. In many ways, I think that it’s the most hardcore song on the record, and that’s what we love about it. It’s our version of a catchy hardcore track that can really connect with people.” **“Suffocate” (feat. Poppy)** “We wrote this song after we thought we had a finished record. Before we went to record, Poppy slid into Bryan’s DMs asking if we would be interested in collaborating on some music. Me and Bryan are huge Poppy fans, so of course we said yes automatically. That same day, Bryan called me like, ‘Hey, man—I’m coming over. We need to write another song.’ We wrote the track the next day, and it was one of the smoothest writing experiences on the record because we wrote it knowing Poppy was going to be a part of it. And because of that, we were able to do some sassy parts that maybe we wouldn’t put on a normal Knocked Loose song but that really work with her voice. I think it’s one of the most special songs we’ve ever written.” **“Don’t Reach for Me”** “This was our attempt at writing a song with a more rock- or pop-oriented structure. It’s different from stuff that we\'ve done before because it has a slightly melodic chorus with a hook. It has a soft bridge with a jam part and some cleaner guitar. And a lot of it is midtempo, besides the very beginning. It only gets fast very briefly. That’s very new for us. There’s like seven mosh parts, so we needed to balance those. It took a long time to figure out, but I think the final product really succeeds in that juxtaposition.” **“Moss Covers All”** “This was written in the second writing session that we did for this record, up in Michigan. We woke up one morning, started jamming, and we were just not coming up with a lot of stuff we liked. We were pretty much just throwing paint at the wall and getting aggravated. When we took a break, I had an idea and basically wrote this entire song in my head in about a minute. I voice memo’d it briefly on my phone and then immediately started putting it down without telling the guys. When they came back, I played it for them—and what I played is pretty much exactly what’s on the record. It’s short, sweet, and super heavy, with a breakdown and a spooky lead that goes directly into the next song.” **“Take Me Home”** “‘Moss Covers All’ and ‘Take Me Home’ are very much connected songs. ‘Moss Covers All’ was written first, but then we really felt the need to have a song on here that’s meant to scare you. We didn’t worry about a mosh part or any sort of heaviness. We just wanted a scary track that’s uncomfortable and throws the listener off guard. When we were thinking about what shape that could take, I immediately thought of that spooky lead from ‘Moss Covers All,’ which we ended up looping as the blueprint for this track.” **“Slaughterhouse 2” (feat. Chris Motionless)** “This song started as an inside joke because Motionless in White was kind enough to reach out to Bryan and have him collaborate on one of their songs, ’Slaughterhouse,’ a very heavy, politically charged track. We’re all huge Motionless in White fans, so of course he accepted. And then we were able to tour with them. As soon as Bryan did that track, we were joking that we should do a song called ‘Slaughterhouse 2.’ We were just kind of laughing about it for a while, but then we thought we were kind of shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn’t do it. Chris was down from the beginning, and his voice is amazing on this. It was a challenge to match the theme and vibe of the original song, but I think we were able to create something that’s not just a great sequel, but that really stands on its own as a highlight of the record.” **“The Calm That Keeps You Awake”** “The funny thing about this one is that the song totally revolves around the huge breakdown at the end. That part was written first, as part of another thing that was written before *A Tear in the Fabric* had even come out. So, like four years ago, we needed to write new parts because the rest of the song we’d written wasn’t up to par, but that breakdown was super necessary. In doing so, we created this really cool, Meshuggah-esque, kind of Sepultura-auxiliary-percussion vibe that’s one of the most unique parts of the record.” **“Blinding Faith”** “We definitely have some jabs at religious hypocrisy throughout the Knocked Loose discography, and this is just kind of an update on that situation. We hadn\'t done one in a while, and it was something that was feeling close to home for Bryan at the time. To me, this sounds like a mix of some of our greatest riffs that we’d written over the course of a year—it’s kind of a riff-salad song. In some ways, it’s one of the heaviest and scariest songs on the record, so we put it out as a single to say, ‘If you thought we were going to get any softer, absolutely not. And here’s proof.’” **“Sit & Mourn”** “This one revolves around the melodic lead and the kind of ambient post-rock breakdown at the end. We wrote that in the first writing session in Joshua Tree, and it took us a while to come up with more parts that we felt were that good. But the song is very, very anthemic. It sounds very dark and melancholic, but at the same time, the lyrics are positive in a way. Thematically, it’s kind of a title track in the way that the lyrics relate to the name of the record. I know it was a very cathartic song for Bryan. In many ways, it’s the saddest song on the record, but in other ways it’s the most positive. And it’s mentally exhausting from start to finish. It ends with a sound clip that I won’t disclose, but it’ll take you by surprise.”

“I wanted the album to feel really fun,” Amyl and The Sniffers vocalist Amy Taylor tells Apple Music of *Cartoon Darkness*, the Australian quartet’s third full-length. That goal does, however, come with a caveat: “I wanted it to feel fun without putting up the blinkers and being like, everything’s sweet, all good. Things are really weird and things are pretty bad and there’s a lot of things to be stressed about, but there’s the balance of it. Not to encourage people to ignore the bad, but to try and find more of a balance.” So while *Cartoon Darkness* finds Taylor confronting issues such as body positivity, the ills of social media, the climate crisis, and capitalism’s impact on society and people’s wellbeing, she does so with an unrelenting lust for life and an indefatigable spirit that, on songs such as “Jerkin’” and “Motorbike Song,” adheres to the adage that life is for the living. Recorded with Nick Launay (Midnight Oil, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606, which boasts the same mixing desk on which Nirvana recorded *Nevermind* and Fleetwood Mac did *Rumours* (“I really didn’t want to spill anything on it,” laughs Taylor), the band approached *Cartoon Darkness* with a specific sonic goal in mind. “Bryce \[Wilson, drums\] and Declan \[Martens, guitar\] were really keen to try and explore different sounds and make it feel a bit more like a studio album,” says Taylor. Adds Martens: “In the past we’ve tried to see how everything would relate to when we perform it live. And even though a lot of these songs will be included in the set, I think we just wanted to make sure the focus was on making the best listening experience at home rather than making the best songs to be taken live.” A typically fiery slice of raw punk rock, albeit one that takes a breather on the gentler “Big Dreams” and “Bailing on Me,” the end result is what Taylor calls “the first album we feel really proud of from the get go.” Here, Taylor and Martens walk Apple Music through *Cartoon Darkness*, track by track. **“Jerkin’”** Amy Taylor: “It’s a tongue-in-cheek poke at keyboard warriors, at the haters in general. It’s just a fuck you to anyone who’s down to accept it.” Declan Martens: “This was conceived earlier than the intense writing period. We came up with it in the early half of 2023. It has a good intensity. Despite this being our attempt at a studio album it does replicate what we do live, which is straightaway energy.” AT: “I really wanted to write a song that big-upped yourself while bringing down the haters. I wanted it to be like, ‘I’m sick, you’re shit.’” **“Chewing Gum”** AT: “So much of life is just a carrot dangled in front of your head, like you’re just around the corner from being able to take a break, or the goodness is always just around the corner. And it’s so much hard work. Under capitalism you’re just constantly working for goals you can never seem to hit. I feel that robs people of themselves and robs people of happiness and joy. Something else that robs people of those things is criticism and judgment. I think with social media, a lot of people are constantly bombarded with how they should be and what they could do and what they might be and how bad they are. I feel that robs people of the joy of making mistakes, and making mistakes is so important for growing up. I want to make the wrong decision sometimes, and I want to have fun and I want to feel love even if that’s a wrong decision, even if that’s a dumb decision, because what else is the point?” **“Tiny Bikini”** AT: “I always try and consciously surround myself with women, but sometimes it doesn’t work out. Even in the studio I was the only lady of maybe eight dudes in the room. So I was just channeling that energy going, ‘Yeah it’s technically my space, but I’m the only one here in a bikini.’ I think a lot of my experience in life is being the only lady, and I feel like, for me, I love expressing myself in slutty ways. The world is a boring place, and to dress up or to be scantily clad or just be interesting is something I value, so that song is going, ‘That’s what I like.’” **“Big Dreams”** DM: “I write a whole scope of heavy and soft songs, and finding the softer songs’ place in Amyl and The Sniffers has always been a challenge; I’ve had a fear of doing it. So I showed it to Amy and she really enjoyed it and encouraged it. I think a lot of the misconception is that it’s experimenting, but I feel like these sorts of songs have always been in us. I prefer to refer to it as exploring rather than experimenting.” AT: “A lot of people in my life have really big dreams and they are really talented, and they are trying to make something of themselves. The world is a harsh place, and even if they’re super talented, it’s really difficult because of the cost of living and the oversaturation of everything. And it’s like we’re all getting older and a lot of people’s dreams may not happen, but that internal energy, it’s still swirling inside you.” **“It’s Mine”** DM: “The guitar \[has\] a really odd tuning that I’d never used before. Me and Nick \[Launay\] had worked to get this really direct, harsh, aggressive guitar sound, and that’s what makes it unique—it makes it sound like you’ve just stuck your head in a bucket of bees swarming.” AT: “Lyrically, it’s a subconscious dump trying to explore lots of different themes—the pressures of bodies to be perfect, and it’s saying it might not be perfect but it’s mine. And dipping into the confusion of consumerism and getting swept up and wanting to buy stuff. It’s a big mix of that.” **“Motorbike Song”** AT: “It’s a yearning for freedom. Life can be so stuffy, especially with screens and technology, so much of it is sitting still and looking at a screen for hours. I just saw a motorbike driving along and I wanted to embody the motorbike. I don’t want to ride it, I want to be the motorbike.” DM: “When we were working it out it felt like a So-Cal, ’80s punk song and it developed into more of a Motörhead-type thing. It’s fun, it’s got my most guitar solos on one song ever.” **“Doing in Me Head”** DM: “I was trying to write a disco song. I wanted it to be like The Gap Band. But I guess when you bring it to some Australian punks it comes out as ‘Doing in Me Head.’” AT: “This song kind of embodies the whole of *Cartoon Darkness*. Like it touches on the fact we all use our phones and social media, and they favor outrage, and subconsciously the system floods us with negative emotions and then it profits off that. It kind of dictates our life, not the other way around. You have to favor the algorithm, it won’t favor you. And talking about how spoon-fed our generation especially is and the lack of critical thinking.” **“Pigs”** AT: “Sometimes people are like, I know more so, therefore, I’m better than you and you’re an idiot. I don’t agree with that, because I’ve been on both sides of knowing stuff and not knowing stuff, and being an idiot and being a legend. So this song is saying, ‘We’re all pigs, you’re not better than me, we’re all just pigs in the mud.’” DM: “I’m really fond of the chorus. It’s a recycled riff that I wrote before our self-titled album that we jammed on but never became a song. Now, with my new knowledge in music, five or six years on, I found a way to make it interesting. I remember seeing that excitement in Amy’s face when I first started playing it differently.” **“Bailing on Me”** AT: “I was really struggling to write lyrics to it and figure out what to say and Declan was like, ‘I think it’s a sexy song, try and make it horny.’ I was trying to do that but was like, ‘I really don’t get that vibe from this song.’ So I ended up making it a heartbreak song.” DM: “I think it’s interesting that my intention was horny and Amy interprets heartbreak. I think that’s a funny way of looking at it.” **“U Should Not Be Doing That”** AT: “So much of my experience in the music world has been people trying to hold me back with their negativity and their limitations. Because they’ve made limitations for themselves that I don’t subscribe to. They might be saying you shouldn’t be doing that and I can’t believe you’re doing that, but I am doing it, and you’re not. I’m over here experiencing this with the choices that I’ve made, and you’re down in Melbourne having a bitch while you’re doing lines at 4am with other 50-year-olds, bitching about a 24-year-old. There are Facebook groups with old rockers being like, ‘I don’t like that band, she’s crap.’ Kiss my arse!” **“Do It Do It”** AT: “For some reason I always imagine some random athlete trying to listen to this to gee up, so that’s what it’s about. Someone being like, ‘Yeah I’ll fuckin’ get up and run.’” DM: “This was the last riff I came up with before moving to the US. The working title for it was ‘Pornhub Awards’ because, the night before, I found a free ticket to the Pornhub Awards. I didn’t win anything.” **“Going Somewhere”** AT: “Anyone can find dirt, but it takes hard work to find gold. It’s the easiest thing in the world to criticize. People are just lazy, and they’re not trying hard enough to find the good in stuff. There’s no perfect world and there’s not going to be utopia, because utopia would be dystopia anyway. It’s just saying I’m going to go somewhere, hopefully you can come there too.” **“Me and The Girls”** DM: “Amy sent me this hip-hop song that had like an Eddie Van Halen sort of guitar sample in it, and I was like, ‘I’ve got a riff that’s super repetitive, almost like a sample, a loop, and I wrote it when I was 21. It’s called ‘Fry Pan Fingers,’ because I used to stick my fingers on the frying pan to callous them before gigs when I was young.’ So I was like, ‘All right, Amy, here’s this repetitive \[riff\], like a hip-hop loop that I’ve got.’” AT: “I needed a lyric for the chorus, so I was like, ‘Declan, now’s your chance, do you want to do a duet?’ I said, ‘Me and the girls are drunk at the airport,’ and he’s like, ‘I can’t believe that it’s an open bar,’ and I loved it, but everyone else was like, this is a bit weird. We’d been listening to a lot of Beastie Boys so we were like, let’s add in the vocoder \[on his voice\] and make it sound like that.”

On twenty one pilots’ seventh album *Clancy*, the duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun have crafted a project that is both a culmination and a glimpse into the future. Narratively, *Clancy* wraps up a story they’ve been weaving since 2015’s *Blurryface*. Sonically, the Columbus, Ohio-bred group begins forging the next iteration of their style. “It feels like truly the beginning of an era, but an end to one as well—or will be,” Dun tells Apple Music. “I think it\'s been a great place to write songs from having this kind of story in mind, but I think that definitely by no means is it the end of our band.” Take the thriller “Next Semester,” which finds the group diving into elements of synth-pop, emo, dance-punk, and more. It’s equal parts catchy and subtle, with Joseph’s lyrics almost directly in conversation with early themes the group focused on, like alienation, confusion, and loneliness. He sings: “I don\'t wanna be here, I don\'t wanna be here/It\'s a taste test/Of what I hate less/Can you die of anxiousness?/I don\'t wanna be here, I don\'t wanna be here.” “Lavish” is a futuristic psych-pop track buoyed by glimmering keyboards and dusty drums. When Joseph sings, “Welcome to the style you haven’t seen in a while,” before delivering an intoxicating rap, he’s almost speaking to the creation of the album itself. It’s an ambiguity and a breaking of the fourth wall that the band has embraced. “Maybe there are conversations that will happen between friends who have followed the storyline and maybe have some kind of arguments over what the outcome was,” Dun says. “And I think that\'s cool.”

Arriving 20 years after the open political ire of *American Idiot*, Green Day’s 14th album sees the veteran California punk trio energized by a new wave of worrying trends. Now in his early fifties, singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong retains the snotty defiance that has always been his calling card, whether the stakes are high or low. He doesn’t mince words on opener and lead single “The American Dream Is Killing Me,” calling out the nation’s boom in conspiracy theories and reimagining the classic patriotic lyric “my country, ’tis of thee” as “my country under siege.” While less of a concept album than the rock opera turned stage musical *American Idiot*, *Saviors* still latches on to some recurring themes in the name of getting a point across, such as updating 1950s-era rock ’n’ roll tropes: “Bobby Sox” swaps the aw-shucks question “Do you wanna be my girlfriend?” with “Do you wanna be my boyfriend?” while the timeless-sounding romantic ballad “Suzie Chapstick” is timestamped with a reference to absently scrolling Instagram. And “Living in the ’20s” may flash a guitar solo ripped straight from rock’s earliest days, but it also cites the more modern markers of mass shootings and pleasure robots. Armstrong’s urgent venting is delivered within some of Green Day’s catchiest songs since the 1990s, and longtime producer Rob Cavallo proves just as crucial to the album’s punchy, uncrowded sound as bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool. After all, Cavallo helmed the band’s 1994 smash *Dookie*, and *Saviors* sneaks in a few nods to that ripe era too. The sheer simplicity of the chugging chords opening “Strange Days Are Here to Stay” evokes the former album’s hit single “Basket Case,” while the mortality-minded closer “Fancy Sauce” borrows Nirvana’s coupling of “stupid and contagious.” The bubblegum anthem “Look Ma, No Brains!” harks back even further to Green Day’s DIY roots (and before that, pop-punk godfathers the Ramones), further cementing the idea that righteous anger goes down easier smuggled inside a pop song.

