Louder's 50 Best Albums of 2020

This is the AC/DC album that no one thought would happen. After a tumultuous period that saw the death of guitarist and co-founder Malcolm Young, the departures of bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd, and the (thought-to-be) career-ending hearing loss of vocalist Brian Johnson, it was widely assumed that 2014’s *Rock or Bust* would be AC/DC’s swan song. “You can’t call an album *Rock or Bust* and then go bust,” lead guitarist Angus Young says. With Johnson, Rudd, and Williams back in the fold, *POWER UP* is a massive triumph. True to AC/DC’s nearly half-century of domination, the album sees the Australian masters in top form, as evidenced by the groove-powered opener “Realize,” the frenetic “Demon Fire,” and anthemic lead single “Shot in the Dark.” Elsewhere, Johnson cowboys up on the western-themed “Wild Reputation” and delivers a classic AC/DC double entendre on the suitably lascivious “Money Shot.” Dedicated to Malcolm, the record features songs that he and his brother Angus worked on together back in 2007 and 2008. “These ideas came from just before we did *Black Ice*, when me and Malcolm had been in the studio for a long time just writing songs,” Angus reveals. “We had so much material.” With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping much of the world on lockdown and just about eliminating live music, AC/DC decided to release *POWER UP* to tide fans over until the band can safely hit the stage again. “I think we waited until the world hit a limit of misery with this thing,” Johnson says, “and just said, ‘Right, time to cheer it up.’”

*“It’s beauty meets aggression.” Read an interview with Abe Cunningham about Deftones’ massive ninth album.* “My bags are still packed,” Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham tells Apple Music. The California band was set to embark on a two-year touring cycle when the pandemic hit. “We were eight hours away from flying to New Zealand and Australia,” he says, when they received the news that the festival that was to signal the start of their tour had been canceled. The band had spent nearly two years before that chipping away at their ninth album, *Ohms*, while also planning to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 2000’s *White Pony* with a remix album, *Black Stallion*—which is to say, they had more than a few reasons to take their show on the road. “There was talk of delaying the album,” he says, “but we were like, ‘Shit, if we can help somebody out, if we can get somebody through their doldrums and their day-to-day shit, let’s stick to the plan.” *Ohms* is a triumph that serves the stuck-at-home headphone listener every bit as much as it would, and eventually will, the festival-going headbanger. It reaches into every corner of Deftones’ influential sonic repertoire: chugging grooves, filthy rhythms, extreme vocals, soaring emotions, experimental soundscapes, and intentionally cryptic lyrics, open for each individual listener’s interpretation. “We try to make albums,” Cunningham says. “Sequencing is definitely something that we put a lot of thought and energy into.” Opening track “Genesis” begins with an eerie synth, a slow, wavering riff. And then, with a hint of reverb and Cunningham’s sticks counting it in, there’s an explosion. Guitars and bass pound out an enormous, droning chord as Chino Moreno screeches: “I reject both sides of what I’m being told/I’ve seen right through, now I watch how wild it gets/I finally achieve balance/Approaching a delayed rebirth.” “Ceremony” opens with staccatoed guitar and muffled vocals, followed by a feverish riff. “The Spell of Mathematics” is an epic album highlight that combines doomy basslines, breathy vocals, and screams, before a midsection breakdown of finger snaps that you can easily imagine resonating across a festival field or concert hall. “It’s one of those things that just happened out of nowhere,” Cunningham says. “Our buddy Zach Hill \[Death Grips, Hella, and more\] happened to be in LA when we were tracking everything, so we all walked up to meet him and had one beer, which led to three and four. He came back to the studio with us. The snaps are our little attempt at a barbershop quartet. It just worked out organically, and we have one of the baddest drummers ever just snapping.” The band took time off after touring their 2016 album, *Gore*, allowing them to take things slow. “In the past, it’s been, ‘All right, here’s your two months, you’re off tour, take a break. All right, you’ve got studio coming up, go, be productive!’ And we’re like, ‘Okay, but what if I don’t feel productive today?’ Tensions can come in. So we decided to take that year off.” Each band member lives in a different city, so they’d get together for a week or so once every month to jam and write songs, ultimately creating *Ohms*, in the order it was written. “Each time we would jam, we started making songs and we treated it as a set list,” Cunningham says. “We’d go home, stew on that for the month and see what we had, live with it, then come back and play those songs in order.” Summing up their approach, Cunningham says, “It’s beauty meets aggression. We’re trying to make a lovely mix of things that flow. I think we have more to offer than that, but it’s definitely one of our trademarks. I think our frustration is just trying to fit all these things that we love into one album.”