Neck Deep have never been afraid to explore, regularly seeding sounds and ideas from other genres into their pop-punk foundations. The Wrexham, Wales, band were at their most adventurous on their fourth album, 2020’s *All Distortions Are Intentional*: Setting the songs in a conceptual world called Sonderland, they nosed around in indie rock and Britpop while reflecting on identity, mental health, and disenfranchisement. However, this intrepid spirit stalled under lockdown, and when restrictions lifted, the five-piece struggled to find that momentum again. “We had to rediscover ourselves a little bit, post-COVID,” singer Ben Barlow told Mark Hoppus on Apple Music 1’s After School Radio. “It took us a little bit to build back up and figure out where we were gonna go.” Even by the time Neck Deep stationed themselves in LA to record this self-titled fifth album in 2023, there was still uncertainty. After just a few weeks’ work, all they’d forged was a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction. The music didn’t sound right, so they decided to strip away outside influences and start again by returning to their own studio in Wrexham, where the other Barlow brother, bassist Seb, took on production duties. It’s little surprise then that *Neck Deep* marks a return to the exhilarating and simple blend of melody and adrenalin that characterized their earliest records. “It’s straight-up pop-punk, just short, sharp, to the point, in your face,” said Ben. “We just simplified, took a step back, looked at where we came from and what we loved about the music that we write. It’s always been about hard-hitting, fast, pacy anthems that are catchy, can help you through a bad time and be the soundtrack to your good times. We’re really at peace with ourselves—let’s just be a straight-up pop-punk band and do what we do.” What’s different now is their music carries the wisdom of age and experience, and Ben’s lyrics present more shades and nuance as he explores his relationship with his parents (“They May Not Mean to \[But They Do\]”), urges self-belief in times of frustration and vulnerability (“Moody Weirdo”), and raises an insurrectionary call to make a difference in a turbulent world (“We Need More Bricks”). “It’s just life, love, relationships, myself, lots of looking inward,” he says. “I’m looking at how I was as a kid and who I am now. All I know is I know nothing, and I’m just a fool in a crazy world—dealing with normal things. While we’re a successful band, I’m a pretty normal dude: My life revolves around my band, my future wife, and my dogs. So, hopefully, I’m relatable—and that’s always been something I look for in music.”

Across three albums as Slaves during the second half of the 2010s, Kent duo Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent established themselves as a playful, charismatic arm of UK punk, earning a Mercury nomination, festival headline slots, and the patronage of Mike D, who produced 2016’s *Take Control*. In a tale as old as rock ’n’ roll, though, their bond dimmed in a fog of miscommunication and weariness. By 2019, the band had been indefinitely decommissioned as they worked on solo projects and contended with personal upheaval, including Vincent losing his partner to cancer in 2020 and Holman living with OCD. However, when Blur sounded them out towards the end of 2022 about a support slot at Wembley the following summer, it catalyzed the gentle steps Holman and Vincent had been taking towards a reunion. Beginning to write together again, they changed their name to SOFT PLAY, having reflected on criticism they’d regularly faced as two white males trading under the name Slaves. Thus *HEAVY JELLY* arrives as a reset, and it’s the sound of a band revitalized by recovering the joy and love in their friendship. “We’re obviously older and have gone through some shit, and in a way life is totally different now,” Holman told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in May 2024. “But we found the original recipe and it just feels like super fun again. We’re not thinking about anybody else—we’re just enjoying having a laugh together and making some tunes, and it feels like good stuff’s coming out of that.” Nowhere is that more obvious than on “Punk’s Dead.” When they announced their new name on social media in December 2022, it raised anger in some corners of the comments sections, and here, against pummeling riffs, they turn an amusing flamethrower on themselves as well as people whose punk fundamentalism became reactionary foot-stamping. “I don’t like change,” spits Holman, mocking the outrage. “Punk’s dead/Pushing up daisies/Come and get a load of these PC babies.” To pour a bit more fuel on the ire, they then invite Robbie Williams to sing the middle eight while some of their critics read out their Instagram comments to the sound of a crying child. This is the duo’s heaviest-sounding record to date, embracing a childhood love of nu metal on “Mirror Muscles,” a tale of feeling intimidated and inadequate in the gym. It’s also their most vulnerable. Holman examines his OCD on “Worms on Tarmac” and “Isaac Is Typing…,” while folk-rock closer “Everything and Nothing” is a heart-grabbing study of grief. However heavy the jelly gets, though, there’s always that playful humor to leaven the taste. Speaking to Lowe about writing “Act Violently”—a profane outburst of excessive rage inspired by the pair almost being knocked over by an e-scooter—Vincent said, “You have to give yourselves permission to write the song, and it was similar back in the day when we wrote \[2014 single\] ‘Where’s Your Car Debbie?’: You see a wry smile from the other guy and you think, ‘Can we actually get away with this?’ And then, when you’re in a good place—which we weren’t before now—we can give each other permission to write the song.”

On their second album, 2021’s *Who Am I?*, and follow-up *Unwanted* (2022), Pale Waves presented a tough, punk-pop- and rock-informed exterior for singer Heather Baron-Gracie’s emotionally bare confessionals. Fourth album *Smitten*, however, finds the Manchester quartet back wandering through the gothic spires and ethereal dream pop that had marked 2018 debut *My Mind Makes Noises*. Epic, swooning, and romantic, the likes of “Perfume,” “Gravity,” and “Seeing Stars” sparkle with an iridescent color palette, blending shades of jangling ’80s indie pop, Cure-like atmospherics, and lush, Cocteau Twins-inspired washes of sound. “I wanted this record to sound very British,” Baron-Gracie tells Apple Music. “The visuals of the album came first for me before the music. I wanted it to look grand, like the English countryside, and romantic and feminine and just beautiful. That came before any of the music. Once I had that imagery, I moved on to the music.” With the sonic architecture for the record in place, Baron-Gracie penned a set of songs that looked back across the key moments and relationships of her past, taking stock and reassessing the person she was with a new perspective as she approached her thirties. “I don’t think I could have written these songs at any other point in my life until now, I would have justified a lot of things and made excuses,” she says. “I thought it was important for me to look back at a lot of my life, because I’ve had some huge experiences that I haven’t ever written about. I felt comfortable, and I felt in a good position in my life to be able to do that this time around.” Read on as Baron-Gracie takes us on a tour of *Smitten*, track by track. **“Glasgow”** “A lot of the songs are looking back at certain moments. ‘Glasgow’ is about a situation I had with another woman. It was a quite brief encounter, but it felt amazing and then, all of a sudden, it came crashing down. We both had a realization that this definitely wasn’t going to work, that our personalities were never going to work together and, if we carried this on, we would’ve burnt everything down in flames. It could have just gone totally toxic and, at that point, I just don’t think I was ready to add any more toxic feelings into my life.” **“Not a Love Song”** “This is a ‘fuck you’ song. I fall hard and I fall deep, and I did in this situation. Behind closed doors, I was the one and only, I was the person that this person was willing to commit to and she adored me, but then in front of everyone else I was nobody. That really frustrated me, and I would question myself, ‘Am I not good enough? Why do you want me behind closed doors, but then you don’t when anyone else is around, and then you chase boys to just piss me off?’ I had to list all of these amazing things that I could’ve been and that she’ll never be able to get from me anymore.” **“Gravity”** “The story in ‘Gravity’ is about me and another woman. She was religious but also secretly gay. Her family were very religious too, and she couldn’t choose between me and her religion and her family and her world outside of me. In the end, it was too much for her and she chose her religion over me. I wanted the song to feel quite religious so that’s why it has all the stacks of the harmonies. You can imagine those harmonies being sung in church.” **“Thinking About You”** “We’ve had multiple versions of all of the songs on this record. I think that’s why it’s our strongest record, because these songs have been worked through again and again and again and had so many different personalities and so many changes. So much thought and consideration has gone into them. The original version of this was a straight-up acoustic ballad. In the studio, everyone started to say that it didn’t fit with the rest of the record, but I was so attached to this song from day one. I felt a weird connection to it, so we had to rework it with this guitar riff. It was perfect, it made the record better.” **“Perfume”** “‘Perfume’ had to be the first single for *Smitten*. It was the star of the show for me. It sets up this expectation for the record and it captures everything that’s going to follow. It’s romantic, it’s feminine, it’s dreamy, it’s grand. It paints the perfect picture. It’s all the things I love about music in this one track. ‘Perfume’ is about that infatuation you get, it’s a need, it’s a want. It’s lust as well. It’s all these falling-in-love moments captured in a song. The lyrics and the music take you on that roller coaster that you go through when you meet someone for the first time.” **“Last Train Home”** “It’s about a situation when I was just figuring out my sexuality and this was the first girl that I was figuring that out with. She had already embraced it and was confident with who she was and her sexuality, but I definitely wasn’t there. I couldn’t commit to her the way she wanted me to. I wasn’t ready to walk down the street holding her hand and I kept her a secret. I feel incredibly guilty and ashamed about that, but I just wasn’t ready. I broke her heart because I wasn’t confident or strong enough yet. It took me a few years to get there and to get comfortable, but I definitely wasn’t ready when I was in my early twenties. But everyone’s different. Some people instantly feel comfortable with it. Others take a few years. Others take decades.” **“Kiss Me Again”** “I wanted a really fun song on the record. We’ve been rehearsing this, and it’s really fun to play live as well. It was about a time where I knew this girl was just having me on for fun and as her little experiment but, at the time, I just didn’t care because I just wanted her attention and her touch. She was willing to give it to me, and I wasn’t willing to think about it at all. I just dived in deep and didn’t really think about it. And I didn’t want to, either.” **“Miss America”** “It’s definitely the most aggressive song on the record. We had so many dreamy songs that we felt we had the space to write something a bit more aggressive that would translate really well live. We always think about how things are going to be received live, and people love an upbeat, aggressive moment in a set. We like to intertwine a lot of things in our music. The lyrics are very delicate and honest and raw, about me holding my hands up about being a shit person. But then we contrast it with this music that is very in your face, punchy, and aggressive.” **“Hate to Hurt You”** “‘Hate to Hurt You’ was the last track that we wrote for *Smitten*. A lot of the songs are quite yearning and heartfelt. I love that kind of music. That’s what I listen to the most. But I felt like we had to give people a moment where they could dance. It’s about a situation where I want to leave, but I feel awful doing so. I’m kind of pushing and pulling: I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m looking at other people, but I respect you as person and I don’t want to upset you. I don’t want to cause you harm, but I’m causing you harm by staying in this longer than necessary.” **“Seeing Stars”** “After we finished touring *Unwanted*, I started going into the studio and writing. I didn’t know it was going to be *Smitten* at the time, it went through loads of different genres and cycles and it was only when we wrote ‘Seeing Stars’ that we realized: *This* is the kind of sound that we want for our fourth record. It was those big jangly guitars. Previously, I was trying for a more rock sound, and then I instantly heard these guitars and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what heaven sounds like…OK, this is what the record is going to be.’” **“Imagination”** “I was taking inspiration from a girl that I was infatuated with in high school who was straight. I was never going to be able to receive an ounce of her love in that way. Nor did I ever want to admit it to her because I knew that she was straight, she wasn’t queer. So, for me, the only way we could exist together was in my imagination, and that’s what inspired that song: when you know something is unachievable and it’s never going to happen. It’s that realization.” **“Slow”** “‘Slow’ is very anthemic, and it felt like it had to be the song that we finished the record on. I didn’t want to end on the slow sad song, because we’ve done that in the past. We wrote this quite early on in the process, and we changed a lot of things about it in the studio. It was definitely more of an aggressive track previously, but I thought it sounded a bit too dad rock, so I wanted to strip away a lot of things about it. I replaced the riff and we replaced a lot of the other guitars. I changed the structure and I changed the lyrics as well. It is quite a defiant way to end the album. It’s kind of like, ‘OK, the record is done. I’ve said everything I need to say. I’m out of here now.’”

Nineteen albums into their genre-defining career, heavy metal gods Judas Priest are still on top. *Invincible Shield* continues in the anthemic, fan-friendly tradition of 2018’s *Firepower* with songs inspired by internet-induced rage (“Panic Attack”), political charlatans (“Devil in Disguise”), and the Salem witch trials (“Trial by Fire”), among many other topics. “As the metal messenger of Priest, I\'m always looking for opportunities to touch on subjects and ideas that I haven\'t done before,” vocalist Rob Halford tells Apple Music. “You’re searching for something fresh, something new. It’s the same with all of us in Priest. I think this is so important in music—to be interesting, engaging, and entertaining. I think Priest have been doing that for 50 years. Otherwise, we\'d have been dissipated many decades ago.” Below, he comments on each song on *Invincible Shield*, plus the three bonus tracks included in the deluxe edition. **“Panic Attack”** “When you talk about topics and subjects and ideas and so forth, it\'s all been done. Let\'s face it. Whenever I do a title for a song, I search it, because I hate doing things that have been done before. But ‘Panic Attack,’ I just love that phrase. I used to have panic attacks before I got sober, and they’re very debilitating. In this case, it’s someone reacting to something they’ve seen on the internet.” **“The Serpent and the King”** “The devil is the serpent, and the king is God. Is the devil a deity? I don’t know. But I think the serpent came to me first, and then naturally my mind went to the king. And then I always try to use at least one word in a Priest album that I\'ve never used before, like ‘sulfur.’ We know what sulfur is, we know what it smells like. So, we’ve got the devil and God in conflict. Good and evil, positive and negative, black and white. It’s a constant battle.” **“Invincible Shield”** “This is resilience, determination, protection. As I was sitting there with a blank piece of paper and pencil, what came into my head was the invincibility of who we are as people in all aspects of life and living, and the shield that we defend ourselves with. It’s about standing up for yourself within our world of heavy metal.” **“Devil in Disguise”** “I\'m a news hound. Like most old people, you start to engage in politics more as you age. When you\'re a younger person, for the most part, you don\'t give a fuck about politics. But as you get older, you start thinking, \'Why do I want to do an Elvis—pull out my gun and shoot the TV?\' So, this song came from just thinking about the political spectrum, but also thinking about the snake oil salesmen of this world. In the old westerns, the snake oil guy would come into town saying, ‘This potion will cure baldness. This one will make the horse eat.’ We’re not far removed from that, are we?” **“Gates of Hell”** “There are some deep, dark moments on this record, and this one goes to purgatory. You get there if you ride with me. It\'s that unity aspect of this beautiful metal community that we\'ve got. Sign on the line, let the Priest sell your soul. I was thinking of the PMRC, and I was thinking about devil music, and the people that used to come and stand outside the venues with placards: \'Judas Priest is the devil,\' and all that fun stuff. This is kind of throwing it back in their faces.” **“Crown of Horns”** “It\'s about finding love. I think if you can find love, it makes you complete. And it\'s a very deep song for me, spiritually. It\'s about finding Christ, really, but I wrap it up in that beautiful sphere of love. Love is all that matters. Love beats hate worldwide no matter where you\'re from. It\'s what keeps us all together.” **“As God Is My Witness”** “I think what\'s happening with me here is there\'s a lot of mortality going in my mind. Life can be a battle. I mean, it can be a battle trying to get the particular brand of bread that you want—‘they’re out of the bread!’ Originally, we were going to call this song ‘Hell to Pay,’ but ‘As God Is My Witness’ felt better. It’s something people actually say, like, ‘You’ve got another thing coming,’ or ‘Breaking the law.’ These phrases are out in the world, and they’re fun to utilize.” **“Trial by Fire”** “I saw something on Netflix about the Salem witch trials. The horrific way all those women were treated was out of pure superstition. The power of religion is profound in the way it affects humanity, and some of that is trauma. That was kind of the spark for this, but it’s also a bit of a reference to the way the public, when they get a story or an incident—and this is human nature—become the judge, the jury, and the executioner. We are so fast to create our opinions.” **“Escape From Reality”** “The bulk of that song comes from \[guitarist\] Glenn \[Tipton\]. He has these riff vaults. The thing about a riff is that it doesn’t matter if he wrote it in 1970 or 2023. Within *Invincible Shield*, it’s an affirmation of the heaviness of Judas Priest in this slow-tempo context. I think it’s the only one on the album with that kind of groove. Some of the messages on this album are quite personal, and ‘Escape From Reality’ is one of those. It’s about wishing you could go back in time to fix certain things, whatever they might be. It could be as simple as an argument in a relationship, or something big and traumatic.” **“Sons of Thunder”** “When you sit astride a Harley or whatever it is, it epitomizes freedom. The bike represents so many things with Judas Priest, and we\'re the only heavy metal band that\'s utilized the bike consistently. Those things that are attached to the bike—it\'s loud, it smells, it pisses people off—that\'s metal. I just wanted to have a bit of fun with that. And it\'s a little bit of a nod to *Sons of Anarchy*, because that free spirit, that part of Americana, is with us.” **“Giants in the Sky”** “The touchstones for this were Ronnie \[James Dio\] and Lemmy, two of my dear friends. Originally it was going to be called ‘The Mighty Have Fallen,’ but I thought that just sounds too bleak. Let\'s give it some lift. Let\'s give it some transcendence. I was also thinking about rock ’n’ roll radio. When I was growing up in England, we had one station. The first time I came to America, I couldn’t believe how many stations there were. And right now, as you and I are speaking, somebody in the world is playing Ronnie or Lemmy over the radio. They’re the giants in the sky.” **“Fight of Your Life”** “This is a bonus track. I really wanted it in the main track listing, but I didn’t get my way. I’m not a fan of brutal sports, but I do understand the athleticism and the skill of MMA and boxing, and even the fun stuff like wrestling. And you are fighting for your life. It’s a struggle and you’re pushing through. But I love this song. To me, it’s like, ‘Can we please put this song up for the NFL or NBA?’” **“Vicious Circle”** “Sometimes relationships can be in a vicious circle. ‘With the wicked schemes, cut deep the way that you can try/It makes me wonder how you sleep.’ So, again, we\'re in the political arena, aren\'t we? ‘I stand against you as you rage. My fate has struck your gilded cage.’ It\'s about the way personal relationships can sometimes get into a vicious circle, but it\'s also addressing the political spectrum.” **“The Lodger”** “Bob Halligan Jr. wrote this. He wrote ‘Some Heads Are Gonna Roll’ and ‘(Take These) Chains.’ He came to a show a few years ago, just to see the band. It was so great to see him, and I love what he’d done with those two tracks, so I said, ‘If you’ve got anything, send it to me.’ Maybe a month later, he sends me this. It’s about a guy who kills his wife and then his sister. It’s like a mini-movie about revenge and justice. Bob has a great talent for words and imagery, and I really love the dark and mysterious atmosphere of this song.”