The third full-length from British rock band The Struts, Strange Days came to life over the course of a charmed and frenzied burst of creativity last spring. After getting tested for COVID-19, singer Luke Spiller, guitarist Adam Slack, bassist Jed Elliott, and drummer Gethin Davies all moved into the Los Angeles home of Jon Levine, a producer who worked extensively on their acclaimed sophomore effort YOUNG & DANGEROUS (including the album’s chart-climbing lead single “Body Talks”). Within just ten days of couch-crashing at Levine’s house, The Struts had laid down nine original tracks and one masterful cover of a KISS B-side: a lean, mean body of work that amounts to their most glorious output to date. “It was so much fun to make a record this way instead of getting everything done in between touring, working with multiple producers in multiple countries,” says Spiller. “We were all just burning to capture that excitement as much as we possibly could, and at times it felt like the songs were literally just falling from the sky.” In an organic turn of events for a band massively embraced by some of rock-and-roll history’s greatest icons—a feat that’s included opening for The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Guns N’ Roses—Strange Days finds The Struts joining forces with a formidable lineup of guest musicians: Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott and Phil Collen, Albert Hammond Jr. of The Strokes, Tom Morello, and Robbie Williams. Mixed by Claudius Mittendorfer (Panic! At the Disco, Arctic Monkeys, Johnny Marr), the result is a powerhouse album that lifts The Struts’ glammed-up breed of modern rock to entirely new and wildly thrilling heights. Kicking off with a magnificent bang, Strange Days opens on its title track, a sprawling and string-laced duet with Robbie Williams. “I was doing Quarantine Radio and Robbie hit me up out of the blue asking if we could talk,” notes Spiller, referring to the Instagram Live show launched by The Struts in the early days of lockdown. “We ended up Face-Timing for about two hours the first time we’d ever spoken, talking about life and music and UFOs and everything else you can think of. I asked if he’d like to work together at some point, and while we were making the album he graciously let us come over and record him singing on his front porch.” Despite its prescient title, “Strange Days” took shape from a voice memo Spiller recorded on the band’s tour bus way back in summer 2019. Fused with a cabaret-inspired interlude Spiller had recently dreamed up, the song ultimately evolved into the perfect vessel for the frontman’s force-of-nature voice: a tenderhearted epic that offers incredible solace in the most chaotic of times. Sparked from a Britpop-leaning riff brought in by Slack, the album’s potent lead single “Another Hit of Showmanship” feat. Albert Hammond Jr. centers on another poignant vocal performance from Spiller, who deftly channels the tension between giving in to temptation and rising above your demons. After laying down the initial version of the track, Spiller reached out to Hammond, for whom the band opened on a series of 2018 solo shows. “‘Another Hit of Showmanship’ reminds me of being at a club night called Ramshackle years ago at the O2 Academy in Bristol, where they’d play bands like The Libertines and Razorlight and Scissor Sisters, and of course The Strokes,” says Spiller. “I hit up Albert out of the blue and told him, ‘We’ve got this song, and I’m so excited to see what you would do with it.’ As soon as he got his hands on it, he took it to a whole different level—it really just shows why he’s so brilliant at what he does.” The most groovy-heavy work yet from The Struts, Strange Days also delivers hip-shaking standouts like “I Hate How Much I Want You”: a hot-and-bothered stomper graced with a scorching guitar solo from Phil Collen and Joe Elliott’s high-voltage vocals. Another explosive moment, “All Dressed Up (With Nowhere To Go)” unfolds in snarling power chords and exquisitely cheeky lyrics (its opening salvo: “You look like a movie star/On Sunday morning”). “That one’s based around the idea of being in love with your motorcycle—there’s a bit of innuendo to it,” says Spiller, whose own bike inspired the track. “The whole concept of being all dressed up with nowhere to go seems especially relevant the moment.” Meanwhile, “Wild Child” makes for a fierce and filthy anthem, infinitely supercharged by Tom Morello’s blistering guitar work. And on the beautifully weary “Burn It Down,” The Struts slip into a bittersweet mood, serving up a slow-burning ballad that sounds straight from the sessions for Exile on Main St. The sole cover song on Strange Days, “Do You Love Me” finds The Struts updating a fantastically sleazy track first recorded by KISS in 1976 and remade in 1980 by Girl (a late-’70s/early-’80s British glam-metal band that, incidentally, featured Phil Collen on guitar). “I was so in love with Girl’s version of ‘Do You Love Me’ and thought the simplicity of it was amazing,” says Spiller. “I wanted to give it an even bigger sound for our album—something way more aggressive, completely balls-to-the-wall.” In their supreme handling of “Do You Love Me,” The Struts again claim their rightful place in the lineage of rock-and-roll hellraisers. Formed in Derby, England, in 2012, the band quickly drew a major following with their outrageous live show, and later made their debut with Have You Heard (a 2015 EP whose lead single “Could Have Been Me” hit #1 on Spotify’s viral chart). Before they’d even put out their first album, the band opened for The Rolling Stones before a crowd of 80,000 in Paris and toured the U.S. on a string of sold-out shows. With their full-length debut Everybody Wants arriving in 2016, The Struts released YOUNG & DANGEROUS in 2018, soon after wrapping up a North American tour with Foo Fighters. Having toured incessantly since their formation, The Struts have also taken the stage at many the world’s biggest music festivals, including Lollapalooza, Governors Ball, Isle of Wight, and many more. As Spiller reveals, the making of Strange Days was a period of joyful productivity. “Every day I’d wake up at about 7 a.m., get three venti Americanos delivered to the house, go out to the backyard and smoke a couple of spliffs, and listen to the voice memos I’d recorded at the sessions the day before,” he recalls. “After the first four days or so we hit a bit of a wall, so we decided to get some beers in and just stay in the pool all day—and the day after that we knocked out three whole songs.” Throughout Strange Days, that kinetic energy manifests in the album’s unbridled spirit, an element that makes every track exhilarating. “I think because we’d wanted to make an album this way for years, all that excitement and hunger led to an immediate sort of magic once we started working on it,” says Spiller. “It was undoubtedly a magical ten days for us—and I hope when people hear the album, it gives them a taste of that magic too.”

Since Bruce Springsteen last released an album with the E Street Band—*High Hopes*, 2014’s collection of re-recorded outtakes and covers—he’s spent a lot of time thinking about his past. He followed his 2016 memoir *Born to Run* the next year with a one-man Broadway show in which he reimagined his songs as part of an intimate narrative about his own life and career. And while his 20th LP was recorded completely live with the band in a four-day sprint—for the first time since 1984’s *Born in the USA*—the songs themselves bear the deliberation and weight of an artist who knows he’s running out of time to do things like this. “The impetus for a lot of the material was the loss of my good friend George Theiss,” Springsteen tells Apple Music. “When he passed away, it left me as the only remaining living member of the first band that I had, which was a very strange thought, and it gave rise to most of the material. There\'s aging and loss of people as time goes by, and that\'s a part of what the record is. And then at the same time, you\'re sort of celebrating the fact that the band goes on and we carry their spirits with us.” That combination of wistfulness and joy—propelled by the full force of an E Street Band that’s been playing together in some form for nearly 50 years, minus two departed founding members, Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici—drives “Last Man Standing” and “Ghosts” most explicitly, but imbues the entire project. Though this may have been recorded live and fast, nothing sounds ragged or rambunctious; the efficiency owes to the shorthand of a unit that knows each other’s moves before they make them. While most of the songs were written recently, “Song for Orphans,” “If I Was the Priest,” and “Janey Needs a Shooter” date back to the early ’70s, only adding to the feeling of loose ends being tied. And it’s not lost on Springsteen after this long period of reflection that this album fits into a larger story that he’s been telling for most of his life. “If you wanted to find a body of work that expressed what it was like to be an American, say from 1970 to now, in the post-industrial period of the United States—I\'d be a place you could go and get some information on that,” he says. “And so in that sense, I always try to speak to my times in the way that I best could.” Here he digs deeper into just a few of the highlights from *Letter to You*. **One Minute You’re Here** “It\'s unusual to start a record with its quietest song. The record really starts with \'Letter to You,\' but there\'s this little preface that lets you know what the record is going to encompass. The record starts with \'One Minute You\'re Here\' and then ends with \'I\'ll See You in My Dreams,\' which are both songs about mortality and death. It was just sort of a little tip of the hat to where the record was going to go and a little slightly connected to \[2019\'s\] *Western Stars*. It was a little transitional piece of music.” **Last Man Standing** “That particular song was directly due to George\'s passing and me finding out that out of that group of people, I\'m kind of here on my own, honoring the guys that I learned my craft with between the ages of 14 and 17 or 18. Those were some of the deepest learning years of my life—learning how to be onstage, learning how to write, learning how to front the band, learning how to put together a show, learning how to play for all different kinds of audiences at fireman\'s fairs, at union halls, at CYO \[Catholic Youth Organization\] dances, and just really honing your craft.” **Janey Needs a Shooter** and **If I Was the Priest** and **Song for Orphans** “We were working on a lot of stuff that I have in the vault to put out again at some time, and I went through almost a whole record of pre-*Greetings From Asbury Park* music that was all acoustic, and these songs were inside them. The guys came in and I said, ‘Okay. Today we\'re going to record songs that are 50 years old, and we\'re going to see what happens.\' The modern band playing those ideas that I had as a 22-year-old—and for some reason it just fit on the record, because the record skips through time. It starts with me thinking about when I was 14 and 15, and then it moves into the present. So those songs added a little touchstone for that certain period of time. I went back and I found a voice that really fit them, and they\'re a nice addition to the record.” **House of a Thousand Guitars** “Every piece of music has its demands—what tone in my voice is going to feel right for this particular piece of music—and you try to meet it in the middle. That\'s one of my favorite songs on the record; I\'m not exactly sure why yet. It\'s at the center of the record and it speaks to this world that the band and I have attempted to create with its values, its ideas, its codes, since we started. And it collects all of that into one piece of music, into this imaginary house of a thousand guitars.” **The Power of Prayer** “I grew up Catholic, and that was enough to turn me off from religion forever. And I realized as I grew older that you can run away from your religion, but you can\'t really run away from your faith. And so I carried a lot of the language with me, which I use and write with quite often—\'Promised Land\' or \'House of a Thousand Guitars\' and \'The Power of Prayer\' on this record. Those little three-minute records and the 180-second character studies that came through pop music were like these little meditations and little prayers for me. And that\'s what I turned them into. And my faith came in and filled those songs, and gave them a spiritual dimension. It\'s an essential part of your life.” **I’ll See You in My Dreams** “I remember a lot of my dreams and I always have. But that song was basically about those that pass away don\'t ever really leave us. They visit me in my dreams several times a year. Clarence will come up a couple times in a year. Or I\'ll see Danny. They just show up in very absurd, sometimes in abstract ways in the middle of strange stories. But they\'re there, and it\'s actually a lovely thing to revisit with them in that way. The pain slips away, the love remains, and they live in that love and walk alongside you and your ancestors and your life companions as a part of your spirit. So the song is basically about that: \'Hey. I\'m not going to see you at the next session, but I\'ll see you in my dreams.\'”