Denzel Curry’s *King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2* continues a series that began way back in 2012, and the South Florida spitter illustrates just how far he’s come on the sequel. He unites rappers of all different generations on the project, taking cues from the Raider Klan crew he cut his teeth with in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Key Nyata and That Mexican OT represent the new school, while 2 Chainz and Juicy J hold it down for the old heads. As is often the case with Curry, the album is full of high-energy bangers, like the Maxo Kream-assisted “SET IT,” which burns and bounces with the half-speed swagger of Maxo’s Houston roots. Employing his now-classic triplet flow, Zel recalls how real the struggle was when he was cutting his teeth in the game: “They always told me more money, more problems/But when I was broke, they gave me shit for less.” On the Armani White-featuring “WISHLIST,” the duo turn in a club anthem, beaming with arena-ready synths and drums that will be perfect for one of Denzel Curry’s rowdy concert mosh pits.

“We are capable of doing whatever we want,” Stand Atlantic vocalist Bonnie Fraser tells Apple Music. “So that’s what we’re doing.” This shouldn’t come as a surprise to long-term fans of the Sydney outfit—they are, after all, a band that’s evolved from their pop-punk roots into one of rock’s most forward-thinking acts. On 2022’s *f.e.a.r.*, they embraced collaborations with artists outside of their scene such as emo rapper nothing,nowhere. and MC Tom The Mail Man, while incorporating a grab bag of styles including electronica and hip-hop. So it continues with their fourth album, *WAS HERE*, which further embellishes their sound with elements of reggae (“ROCKSTAR”), metal (“CRIMINAL”), and electropop (“GIRL$”). “We’ve never wanted to be put in a box, but this record was defining in that scenario,” says Fraser. “We were just like, ‘If this song is sounding pop as hell, let’s roll with it. If it’s sounding really heavy, let’s roll with it.’” Though the album’s name was inspired by the dressing room walls on which the band members have scrawled “Stand Atlantic Was Here,” it also has a deeper meaning that alludes to the diversity of the LP. “I knew going into this record we were going to push ourselves a lot more than we ever have,” admits Fraser. “So I wanted it to set the theme of like, ‘Just forget everything you know about our band.’ It’s almost as if we’ve died and been reborn, in a way.” Lyrically, the record finds Fraser in typically unflinching form, working through issues such as sexual abuse (“17,” “17 // REPRIZE \[ONE TAKE\]”) and a crisis of confidence in her reason for being. “This album really helped me get back to how I was feeling and realize who I am again,” she offers. “It was really cathartic and therapeutic for me.” Here, the singer talks Apple Music through *WAS HERE*, track by track. **“WAKE UP-SIT DOWN-SHUT UP”** “The song was written when I was living in Manchester. I was feeling very numb. I was questioning everything about who we are, why we are here. Like, ‘Is this my life?’ I was getting super existential.” **“FRENEMIES”** “I had this friend, and I didn’t know where the hell I stood with them. For some reason, they just weren’t interested in being my friend anymore. I did everything I could and extended every olive branch and still didn’t get anything back. I was like, ‘Is this what it feels like to have an enemy? I don’t know what I did wrong.’ It was a sad moment.” **“GIRL$” (with PVRIS and Bruses)** “I’ve wanted to have Lynn \[Gunn, PVRIS vocalist\] on a song for a while. Someone at the label sent her the track and I got a text from her and she was like, ‘Oh, my God, “GIRL$” is so good!’ She loved the track and jumped on. I really wanted a third person on the track too, and having another queer woman \[Mexican artist Bruses\] is awesome. I don’t think we ever really got into depth about the song’s meaning specifically, but I know that at least me and Lynn have talked about growing up as a woman in the music industry, or in society in general. But I didn’t want it to be too heavy, it’s supposed to be fun and uplifting and like, the girls are the best.” **“FREAKIN’ OUT”** “It’s one of my favorite tracks on the record. Lyrically, it just goes back to a dark spot that I was in—I was numbing myself subconsciously and in my behavior. I was partying and doing drugs and drinking without realizing that I was trying to cover up my feelings and not deal with the stuff that I was going through. Kind of heavy, I guess. But the song’s super fun, so that’s how we balance that out.” **“NOSE BLEED” (with Sueco)** “I don’t know why this reminds me of Quentin Tarantino, but there’s this little organ thing that’s going on. And I’m like, ‘If Quentin Tarantino was a fucking song, that’s what it would sound like.’ So I was thinking a lot about that and that’s where all the visuals lyrically came in—of ‘nosebleed’ and ‘twist the knife’ and basically dying over someone and doing everything that they want and being stuck in this toxic cycle that you cannot get out of. And you’re like, ‘Well, just leave me to die. I surrender to the cycle, and I’m never getting out of here.’” **“LOVE U ANYWAY”** “The relationship I was in, it felt like make-or-break at the time and I was like, ‘I’m gonna write a love song for the first time in my life.’ I don’t know if I was trying to trick myself into thinking everything is going to be OK or not. We ended up breaking up soon after I wrote it, which is awesome karma. So I’m never writing another love song in my life!” **“KISSIN’ KILLER COBRAS”** “I have a fair share of experience in toxic relationships. Sometimes when you’re in a toxic relationship, because that’s your normal, you lean into that and you think that’s normal to fight back or participate and perpetuate other toxic interactions. It kind of made me feel like I was becoming the monster that I was being presented with, if that makes sense. So I was trying to write this little urban legend of someone getting attacked by a snake and then becoming the fucking snake.” **“WARZ0NE”** “It’s basically me being like, ‘Fuck you’ to the keyboard warriors—people on the internet who have nothing better to do than send hate for no reason. They don’t know you personally, but they’ll judge everything about you based on stuff they see online or your songs. You can tell yourself that it doesn’t matter and not to read into it, but when you see it, it does hurt a little. It makes you so angry because you want to respond and roast the fuck out of them, but you have to just not. So the only way I could do that was write a song and be like, ‘Fuck you guys.’” **“CRIMINAL” (with Polaris)** “The way I write and the style of writing that I participate in is like, I need to feel something and then get it out. I feel like you can get caught in this cycle mentally of like, ‘Oh, I guess I need to fuck my life up a little bit to write these songs.’ And the people that are selling them don’t care about what you’ve gone through to get there as long as you get the song. And it feels a little weird. You’re making other people money based off the pain that you put yourself through. Then you also make money off it. It does feel a little bit criminal.” **“17”** “It’s something I’ve barely spoken about. And I’ve definitely never written about it. It’s about sexual assault; it was something that happened to me a few years ago. I thought I’d processed the whole thing properly, but one night on tour, I woke up in my bunk and I’d had a dream about this person, who I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I hadn’t thought about the situation in a long time. I woke up and I was so angry, and I was punching the bunk above me. After that I was like, ‘I think there’s some residual shit here that I need to process, or at least stop burying and actually talk about.’ The only way for me to do that is writing a song about it.” **“17 // REPRIZE \[ONE TAKE\]”** “The original song is where I was at the time and getting all that emotion out. Then the reprise is like, ‘This is where I’m at now. It’s not fine, all that stuff that you did, because I have to live with that for the rest of my life. But I’m doing OK, and you’re not clouding up my mind every day. And I’m not fucking my life up because of what you did.’ The interesting thing about that song was that we did that in one take. The lyrics just kind of came out in one go.” **“G.A.G.”** “It stands for ‘Girl’s a Gun’ but I didn’t want to have the word ‘girl’ in two titles! That again is just back to a toxic relationship situation. Just feeling like you have to surrender to it to make it get better when it doesn’t. But you’re also questioning like, ‘Is this right? Are we doing something stupid here? Like, maybe we need to look at this a little further.’ But essentially it’s kind of just surrendering to it all, unfortunately.” **“ROCKSTAR”** “It’s about a specific person. I thought we were cool with each other, and then I found out he was talking so much shit on my friends, on my band, my friends’ bands. It just pissed me off so much. I was like, ‘You literally think you’re the coolest dude. And all you do is talk shit on other people because you’re friggin’ insecure. Fuck you.’ It’s just a huge middle finger to this person. There’s lots of Easter eggs, so if people know the story and know the person, they’ll be able to figure out who it’s about.” **“SEX ON THE BEACH”** “It was inspired by one of the first times I went to LA. I was in this club and it was full of douchebags wearing their sunglasses inside at 3 am and purposely being dicks. I was like, ‘This is so gross. I’m just gonna sit here and drink myself to death, I guess.’ Then, people at the same time were blowing smoke up my arse and trying to be a friend. I know exactly what you’re trying to do here, you’re trying to network. It just feels superficial. I did not like that at all.” **“KILL\[H\]ER”** “Lyrically, it’s when you’re in a situation that you feel like you can’t get out of and you are compromising who you are constantly. It feels like you’re killing off a version of yourself. It’s kind of like wishing to get that old you back but realizing that that person doesn’t exist anymore, and you’re left with this shell of whatever the hell you used to be. You’ve killed yourself off, basically.”