You don’t need to know that Fiona Apple recorded her fifth album herself in her Los Angeles home in order to recognize its handmade clatter, right down to the dogs barking in the background at the end of the title track. Nor do you need to have spent weeks cooped up in your own home in the middle of a global pandemic in order to more acutely appreciate its distinct banging-on-the-walls energy. But it certainly doesn’t hurt. Made over the course of eight years, *Fetch the Bolt Cutters* could not possibly have anticipated the disjointed, anxious, agoraphobic moment in history in which it was released, but it provides an apt and welcome soundtrack nonetheless. Still present, particularly on opener “I Want You to Love Me,” are Apple’s piano playing and stark (and, in at least one instance, literal) diary-entry lyrics. But where previous albums had lush flourishes, the frenetic, woozy rhythm section is the dominant force and mood-setter here, courtesy of drummer Amy Wood and former Soul Coughing bassist Sebastian Steinberg. The sparse “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is backed by drumsticks seemingly smacking whatever surface might be in sight. “Relay” (featuring a refrain, “Evil is a relay sport/When the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch,” that Apple claims was excavated from an old journal from written she was 15) is driven almost entirely by drums that are at turns childlike and martial. None of this percussive racket blunts or distracts from Apple’s wit and rage. There are instantly indelible lines (“Kick me under the table all you want/I won’t shut up” and the show-stopping “Good morning, good morning/You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”), all in the service of channeling an entire society’s worth of frustration and fluster into a unique, urgent work of art that refuses to sacrifice playfulness for preaching.

“I’m 71 and I don’t fuckin’ understand how I got there,” Ozzy Osbourne tells Apple Music. “I can remember times when I\'ve fuckin’ woken up, puke down me. I’ve fuckin’ woken up with a bed full of blood, when I’ve fallen down and banged my head.” It’s not like Ozzy Osbourne hasn’t tackled the subject of death before. Fifty years and one week prior to the release of this album, on the very first song on Black Sabbath’s debut LP, he asked Satan: “Is it the end?” Here, though, on his 12th solo album, and first in a decade, he’s thinking about it a little more seriously. On “Holy for Tonight,” he ponders: “What will I think of when I speak my final words? … What will I think of when I take my final breath?” On the title track, a soaring ballad featuring Elton John, live strings, and a choir, he admits, “Don’t know why I’m still alive/Yes, the truth is I don’t wanna die an ordinary man.” Let’s get one thing straight: There is zero chance of Ozzy Osbourne dying an ordinary man. Nor Elton, for that matter—or anybody else involved in making this record. At the helm is Andrew Watt, a guitarist who got to know Osbourne while working on Post Malone’s track “Take What You Want” (which you’ll also find at the end of this record). Watt enlisted some famous friends to help, and the first call was to Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith. “I was like, ‘Ozzy wants us to make an album,’ and he was like, ‘When? When are we doing it? Let\'s do it. Let\'s do it. Let\'s do it,’” Watt says. “I was like, ‘Wow, okay. He really wants to do it, and we need a bass player.’ So I called Duff \[McKagan\] up, from Guns N\' Roses…and Duff was like, ‘When? When? When? When?’ Same thing, same enthusiasm.” The result is an epic release that stares time and mortality squarely in the face, but still has time for toilet humor, aliens, cannibals, and that time in 1972 when Osbourne did so much cocaine he accidentally called the police on himself. (“I thought it was an air conditioning button,” said Osbourne of the story behind the punky “It’s a Raid.” “It was a fucking Bel Air patrol.”) Considering Osbourne has publicly battled health issues for decades, and in 2019 was diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s disease, the mere existence of *Ordinary Man* is quite extraordinary. Watt, Smith, and McKagan have nailed the balance of heavy-as-hell riffs (notably opener “Straight to Hell”) and heartstring-tugging rock ballads (“Under the Graveyard” and the title track in particular), while “Today Is the End” hits like a snarling Metallica/Alice in Chains hybrid—both bands he inspired. Meanwhile, the massive drums and pitch-shifted voice intro on “Goodbye” are a clear nod to “Iron Man.” After singing, “Sitting here in purgatory, not afraid to burn in hell/All my friends are waiting for me, I can hear them crying out for help,” the Prince of Darkness ends the song with a crucial question: “Do they sell tea in heaven?”