IDLES’ fifth album is a collection of love songs. For singer Joe Talbot, it couldn’t be anything else. “At the time of writing this album, I was quite lost,” he tells Apple Music. “Not musically, it was a beautiful time for music. But emotionally, my nervous system needed organizing, and I needed to sort my shit out. So I did. That came from me realizing that I needed love in my life, and that I had sometimes lost my narrative in the art, which is that love is all I’ve ever sung about.” From a band wearied by other people’s attempts to pin narrow labels like “punk” or “political” to their expansive, thoughtful music, that’s as concise a summary as you’ll get. It’s also an accurate one. The Bristol five-piece’s music has always viewed the world with an empathetic eye, processing the human effects and impulses around subjects as varied as grief, immigration, kindness, toxic masculinity, and anxiety. And on their fourth album, 2021’s *CRAWLER*, the aggression and sinew of earlier songs gave way to more space and restraint as Talbot turned inward to reckon with his experiences with addiction. For *TANGK*, that experimentation continued while the band’s initial ideas were developed with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich in London during late 2022, before the record was completed with *CRAWLER* co-producer Kenny Beats joining the team to record in the south of France. They’ve emerged with an album where an Afrobeat rhythm played out on an obscure drum machine (“Grace”) or a gentle piano melody recorded on an iPhone (“A Gospel”) hit with as much impact as a gale-force guitar riff (“Gift Horse”). Exploring the thrills and the scars of love in multiple forms, Talbot leans ever more into singing over firebrand fury. “I’ve got a kid now, and part of my learning is to have empathy when I parent,” he says. “And with that comes delicacy. To use empathy is a delicate and graceful act. And that’s coming out in my art, because I’m also being delicate and graceful with myself, forgiving myself, and giving myself time to learn. I don’t want to lie.” Discover more with Talbot’s track-by-track guide to *TANGK*. **“IDEA 01”** “It was the first thing \[guitarist and co-producer Mark\] Bowen worked on, and Bowen, being the egotistical maniac that he is, called it ‘IDEA 01’ because he forgot that it was actually idea seven. But, bless him, he does like attention. But, yes, it was the first song that was written in Nigel’s studio. Bowen sat at the piano and started playing, and it was beautiful. ‘IDEA 01’ is different vignettes around old friends that I haven’t seen since Devon \[where Talbot grew up\], and the relationships I had with them and their families, and how crazy certain people’s families are. Bowen’s beautiful piano part reminded me of this song we wrote on the last album, ‘Kelechi.’ Kelechi was a good friend of mine who sadly passed away, and I hadn’t seen him since I waved him off to move to Manchester with his family. I just had this feeling I was never going to see him again. Maybe I’m writing that in my head now, but he was a beautiful, beautiful man. I loved him. I think maybe if we were still friends, part of me could have helped him, but that’s, again, fantasy I think.” **“Gift Horse”** “I was trying to get this disco thing going, so I gave Jon \[Beavis, drummer\] a bunch of disco beats to work on. And Dev \[bassist Adam Devonshire\] is bang into The Rapture and !!! and LCD Soundsystem, and he turned out that bassline real quick. I wrote a song around it, and it felt great. It was what my intentions of the album were: to make people dance and not think, because love is a very complex thing that doesn’t need to be thought. It can just be acted, and worked on, and danced with. I just wanted to make people move, and get that physicality of the live experience in people’s bones. I had this concept of a gift horse as a theme of a song, and it sang to me. I like that grotesque phrase, ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth.’ It’s about my daughter, and I’m very grateful for her, and our relationship, and I wanted to write a beast of a tune around her.” **“POP POP POP”** “I read \[‘freudenfreude’\] online somewhere. It was like, words that don’t exist that should exist. Schadenfreude is such a dark thing, to enjoy other people’s misery, so the idea of someone enjoying someone else’s joy is great. Being a parent, you suddenly are entwined with someone else’s joys and lows. I love seeing her dance, and have a good time, and grow as a person, and learn, so I wanted to write a song about it.” **“Roy”** “It’s an allegorical story that sums up a lot of my behavior towards my partners over a 15-year period where I was in a cycle of absolute worship and then fear, jealousy and assholery. I wanted to dedicate it to my girlfriend, who I call Roy. She’s not called Roy. I wanted it to be about the idea of a man who is in love and then his fears take over, and he starts acting like a prick to push that person away. Then he wakes up in the morning with a horrible hangover, realizing what he’s done, and he apologizes. He is then forgiven in the chorus, and rejoicing ensues.” **“A Gospel”** “It’s a reflection on breakups, which I think are a learning curve. I think all my exes deserve a medal, and they’ve taught me a lot. It’s really a tender moment of a dream I used to have, then \[it\] dances between different tiny memories, tiny vignettes of what happened before, and me just giving a nod to those moments and saying goodbye, which is beautiful. No heartbreak, really. I’ve been through the heartbreak now. It’s just me smiling and being like, ‘Yeah, you were right. Thank you very much.’” **“Dancer” (with LCD Soundsystem)** “The best form of dance is to express yourself freely within a group who are also expressing themselves freely, the true embodiment of communion. The last time I had this sense of euphoria from that was an Oh Sees gig at the \[Sala\] Apolo in Barcelona. I closed my eyes and let the mosh push me from one side of the room to the other and back. I didn’t open my eyes once, I just smiled and was carried by this organism of beautiful rage. Dancing’s a really big part of my personality. I love it. My mum always danced. Even in her most ill days \[Talbot’s mother passed away during the recording of 2017 debut *Brutalism*\], she would always get up and dance, and enjoy herself. I dance with my daughter every day that I have her. I think it’s magic and important.” **“Grace”** “It all came out of nowhere. I had this beat in mind for a while—I was thinking of an aggro Afrobeat kind of track. But it didn’t come out like that. It came out like what happens when Nigel Godrich gets his hands on your Afrobeat stuff. I asked Nigel to make the beat, and he chose the LinnDrum \[’80s drum machine\]. The LinnDrum changes the sound of a beat, the tone of a drum, the cadence of a beat, it changed the beat completely. It’s a very, very delicate thing, a beat. It sounded like a different song to me. It sounded amazing. And that’s where the bassline came from. And then that’s where the vocals came from. It felt a bit uneasy for a long time because it came out of nowhere. Me and Bowen were like, ‘Is this right? Is this complete?’ I think it just has to feel like you, like it is part of you and what you mean at the moment, that’s all. An album’s an episode of where you’re at in the world in that point in time.” **“Hall & Oates”** “I wanted to write a glam-rock pounder about falling in love with your boys. My ex and I used to joke about this thing where you make love to someone for the first time, and then the next day, you’re walking on air, and it feels like Hall & Oates is playing. The birds are singing, you’re bouncing around and everything’s great. I wanted to use that analogy for when you make friends with someone for the first time, and they make you feel good, lighter, stronger, excited to see them again. And that’s what happened in lockdown: I made friends with \[Bristol-based singer-songwriter\] Willie J Healey and my mate Ben, and we went on bike rides whenever we could, getting out and feeling good post-lockdown. It gave me a sense of purpose again. It felt like I was falling in love.” **“Jungle”** “I was trying to write a jungle tune for ages. The guitar line was a jungle bassline that I had but it just never fit what we were writing. And then Bowen started playing the chords on the guitar and it transformed it into something completely different. It completely revitalized what I’d been dragging through the mud for five years. Bowen made it IDLES, made it real, made it believable, made it beautiful. And then it reminded me of getting nicked, so I wrote a song about different times that I’ve been in trouble.” **“Gratitude”** “This was a real struggle. Bowen was really obsessed about doing interesting counts with the beats. I just wanted to make people dance and create infectious beats. We were coming from very different angles, but we loved this song that Bowen had made. I was like, ‘I get it, Bowen. This is insane. I love it, but I can’t get it.’ We hung on to it for ages, and then Nigel really helped us out, he created spaces and bits here and there by turning things down and moving everything slightly. Then Kenny helped me out, and got rid of the stupid counts, I think, and helped me write it on a 4/4 beat. And then they changed it back. I just come in in weird places. Everyone chipped in, because everyone believed in the song.” **“Monolith”** “I was fascinated by films where four or five notes are repeated throughout and create this monolithic motif. There’s a sense of continuity but the mood changes depending on certain things like tone and instruments. I wanted to do that over a song, and we got our friend Colin \[Webster\] from \[London noise rock unit\] Sex Swing to do the sax, we did it on different instruments that Nigel had. Nigel went away and basically put it all through the hollow-body bass. It reminded me of a documentary from a series called *The Blues* that Martin Scorsese curated. *The Soul of a Man* \[directed by Wim Wenders\] is about a song \[Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Dark Was the Night’\] getting sent into space. If any aliens get this capsule, they’ll hear this song being played from a blues artist. It created a really beautiful and deep picture in my mind. It felt like this monolith drifting in the ether. I started singing a blues riff behind it, a Skip James kind of thing. I think it’s a beautiful way to finish the album—us drifting in the ether.”

For the title of his fourth album under the Zeal & Ardor banner, avant-garde metal musician Manuel Gagneux turned to ancient legend. The greif, or griffin, is a mythological creature—part lion, part eagle—that appears in many of the oldest cultures. In Gagneux’s hometown of Basel, Switzerland, the griffin figures prominently in the annual Vogel Gryff procession. “It’s basically a guy in a big old bird costume that reveals its backside to the rich part of town,” he tells Apple Music. “It’s like an 800-year-old tradition. It’s so endearing, I thought it was worth sharing with the world.” *GREIF* is also the first Zeal & Ardor album to feature Gagneux’s live band. “By now, people know us more from our live performances,” he says. “So, it’s more representative of what it is that I associate with Zeal & Ardor. Doing the opposite would’ve been weirder to me at this point. It felt very organic to have them involved. Just like the greif is an amalgam of animals, everyone doing their part on this record is an amalgam of us. And it’s our most eclectic record, I think, so it feels quite fitting.” Below, he comments on each track. **“The Bird, the Lion and the Wildkin”** “Yeah, wildkin. In all honesty, I might’ve made up that word. But as that procession happens with the greif, it’s accompanied by piccolos and snare drums. So, that’s what I tried to emulate with the whistling and the drums there. Also, it’s a melody that will return later in the record, and I thought it kind of a nice little booming opening to welcome this weird, strange world of *GREIF*.” **“Fend You Off”** “It’s the first, or one of the few times, that I use the ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ in a Zeal & Ardor song. It’s quite a personal-struggle song, not in a specific thing that happened to me, but it’s about self-preservation. Sometimes we take steps that hurt ourselves just to make way for others. So, it’s about yielding, basically, and how not good of an idea that sometimes is.” **“Kilonova”** “The word ‘kilonova’ is a fairly new term about two supernovas colliding, which is objectively cool. It’s also about how our spirits and our weird ideas, or our weird playing, collides on this record. It’s one of the more occult songs on the record, with references to old, old books. And it’s one I hold really dear to my heart. It started as a funk song, and then I started distorting guitars. It kind of has reminiscing factors to another band that were not planned, but they are there. I’m not going to name names, but there’s some utensils at play.” **“are you the only one now?”** “It was an intentional decision to make the title all lowercase. It’s about these minichapters of the record, and basically these few \[lowercase\] songs prefacing what is coming after them, in a thematic sense. This is another personal one. It’s about solitude and finding peace in solitude, because there’s a huge difference between loneliness and solitude. It’s about embracing being alone, and that even time perceptively wasted being alone is still time that was spent working on oneself. I’m very much a person that enjoys being alone and kind of revels in solitude. It sounds very, very mopey, but I think I’m quite happy when I’m alone.” **“Go home my friend”** “This is a callback, musically, to the things we did prior to this record. It’s a taste of, ‘Oh, remember this?’ I think it conveys the idea of what it wants to be quite well, and there’s no need to expand on it. It’s just, ‘OK, this is it.’ It goes exactly where it should go, and then it ends without being ruined. And I quite like that.” **“Clawing Out”** “I think, in many ways, it’s the most aggressive song we’ve put out, or the most intense. Because it has these mean tempo ramps that just fuel anxiety, I think. And I really love that. It all culminates in these aggressive, hardcore electro kicks, which I find so, so nice. And it kind of blends well with the metal aesthetic in a weird way. I’m very happy with this one. It’s a new flavor of heavy.” **“Disease”** “That’s basically about how good intentions can have bad results. Because I think I’ve hurt a lot of people just by trying to help them, and I’ve been hurt by people who’ve tried to help me. It’s not about the intent, but sometimes a helping hand is just something in the way. That sounds very cynical, but I think there’s truth to that. It kind of needs to be spoken to.” **“369”** “This is a reference to a Tom Waits song called ‘Clap Hands,’ which itself is a reference to a Shirley Ellis song called ‘The Clapping \[Song\],’ which starts out ‘Three, six, nine, the \[goose\] drank wine.’ So, it’s a cover of a cover. Or a theft of a theft. I kind of wanted to pay my dues, although it’s so obscure no one will ever know unless I explain it. So, I don’t know if my dues are really paid.” **“Thrill”** “This is basically one of the newer emotions that we try to convey with this record. It’s not imposing, it’s not dark and brooding or ominous. It’s basically still aggressive, but most of all excited. I think that’s an emotion that I’ve always wanted to convey with this band, and I think I finally got to do it on this record. I wouldn’t even say it’s a metal song. I’d say it’s more like a rock song.” **“une ville vide”** “I go on long walks at night. And the town I live in is quite sleepy, so it’s empty a lot of the time, which I find one of the nicest feelings. I wanted to convey that feeling of being in between these looming buildings, and you kind of feel like a little mouse in a huge, strange world. There’s freedom to that, and that’s what I wanted to convey with this instrumental. Also, it’s kind of a palate cleanser between songs.” **“Sugarcoat”** “That’s another fun one. It’s such a simple song, and it almost veers into the goofy. There’re no solos, there’s no, ‘What is that rhythm structure?’ It’s kind of just a banger. It’s silly, and it’s supposed to be that. It’s one of those songs, when I wrote it, I giggled to myself and said, ‘This is going to be so much fun live.’ And the times we’ve played it live, by the last part of it, people are just singing that little theme thing. That just makes me almost burst with glee.” **“Solace”** “In many ways, this is the saddest song I’ve ever written. I honestly wasn’t sure if it would make it onto this record because I thought it was too much of a whiplash moment. But now I think of it as kind of a necessity to balance things out. And it took me a really long time to write this one. I just wanted to get everything right, and I’m really happy with the result. It’s inspired by a lot of Portishead and this song The Book of Knots did with Mike Patton called ‘Planemo.’ I just wanted to replicate that absolute dire, heart-wrenching situation. I’m not sure if I can do that one live because I might cry.” **“Hide in Shade”** “That’s basically vintage Zeal & Ardor because it’s the only song that’s older. It’s not only a callback—it’s actually from that time. It just never really got a home on an album until this one because I had to arrange it properly. So, it’s been brewing and stewing for a while. It’s just kind of a reminder of where we come from.” **“to my ilk”** “Another not-so-heavy track. I think this is the softest record we put out thus far, and I’m really happy with it in terms of how the three voices that we have are featured on it. It’s very distinct. It’s not too far from what people expect of us, but it kind of veers in a distinct direction. I mean, we could be blamed for selling out or whatever because it’s such a poppy track. But I think it still has this emotionality that is very much us. That can’t be denied. It’s not the best track to get the party started, but it’s still a good one.”