If there is a recurring theme to be found in Phoebe Bridgers’ second solo LP, “it’s the idea of having these inner personal issues while there\'s bigger turmoil in the world—like a diary about your crush during the apocalypse,” she tells Apple Music. “I’ll torture myself for five days about confronting a friend, while way bigger shit is happening. It just feels stupid, like wallowing. But my intrusive thoughts are about my personal life.” Recorded when she wasn’t on the road—in support of 2017’s *Stranger in the Alps* and collaborative releases with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker (boygenius) in 2018 and with Conor Oberst (Better Oblivion Community Center) in 2019—*Punisher* is a set of folk and bedroom pop that’s at once comforting and haunting, a refuge and a fever dream. “Sometimes I\'ll get the question, like, ‘Do you identify as an LA songwriter?’ Or ‘Do you identify as a queer songwriter?’ And I\'m like, ‘No. I\'m what I am,’” the Pasadena native says. “The things that are going on are what\'s going on, so of course every part of my personality and every part of the world is going to seep into my music. But I don\'t set out to make specific things—I just look back and I\'m like, ‘Oh. That\'s what I was thinking about.’” Here, Bridgers takes us inside every song on the album. **DVD Menu** “It\'s a reference to the last song on the record—a mirror of that melody at the very end. And it samples the last song of my first record—‘You Missed My Heart’—the weird voice you can sort of hear. It just felt rounded out to me to do that, to lead into this album. Also, I’ve been listening to a lot of Grouper. There’s a note in this song: Everybody looked at me like I was insane when I told Rob Moose—who plays strings on the record—to play it. Everybody was like, ‘What the fuck are you taking about?’ And I think that\'s the scariest part of it. I like scary music.” **Garden Song** “It\'s very much about dreams and—to get really LA on it—manifesting. It’s about all your good thoughts that you have becoming real, and all the shitty stuff that you think becoming real, too. If you\'re afraid of something all the time, you\'re going to look for proof that it happened, or that it\'s going to happen. And if you\'re a miserable person who thinks that good people die young and evil corporations rule everything, there is enough proof in the world that that\'s true. But if you\'re someone who believes that good people are doing amazing things no matter how small, and that there\'s beauty or whatever in the midst of all the darkness, you\'re going to see that proof, too. And you’re going to ignore the dark shit, or see it and it doesn\'t really affect your worldview. It\'s about fighting back dark, evil murder thoughts and feeling like if I really want something, it happens, or it comes true in a totally weird, different way than I even expected.” **Kyoto** “This song is about being on tour and hating tour, and then being home and hating home. I just always want to be where I\'m not, which I think is pretty not special of a thought, but it is true. With boygenius, we took a red-eye to play a late-night TV show, which sounds glamorous, but really it was hurrying up and then waiting in a fucking backstage for like hours and being really nervous and talking to strangers. I remember being like, \'This is amazing and horrible at the same time. I\'m with my friends, but we\'re all miserable. We feel so lucky and so spoiled and also shitty for complaining about how tired we are.\' I miss the life I complained about, which I think a lot of people are feeling. I hope the parties are good when this shit \[the pandemic\] is over. I hope people have a newfound appreciation for human connection and stuff. I definitely will for tour.” Punisher “I don\'t even know what to compare it to. In my songwriting style, I feel like I actually stopped writing it earlier than I usually stop writing stuff. I usually write things five times over, and this one was always just like, ‘All right. This is a simple tribute song.’ It’s kind of about the neighborhood \[Silver Lake in Los Angeles\], kind of about depression, but mostly about stalking Elliott Smith and being afraid that I\'m a punisher—that when I talk to my heroes, that their eyes will glaze over. Say you\'re at Thanksgiving with your wife\'s family and she\'s got an older relative who is anti-vax or just read some conspiracy theory article and, even if they\'re sweet, they\'re just talking to you and they don\'t realize that your eyes are glazed over and you\'re trying to escape: That’s a punisher. The worst way that it happens is like with a sweet fan, someone who is really trying to be nice and their hands are shaking, but they don\'t realize they\'re standing outside of your bus and you\'re trying to go to bed. And they talk to you for like 45 minutes, and you realize your reaction really means a lot to them, so you\'re trying to be there for them, too. And I guess that I\'m terrified that when I hang out with Patti Smith or whatever that I\'ll become that for people. I know that I have in the past, and I guess if Elliott was alive—especially because we would have lived next to each other—it’s like 1000% I would have met him and I would have not known what the fuck I was talking about, and I would have cornered him at Silverlake Lounge.” **Halloween** “I started it with my friend Christian Lee Hutson. It was actually one of the first times we ever hung out. We ended up just talking forever and kind of shitting out this melody that I really loved, literally hanging out for five hours and spending 10 minutes on music. It\'s about a dead relationship, but it doesn\'t get to have any victorious ending. It\'s like you\'re bored and sad and you don\'t want drama, and you\'re waking up every day just wanting to have shit be normal, but it\'s not that great. He lives right by Children\'s Hospital, so when we were writing the song, it was like constant ambulances, so that was a depressing background and made it in there. The other voice on it is Conor Oberst’s. I was kind of stressed about lyrics—I was looking for a last verse and he was like, ‘Dude, you\'re always talking about the Dodger fan who got murdered. You should talk about that.’ And I was like, \'Jesus Christ. All right.\' The Better Oblivion record was such a learning experience for me, and I ended up getting so comfortable halfway through writing and recording it. By the time we finished a whole fucking record, I felt like I could show him a terrible idea and not be embarrassed—I knew that he would just help me. Same with boygenius: It\'s like you\'re so nervous going in to collaborating with new people and then by the time you\'re done, you\'re like, ‘Damn, it\'d be easy to do that again.’ Your best show is the last show of tour.” Chinese Satellite “I have no faith—and that\'s what it\'s about. My friend Harry put it in the best way ever once. He was like, ‘Man, sometimes I just wish I could make the Jesus leap.’ But I can\'t do it. I mean, I definitely have weird beliefs that come from nothing. I wasn\'t raised religious. I do yoga and stuff. I think breathing is important. But that\'s pretty much as far as it goes. I like to believe that ghosts and aliens exist, but I kind of doubt it. I love science—I think science is like the closest thing to that that you’ll get. If I\'m being honest, this song is about turning 11 and not getting a letter from Hogwarts, just realizing that nobody\'s going to save me from my life, nobody\'s going to wake me up and be like, ‘Hey, just kidding. Actually, it\'s really a lot more special than this, and you\'re special.’ No, I’m going to be the way that I am forever. I mean, secretly, I am still waiting on that letter, which is also that part of the song, that I want someone to shake me awake in the middle of the night and be like, ‘Come with me. It\'s actually totally different than you ever thought.’ That’d be sweet.” **Moon Song** “I feel like songs are kind of like dreams, too, where you\'re like, ‘I could say it\'s about this one thing, but...’ At the same time it’s so hyper-specific to people and a person and about a relationship, but it\'s also every single song. I feel complex about every single person I\'ve ever cared about, and I think that\'s pretty clear. The through line is that caring about someone who hates themselves is really hard, because they feel like you\'re stupid. And you feel stupid. Like, if you complain, then they\'ll go away. So you don\'t complain and you just bottle it up and you\'re like, ‘No, step on me again, please.’ It’s that feeling, the wanting-to-be-stepped-on feeling.” Savior Complex “Thematically, it\'s like a sequel to ‘Moon Song.’ It\'s like when you get what you asked for and then you\'re dating someone who hates themselves. Sonically, it\'s one of the only songs I\'ve ever written in a dream. I rolled over in the middle of the night and hummed—I’m still looking for this fucking voice memo, because I know it exists, but it\'s so crazy-sounding, so scary. I woke up and knew what I wanted it to be about and then took it in the studio. That\'s Blake Mills on clarinet, which was so funny: He was like a little schoolkid practicing in the hallway of Sound City before coming in to play.” **I See You** “I had that line \[‘I\'ve been playing dead my whole life’\] first, and I\'ve had it for at least five years. Just feeling like a waking zombie every day, that\'s how my depression manifests itself. It\'s like lethargy, just feeling exhausted. I\'m not manic depressive—I fucking wish. I wish I was super creative when I\'m depressed, but instead, I just look at my phone for eight hours. And then you start kind of falling in love and it all kind of gets shaken up and you\'re like, ‘Can this person fix me? That\'d be great.’ This song is about being close to somebody. I mean, it\'s about my drummer. This isn\'t about anybody else. When we first broke up, it was so hard and heartbreaking. It\'s just so weird that you could date and then you\'re a stranger from the person for a while. Now we\'re super tight. We\'re like best friends, and always will be. There are just certain people that you date where it\'s so romantic almost that the friendship element is kind of secondary. And ours was never like that. It was like the friendship element was above all else, like we started a million projects together, immediately started writing together, couldn\'t be apart ever, very codependent. And then to have that taken away—it’s awful.” **Graceland Too** “I started writing it about an MDMA trip. Or I had a couple lines about that and then it turned into stuff that was going on in my life. Again, caring about someone who hates themselves and is super self-destructive is the hardest thing about being a person, to me. You can\'t control people, but it\'s tempting to want to help when someone\'s going through something, and I think it was just like a meditation almost on that—a reflection of trying to be there for people. I hope someday I get to hang out with the people who have really struggled with addiction or suicidal shit and have a good time. I want to write more songs like that, what I wish would happen.” **I Know the End** “This is a bunch of things I had on my to-do list: I wanted to scream; I wanted to have a metal song; I wanted to write about driving up the coast to Northern California, which I’ve done a lot in my life. It\'s like a super specific feeling. This is such a stoned thought, but it feels kind of like purgatory to me, doing that drive, just because I have done it at every stage of my life, so I get thrown into this time that doesn\'t exist when I\'m doing it, like I can\'t differentiate any of the times in my memory. I guess I always pictured that during the apocalypse, I would escape to an endless drive up north. It\'s definitely half a ballad. I kind of think about it as, ‘Well, what genre is \[My Chemical Romance’s\] “Welcome to the Black Parade” in?’ It\'s not really an anthem—I don\'t know. I love tricking people with a vibe and then completely shifting. I feel like I want to do that more.”

On their first album in nearly 20 years, classic rock fabulons Blue Öyster Cult deliver a collection of songs that recalls the melodic sci-fi wizardry of their 1970s/early-’80s zenith. *The Symbol Remains* is a nod to the band’s iconic hook-and-cross logo, and sees legendary BÖC vocalist/guitarists Buck Dharma and Eric Bloom leading a band comprising newer adherents Richie Castellano (keyboards, guitar), Danny Miranda (bass), and Jules Radino (drums). “Maybe we didn’t have that much to say for 19 years,” Bloom tells Apple Music. “And now we do. It just took us a while to get these juices flowing again.” After recording all the basic tracks pre-pandemic, BÖC was forced to complete *The Symbol Remains* online. “When COVID hit, we realized we were going to have to start recording from home,” Bloom says. “Richie has advanced degrees in audio engineering, so he was the pivot man. Buck and I did the vocals and some guitar playing at our individual homes using a Zoom-type technology, so I’d do the sessions looking at Richie’s face on my laptop.” Below, Bloom discusses some key tracks from their comeback project. **That Was Me** “We decided this was a good rocking track to open with. The lyric is by John Shirley, who wrote several of the lyrics on this record, and did on the last two records as well. Our longtime manager Sandy Pearlman put us together with him 20-odd years ago and thought he would be a great source of lyrical content, and he has been. John has his own band and is an author of cyberpunk novels and all kinds of things. If I feel like it\'s time to write something, I look in the John Shirley folder and see if I can get inspired. We wrote most of the music a couple of years ago and then I came up with the idea for that reggae-style bridge.” **Tainted Blood** “I wrote this one with Richie\'s assistance. He’s been in the band about 14 years, but this is his first time making a record with us. Sometime last summer, we got on a plane and I had this concept in my head of vampire suicide. Why would a vampire want to kill himself, considering that he has the wherewithal to live forever?” **Stand and Fight** “I wrote this one, and it’s like an anthem. I got the idea on that same airplane where I wrote ‘Tainted Blood.’ It\'s funny to get two ideas for two different songs on the same two-hour flight. It’s about what’s going on in America, but I wanted to keep it even-handed, so I sort of wrote it with the idea of that movie *Independence Day*. It’s the idea that you could stand and fight against anything that seems to be overwhelming. It’s in a metal style that I like, and in the bridge there are some sound effects—that’s supposedly the fight scene.” **Florida Man** “It’s almost a meme about how people in Florida are so fucked up. I think you could look up your birthday and there’s something weird that happened that day in Florida. You open your door and there’s an alligator. Or a weird person does something to somebody.” **The Alchemist** “It’s almost literally based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story about a fantastical kingdom where the alchemist lives on the outskirts of town with his son, and the king’s son—the prince—goes missing. The king is outraged and blames the alchemist, so he goes over to his house and kills the alchemist. But then the alchemist’s son curses the king and all his descendants. And then the alchemist’s son becomes the alchemist. But Richie outdoes Andrew Lloyd Webber in this song. It’s very dramatic, very *Phantom of the Opera* or something. I think it’s great.” **Fight** “Usually if Buck’s singing, you know he wrote it. I think he put out three of these songs as home demos a couple of years ago, and this was one of them. I’m not sure where the lyric comes from, but it’s just a clever little ditty. It’s almost like an exercise or something. It’s just a delightful thing to listen to.”

Released in June 2020 as American cities were rupturing in response to police brutality, the fourth album by rap duo Run The Jewels uses the righteous indignation of hip-hop\'s past to confront a combustible present. Returning with a meaner boom and pound than ever before, rappers Killer Mike and EL-P speak venom to power, taking aim at killer cops, warmongers, the surveillance state, the prison-industrial complex, and the rungs of modern capitalism. The duo has always been loyal to hip-hop\'s core tenets while forging its noisy cutting edge, but *RTJ4* is especially lithe in a way that should appeal to vintage heads—full of hyperkinetic braggadocio and beats that sound like sci-fi remakes of Public Enemy\'s *Apocalypse 91*. Until the final two tracks there\'s no turn-down, no mercy, and nothing that sounds like any rap being made today. The only guest hook comes from Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Mavis Staples on \"pulling the pin,\" a reflective song that connects the depression prevalent in modern rap to the structural forces that cause it. Until then, it’s all a tires-squealing, middle-fingers-blazing rhymefest. Single \"ooh la la\" flips Nice & Smooth\'s Greg Nice from the 1992 Gang Starr classic \"DWYCK\" into a stomp closed out by a DJ Premier scratch solo. \"out of sight\" rewrites the groove of The D.O.C.\'s 1989 hit \"It\'s Funky Enough\" until it treadmills sideways, and guest 2 Chainz spits like he just went on a Big Daddy Kane bender. A churning sample from lefty post-punks Gang of Four (\"the ground below\") is perfectly on the nose for an album brimming with funk and fury, as is the unexpected team-up between Pharrell and Zack de la Rocha (\"JU$T\"). Most significant, however, is \"walking in the snow,\" where Mike lays out a visceral rumination on police violence: \"And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me/Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, \'I can\'t breathe.\'\"

Over the last 20 years, a Pearl Jam studio album has come to signal more of something else—more tour dates, more bootlegs, more live films and live albums, more reason for them to come together onstage, that place that’s come to define them most this millennium. But *Gigaton*—the Seattle rock outfit’s first LP since 2013’s *Lightning Bolt*, and a clear response to our current political moment—feels different: Self-recorded and self-produced in tandem with longtime band associate Josh Evans, their 11th full-length merges the sheer power and unpredictability of their live experience with an experimental streak they haven’t embraced so fully since the late ’90s. For every midtempo guitar workout (“Quick Escape” is especially heavy), there’s a sliver of Talking Heads-like post-punk (“Dance of the Clairvoyants,” in which bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard swap instruments). Where there’s a weathered acoustic ballad (“Comes Then Goes” finds Eddie Vedder at his Who-iest), there’s also a psychedelic lullaby (“Buckle Up,” whose lyrics and kazoo-like backup vocals come via Gossard). It’s an album whose anthemic moments (see: the six-minute epic “Seven O’Clock,” whose cloud-parting coda bears echoes of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World”) are matched—if not enriched—by its subtleties, namely a welcome attention to texture and arrangement. And with every band member represented in various phases of the songwriting process, it’s arguably their most collaborative studio effort to date, as clear a document of the chemistry they’ve developed over three decades as anything they’ve recorded live. “In the end, when we listened to it, it\'s like we really achieved something,” Gossard tells Apple Music. “It’s really us.”