For his seventh solo outing, Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson almost made a concept album. Instead, he made an album with a concept. Some of the songs on *The Mandrake Project* detail episodes from a 12-issue comic series (also called *The Mandrake Project*) created by Dickinson, scripted by Tony Lee, and illustrated by Staz Johnson. “It was never intended to be this big,” Dickinson tells Apple Music. “At first, I had an idea about doing one comic only, like a little bit of extra vibe around the album. I was already thinking in the comic world, because originally the title of the album was taken from a Doctor Strange episode called ‘If Eternity Should Fail!’ I came up with these two characters, Dr. Necropolis and Professor Lazarus, and it’s a really dark story. It\'s not a superhero story. It’s more like a *Watchmen*-style comic in 12 episodes.” With longtime producer and guitarist Roy Z, Dickinson wrote songs that tie in with the comic storyline, like “Afterglow of Ragnarok” and “Resurrection Men,” and others that are completely unrelated, like “Many Doors to Hell,” about a female vampire, and “Fingers in the Wounds,” which imagines Jesus resurrected as a social media influencer. And then there’s “Eternity Has Failed,” an earlier version of which was nicked by Iron Maiden for their 2015 album, *The Book of Souls*. Below, the singer details each track. **“Afterglow of Ragnarok”** “This is meant to be like a hallucination from mandrake juice. Dr. Necropolis is a brilliant scientist, and an orphan. He’s interested in bringing back his brother who died at birth. He’s wondering why he survived and his brother died. And he’s tortured by this voice in his head, which he assumes is his brother. The voice just says, ‘Save me,’ over and over. It hits Necropolis like a depression. He gets into drugs and sex magic and the occult to try and contact his brother and try to figure out a way to bring him back. That’s what drives him and propels him through the story.” **“Many Doors to Hell”** “This is about a female vampire who wants to be human again. She wants to feel what it\'s like to not just bite people in the neck, but to maybe kiss them or make love. Instead of the weird vampire orgasm of drinking blood and stuff, she wants to feel what it\'s like to be a woman again. She\'s fed up with living forever with dead people. So she\'s waiting for the moment when she can step outside. And that moment is when there\'s an eclipse. During the eclipse, she can go out and she can be human. And maybe there\'s a way back for her to be human permanently.” **“Rain on the Graves”** “The title is a phrase I’d written down 10 years before I actually wrote the song. I was in a part of England called the Lake District, a very beautiful area that lots of poets and artists lived in. William Wordsworth had a cottage there and wrote a lot of his best poetry there. He’s buried in the local church, which is where this wedding was that I was invited to, and I decided to find his grave. It was raining and really atmospheric, and I sat there for about 40 minutes just thinking about what an incredible creative mind he had. Years later, Roy and I decided to write this song, which is kind of like ‘Cross Road Blues’ by Robert Johnson, where he meets the devil, but instead of at a crossroads it takes place in a graveyard.” **“Resurrection Men”** “This one is related to the comic. The Resurrection Men are Professor Lazarus and Dr. Necropolis. While I was doing the beginning bit with these open guitar chords, I noticed the tremolo button on the amp. I went, ‘Hang on, what does this button do?’ It was the full-on Dick Dale surf sound, so I thought, ‘What would a Tarantino heavy metal opening sound like?’ So I played that on guitar. I thought Roy would redo it, but he decided to keep mine. And then I put the bongos on it later, because if you’ve got a Tarantino thing, you’ve got to have bongos on it as well.” **“Fingers in the Wounds”** “The fingers in the wounds are the stigmata of Christ. I think it was St. Francis who had the stigmata appear, which proved that he was holy. The song is about the wonderful world of influencers, but with a twist: What if Jesus came back as an influencer? Like, ‘Put your fingers in your iPhones, put your fingers in my wounds, I’ll sell you a piece of my cloth. I can sell pearls to oysters, feed them to swine.’ It’s the way that everything on the internet now is just degraded by trolls and idiots and fake news and all that stuff. And all these influencers are just worthless, fake people. What have they done in their lives to justify all these people following them around like little dogs? I hate all that. That’s why I’m not part of it.” **“Eternity Has Failed”** “Originally, it was entitled ‘If Eternity Should Fail.’ The title comes from a Doctor Strange episode. It was going to be the title track to the record, but then Maiden co-opted it onto their record. By the time I returned to it, I\'d already got this idea for the comic series pretty well developed, so I thought I\'d just tweak a couple of the words to make it reflect the story more. So we did that, and then stuck a few more bits on, like the flutes and percussion at the beginning that give it that spaghetti western type of feel. The last bit of spoken word is the last slide of episode one of the comic.” **“Mistress of Mercy”** “Who is the mistress of mercy? It’s music. I wrote this on acoustic guitar, but the middle bit, the funny little Jeff Beck-type guitar riff, I wrote on a keyboard. And then Roy played it on guitar. I wanted a mashup of something that was really thrashing, like some garage band going apeshit, along with the acoustic feel. The idea is that the music is the dominatrix. She holds you, pins you down, but you can’t help but adore her and love her. The ecstasy, the harmony, the melody drives you absolutely crazy. That’s what the song is about.” **“Face in the Mirror”** “This is a melancholy tune. It\'s about alcoholism, but also it\'s about the way people judge other people and judge themselves. It\'s sung from the point of view of somebody who is a drunk, but he\'s turning around and saying, ‘You\'re laughing at me because I\'m lying on the ground, but when I hold my glass up, I can see right through you. I can see all your bullshit. I can see all your lies. You’re going to judge me because I’m an alcoholic, but take a look in my mirror, because you might see yourself as well.’” **“Shadow of the Gods”** “This one goes back to just after *Tyranny of Souls*. This and the title track from that album were written as a pair for a project that never happened called The Three Tremors, which was supposed to be three metal singers, like The Three Tenors in classical music. It was going to be me, Rob Halford, and Ronnie James Dio. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because Ronnie passed away. So I recorded ‘A Tyranny of Souls’ for myself and then kept this one. When I revisited it, I put a couple references to the comic in it. There’s a part two-thirds of the way through that sounds very reminiscent of Judas Priest because that’s who was supposed to sing it.” **“Sonata (Immortal Beloved)”** “This is the oldest song on the record. It’s almost 25 years old. There’s a sample of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ running underneath the drum machine, so Roy and I were just calling it ‘Sonata’ for a while. Roy later told me it was inspired by the film *Immortal Beloved*. He went to the movies, came home, and pulled an all-nighter, layering keyboards and guitars just for the hell of it. When he sent it to me, I didn’t have any ideas, but I just gave it a try and what came out was about 80% of the vocal, including the spoken word. I just did it freestyle, with no notes or anything. I don’t think that’s happened to me ever again in that way, with that level of detail.”