On his fourth LP, Fantastic Negrito wanted to draw attention to issues of mental illness from the perspective of both himself and the people he’s known all his life. “I noticed that most of the people that I thought were suffering from what I call mental challenges and hurdles, if you will, were just us regular people,” he tells Apple Music. “Not people walking down the street talking to themselves, but my friends, my family, my colleagues. We are facing the depression and the trauma of the gun violence that happens so much in America. And we take it in as if it\'s nothing.” After his politically charged 2018 LP *Please Don’t Be Dead*, the Oakland bluesman and two-time Grammy winner continues to explore societal concerns that are large in scale and scope. But this time, he focuses on the small details rather than looking at the big picture. “My records are always social commentary—but I wanted to go into that door and dig deep into that,” he says. “I wanted to take a therapeutic and accountable approach all in one and ask myself, \'What did we become that we just accept so many really tragic things that happen?\'” His interpretation of the blues in *Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?* is eclectic and all-encompassing, taking on an uncompromising mix of Delta blues, classic R&B, roots music, and funk, especially. “A lot of this album was about the power and the energy of the ’70s—powerful songs one right after another that just don\'t let up,” Negrito says, as he walks us through this track-by-track guide. **Chocolate Samurai** “When I was confronting a lot of the issues of mental health and illness, I was talking about my fans on that one. The whole world is watching us. My community, my people, my teachers, my soldiers, my doctors, my lawyers, my policemen. All of us. And what does that do to our psyche? And that\'s why, in the video, I got people from all over the world to send in their clips and make an amazing video out of that. I was talking about my community during that song. Like, \'We have to get free tonight.\' Get free from oppression. We have to get free from the construct of racism. We gotta get free from the idea that we\'re victims all the time, too. I was thinking very deep on that song. There was a lot about accountability. And celebration. All my songs are celebrations—even if they\'re all kind of anecdotal. There\'s a lot of Stevie Wonder in that song, too.” **I’m So Happy I Cry (feat. Tank and the Bangas & Tarriona “Tank” Ball)** “I wanted to make history and be the first two Tiny Desk winners \[NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest\] ever to collaborate on a song \[referring to his collaboration with Tank and the Bangas\]. The competition has been on for five years and no one has made a collaboration. But the song’s really about myself. You know, all the things that used to make me so high. And now it’s like, ‘Why don’t they get me high?’ Sometimes we have this hole in our life and we\'re just trying to fill it up with all this stuff, and a lot of it\'s from not wanting to confront who we are. I was reading about a lot of these young rappers, especially Juice WRLD and a lot of these young kids that are just dying from overdoses. I thought, you know what? Wow, it\'s not a real happiness. I have all this stuff, but it doesn\'t really fill me up and it doesn\'t fulfill me. I\'m depressed on my private jet with 70 kinds of marijuana on it, doing drugs. But again, it\'s hopeful. Today we wake up to another morning sun. I\'m happy this morning.” **How Long?** “This song was really about these policemen who are just arbitrarily executing citizens. You say to yourself, ‘Well, how long are we gonna keep living with that?’ It was very, very simple and very easy to write that song, because it was a question I thought a lot about. How long can we keep holding on to the same thing that we\'re repeating over and over again?” **Shigamabu Blues** “I like to create names. It was a name and a character that I used throughout the record. It\'s kind of a spirit; it\'s very African. It\'s all the kinds of things that can happen. We don\'t control the future. We don\'t control the next five minutes. It’s the monster of COVID-19, disease, and death. It\'s life and it\'s happiness, and it\'s Kobe Bryant being a millionaire and dying with his daughter. It\'s me getting into a coma for three weeks \[in 1999\]. A friend of mine, he has HIV. This record is very much that feeling, because the minute we realize that, then we have a much more peaceful existence.” **Searching for Captain Save a Hoe (feat. E-40)** “That song\'s a lot about me being the whore, you know? And about a lot of men. We\'re the whores and we can go around and do our thing as guys, but then if a woman does it, we call her a whore. I took the character of Captain Save a Hoe from the \'90s, where this guy is now saving the men who are actually the whores. He\'s learned, and now he\'s a guy that I\'m searching for to help save me and make me accountable to a lot of my really stupid and destructive ideas about family. And about E-40, what an innovative giant. I was so fortunate that my music got his attention. He was willing to go ahead and spit some bars on that, because he\'s just a giant. I was very pleased and honored to work with him.” **Your Sex Is Overrated (feat. Masa Kohama)** “That was more about the mental condition and using sex as a weapon. Sex as manipulation and sex for sale. Masa\'s a guy that I\'ve played with for 25 years, and we did that track a long time ago. We found it and redid the verses, like, chopped it up. Initially, I really wanted to sing that with Brittany Howard—but we couldn\'t really make it happen. That\'s why it starts off with \'Brittany, I\'m so scared of you \[laughing\].\' That was my initial idea, to get her to sing that with her on the second verse. But hey, another time. And Masa\'s solo on there is tremendous. Really, one of one of the best solos ever recorded. That\'s right. I said it.” **These Are My Friends** “I was just playing it this morning on the piano—it\'s one of my favorite songs on the record. I wrote it about two of my very close friends, best friends who are pretty damaged people that may be suffering from a lot of trauma and mental illness, but they are completely functional. I describe them in the song. Sometimes it\'s hard to get along, but you know what, these are my friends, for better or for worse. They got my back and I got their back, and that\'s what I was trying to write about. Exploring people\'s deficiencies, but celebrating the bond. I\'ve got my friends who are just as flawed as I am, but we support each other all the time. Your friends are your investors, basically; that\'s your investment portfolio.” **All Up in My Space** “It’s a very toxic thing—being a human being and being in relationships. People don’t want you sometimes because you don\'t want them, and I feel like that\'s extremely unhealthy. I think there\'s something wrong when that happens to people, and sometimes it can become extremely dangerous. Those type of interactions between people.” **Justice in America** “I didn\'t wanna write a song about it. I thought the idea itself was so powerful, because of the way that we use immigrants in this country and then we just wanna discard them and throw them away. I think that\'s why I wanted my friend Gina \[Madrid\]\'s voice, who\'s a vocal artist. Sometimes, immigrants, they come here and they\'ll realize, \'Hey, this place isn\'t all that it said.\' America is a place that\'s advertising for people to get free labor. And in the end, it\'s just that America was based on money. We don\'t say that on the Statue of Liberty, now, do we?” **King Frustration** “That was one of the most fun productions that I did, I think. It’s the two organ and guitar solos—and a kind of weird classical interlude thing that I did on it. I thought it was just fun, but it was inspired by one of my drug addict cousins. She\'d been hooked on drugs for 30-something years. I just saw her walking down the street and I wanted to tell some of her story in that song. It was based on the struggle of growing up in the inner city, without some of the opportunities and all the challenges and all the pitfalls. And she has, man, five, six, seven different kids and gave them away to relatives.” **Platypus Dipster** “That song was just about relieving pressure, this pressure of the media and the expectations that people have until it just breaks people. I wrote this about a particular person again, and how they\'re just broken by society\'s expectations. People have this image of what they want you to be. Or, you know, our news cycle is for sale. We\'re bombarded daily with this information that people are trying to sell us. I don\'t think it\'s very normal, and it breaks people.”

On his first LP of original songs in nearly a decade—and his first since reluctantly accepting Nobel Prize honors in 2016—Bob Dylan takes a long look back. *Rough and Rowdy Ways* is a hot bath of American sound and historical memory, the 79-year-old singer-songwriter reflecting on where we’ve been, how we got here, and how much time he has left. There are temperamental blues (“False Prophet,” “Crossing the Rubicon”) and gentle hymns (“I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You”), rollicking farewells (“Goodbye Jimmy Reed”) and heady exchanges with the Grim Reaper (“Black Rider”). It reads like memoir, but you know he’d claim it’s fiction. And yet, maybe it’s the timing—coming out in June 2020 amidst the throes of a pandemic and a social uprising that bears echoes of the 1960s—or his age, but Dylan’s every line here does have the added charge of what feels like a final word, like some ancient wisdom worth decoding and preserving before it’s too late. “Mother of Muses” invokes Elvis and MLK, Dylan claiming, “I’ve already outlived my life by far.” On the 16-minute masterstroke and stand-alone single “Murder Most Foul,” he draws Nazca Lines around the 1963 assassination of JFK—the death of a president, a symbol, an era, and something more difficult to define. It’s “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” that lingers longest, though: Over nine minutes of accordion and electric guitar mingling like light on calm waters, Dylan tells the story of an outlaw cycling through radio stations as he makes his way to the end of U.S. Route 1, the end of the road. “Key West is the place to be, if you’re looking for your mortality,” he says, in a growl that gives way to a croon. “Key West is paradise divine.”

Though much of the band’s material has traditionally been written by guitarist, vocalist, and founding member Matt Heafy, Floridian metal squad Trivium took a different path on their ninth album. The bulk of the lyrics and a fair chunk of the music on *What the Dead Men Say* were written by bassist Paolo Gregoletto, who nicked the title from a story by Philip K. Dick, the sci-fi giant whose work has been adapted into films like *Blade Runner*, *Total Recall*, and *Minority Report*. And that wasn’t the only thing on Gregoletto’s reading list that influenced the record. “There’s not a definitive narrative, but if you listen to some of the songs, you maybe pick up on things that relate to one another,” the bassist tells Apple Music. “I was reading books like \[David Wallace-Wells’\] *The Uninhabitable Earth* and Naomi Klein’s *The Shock Doctrine*, where it’s this concept of people using disasters—whether man-made or things like we’re experiencing \[with the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic\]—to gain an edge or profit while other people are left to pick up the pieces.” Below, Gregoletto tells the tale behind each track. **IX** “Originally, this was attached to the next song, ‘What the Dead Men Say,’ as the intro. When you\'re listening to it, it\'s meant to be a continuation—the two go together. The music is foreshadowing what’s to come. It’s a lot of the same melodies and chord progressions you hear in the next track, but played a lot slower and with a different feel. It’s our ninth album, so that’s where the Roman numeral comes from.” **What the Dead Men Say** “I got the title from the Philip K. Dick short story. I felt like the words I was coming up with were about this sci-fi, trippy type of in-between state and the way we deal with death and grieving in the digital age. I’ve always loved Philip K. Dick books and stories because a lot of them are still really relevant and ahead of their time. So I found this short story and I liked the title a lot—it was really intriguing. I think some of the best titles and lyrics are stuff you can’t totally explain.” **Catastrophist** “This is one of the first things I wrote for this record. I was just piling up riffs for this song and it seemed to get longer and more complex. It had this epic feel to it, so I knew the lyrics were going to have to fit that. I was reading *The Uninhabitable Earth* and *The Shock Doctrine* and just thinking about these crises that happen in the world and how some people can benefit from them but a lot of people have to suffer and pick up the pieces or are left to their own devices. And what you do in the world kind of determines what people who aren’t even born yet are going to have to deal with.” **Amongst the Shadows & the Stones** “This was a song that \[guitarist\] Corey \[Beaulieu\] brought in. He already had the title and he had recorded the screams on the ‘amongst the shadows and the stones’ part, which is pretty much where it is now. It’s a great hook, so I took that and started writing lyrics. I ended up thinking about how we’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the war on terror, and what the real consequences have been—not only for us, but for the people on the other end. So it’s about the aftermath, when the dust has settled and there’s just rubble and nothing.” **Bleed Into Me** “A lot of times I write on guitar, but I started writing this song on bass, so bass is a pretty prominent feature of this song. I used one of our lower tunings, which can really benefit more groove-oriented stuff like this. The lyrics came from when I was riding the L in Chicago and saw this dude shooting heroin in the front of the car. So I started thinking about how people are able to ignore things or pretend that things around you aren’t happening. But I made eye contact with this person and for a moment I got to see their world. You can’t look away, and you have to reckon with what that means for you, for them, and for everyone around you.” **The Defiant** “Matt brought in the demo for this one, and right away I felt like it had an almost \[Trivium’s 2005 album\] *Ascendancy*-type vibe to it. When I wrote the lyrics, I had just watched that R. Kelly documentary, and I was thinking about how bad people don’t always just happen in a vacuum. There’s people behind them that are assisting and facilitating things. And these kinds of people can live how they want openly, because shamelessness is a defining feature of our culture now. And just because you’re a bad person, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get what’s coming to you.” **Sickness Unto You** “This is another song that Matt brought in. It just felt like we needed something to let loose and be heavy and fast. That’s the stuff that we excel at. There’s an almost Rush-type vibe in the middle that comes from \[drummer\] Alex \[Bent\]’s part, and I can’t praise him enough for his playing on this record. Matt wrote the lyrics, which are definitely more somber-type lyrics about loss, and I came up with the title of the song. I don’t even know where I got it from—it just felt interesting.” **Scattering the Ashes** “Corey brought in this one, along with some lyrics and the title. His grandfather died last year, and the lyrics describe the process of scattering his ashes out into the ocean. So I took that and turned it into a story of a father and son, or these people that have a falling-out over something but they’re never able to reconcile it. Then losing someone and having that loss compounded with the fact that you weren’t able to get over this or say you were sorry about something. Musically, it makes me think of that Finnish band Sentenced, who make this very melodic but really dark music. This song isn’t as dark as Sentenced, but it’s our version of that.” **Bending the Arc to Fear** “This was the last song I brought into the record, and I just wanted to riff out. I also love having outros that go in a totally different direction than you were expecting. For the lyrics, I was thinking about that saying ‘The long arc of history bends toward justice.’ If it can be bent to justice, it can be bent to all these other negative things. Then I started thinking about the Ring cameras that everyone has on their houses now, and the culture that has built up around them. It breeds paranoia, really. You’re living your life through these little glimpses outside your door and it can just whip up all this fear.” **The Ones We Leave Behind** “This was a song that Corey brought in, along with the title, and it started out way different than what you hear on the record. It started slower, with more clean guitar parts. When we were jamming it, I just had the very cliché metal idea of ‘What if we play it faster?’ So we started playing it faster and faster, and the riffs kind of changed a little bit to what you hear now. With the lyric, I started thinking about how people are left behind by the culture we have where it’s a winner-takes-all kind of mentality—which is a very American way of thinking. But if the winner takes all, what are the other people left with?”

Nearly four decades into their career, Bay Area thrash behemoths Testament remain as ripping as ever. Fronted by towering, sonorous vocalist Chuck Billy and boasting one of the most skilled musical lineups in metal’s history—drummer Gene Hoglan, guitarist Alex Skolnick, bassist Steve Di Giorgio, and guitarist Eric Peterson—the band shows off their virtuosic chops on their 13th album. *Titans of Creation* sees Testament taking inspiration from a visit to Jerusalem, cult-related atrocities, and the healers who helped Billy beat cancer in the early aughts. “The title came after the artwork was finished,” Billy tells Apple Music. “We couldn’t figure out who the guys on the cover were—were they demons, aliens, humans? But we knew they were creating life, so we thought they could be titans as well.” Below, Billy gives us a look behind each of the songs. **Children of the Next Level** “This was actually the first song we wrote for the new record, so it took right off from \[2016’s\] *Brotherhood of the Snake*. The song was inspired by Heaven\'s Gate, a cult out of San Diego, where they committed suicide and thought they were going to actually board a meteor to the next level of existence.” **WWIII** “There were a handful of songs where some of the vocal melodies didn’t happen right away, and this was one of them. So we got in there and just started mumbling our way through it. Somewhere in there, the idea of nuclear warfare hit, so we built off of that and started writing about World War III. We used to write songs about stuff like this in the ’80s, and a lot of it has happened. They end up being weird kind of Nostradamus predictions.” **Dream Deceiver** “This one reminds me of early Scorpions stuff, like *In Trance* or *Tokyo Tapes*. When I dropped the vocal, it just felt like it should have a more old-school melodic feel to it. Eric really liked the hook, so we built on that. A dream deceiver is basically just something that’s haunting your dreams, where you can’t get any rest and you’re living in this dream state.” **Night of the Witch** “This was the first song we put out from the album. It’s definitely a different song from us, just because this is where Eric Peterson gets his vocal debut in the chorus. The part that he sings needed the witch voice, which is more like what he does in \[his side project\] Dragonlord, so we gave him a shot and he nailed it. It really just gave the song a different dynamic to what we’ve done in the past.” **City of Angels** “‘City of Angels’ is really a survivor song on this record, because I thought it was maybe too long and repetitive at first. But then I was working on some lyrics in LA with my friend Del James, who I’ve been writing with for about 20 years, and he handed me these lyrics for a song he had called ‘City of Angels.’ So I went through the music we had, and they fit perfectly. Then I took it home and found myself trying new tones of voice. In the bridge I even doubled it and did a little three-part-harmony thing. I never do that kind of shit, but it ended up really coming to life. By the end of the session, it turned out to be one of the better songs.” **Ishtars Gate** “This song sat on the back burner for a bit because, to me, the mood of the song was real different than your typical metal riff. The year before, we played in Israel, so we went to Jerusalem to see the gates and just walk around. I know Eric got inspired by it and had been referencing this song as ‘Gates of Ishtar’ since he came up with the riff. That was another one where Del and I came up with the lyrics, so we wanted to make Eric happy and write it about the gate.” **Symptoms** “Alex wrote the music and lyrics for this one, and I think you can tell. It really stands out from the rest of the album and has a different vibe from the other songs. Lyrically, he’s talking about the social awareness of mental health, and different things that have been going on with that over the last few years. But it’s taken on a different meaning now with the coronavirus, and our band getting sick. It feels like it’s referring to us.” **False Prophet** “Me and Zet—Steve Souza from Exodus—wrote the lyrics for this one, and Zet came up with the idea. It’s about the Kirtland massacre, where the guy thought he was God and he was killing people execution-style. It’s probably the fastest thrasher on the record, so it seemed to fit.” **The Healers** “This is more of a personal song. It’s about the healers that helped me when I was sick with cancer. I really wanted to pay homage to them. One of them is now in a VA hospital and has Alzheimer’s, so he didn’t really remember me. Another one, Charlie, passed away about two years ago. The third one moved off the mountain where he did sweat lodges and stuff. So I just wanted to tell the story of those three healers and what they did for me when I was ill. The song has kind of an odd vocal melody to it, but the way it turned out as far as the meaning, it’s pretty powerful.” **Code of Hammurabi** “This is another song that Alex wrote, and it fits more with the groove of the rest of the songs, but it has a different flavor—it’s not your typical riding-on-E metal riff. Me and him worked on the lyrics together, and he came up with the idea of the Code of Hammurabi, which is basically the first code of law. It was as simple as ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ If you get caught stealing, you lose your hand.” **Curse of Osiris** “This is one is pretty blistering—Gene is just tearing it up on this one. I think this was probably one of the last ones me and Del wrote. As you can tell, the theme stayed more in the Eastern kind of vibe, and it’s just about \[the Egyptian god of the underworld\] Osiris avenging his father’s death.” **Catacombs** “We’ve been using this piece of music as an intro tape for our show, but I think it wasn’t quite complete. So Eric took it upon himself to finish it and make it as big as he could. We haven’t used it for an intro since we finished the record, but we’ll see what happens. I think maybe it was just something Eric wanted to get done.”

“This is the new abnormal!” Lamb of God vocalist Randy Blythe screams on “Reality Bath,” a particularly ferocious track on the band’s long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s *VII: Sturm und Drang*. It’s a fitting sentiment for the Virginia metal squad’s first record without co-founder and drummer Chris Adler, who split in 2019. Propelled by the dexterous drumming of new member Arturo Cruz (Prong/Winds of Plague), venomous cuts like “Memento Mori,” “Checkmate,” and “New Colossal Hate” showcase the band’s groove metal mastery. “Art has brought a more youthful energy, which is something our old selves need, because I’m pushing 50 and I can get set in my curmudgeonly ways,” Blythe tells Apple Music. “But at the same time, there’s nothing at all new about the writing process. The same guys who always wrote the music wrote the music this time. So in a sense there’s absolutely nothing different.” Lyrically, Blythe spits sociopolitical epithets all over *Lamb of God*, even bringing in Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta and Testament’s Chuck Billy to join him on “Poison Dream” and “Routes,” respectively. “I wrote this record thinking about the mess that is modern-day life,” Blythe explains. “The information overload and the shallow pursuit of wealth and material goods as status symbols have led to an entirely false idea that having these things is going to bring you some sort of inner peace or well-being or happiness—and it\'s a load of bullshit.” Below, he unpacks some of the album’s key tracks. **Memento Mori** “I wrote this song as a reminder for myself to not get stuck in this crazy morass of digital doom and gloom—all the biased news and social media stuff—and get out and really make the most of today. Because when I’m laying on my deathbed, if I have regrets, if I have things I wanted to do that I did not do, I don\'t want to sit there and be like, ‘God, I wish I hadn\'t spent so much time on Twitter. That sucks. I could have gone to Africa or the jungle. I could have written another book or something. But no, I spent eight hours a day on Twitter.’ Which I don’t do, by the way.” **Checkmate** “This is about our subpar political system. The two-party system is just a nightmare, particularly given the divisiveness of— not just right now, but for years now. And it’s not just whoever’s in the Oval Office, but in Congress that really chaps my ass. When Congress manages to agree on something like a relief package to help people who are suffering right now economically in this pandemic, you’ll see news stories about how the bipartisan agreement is some huge victory—that two political parties agreed on something for the good of the American people. That shouldn’t be a special occasion for celebration. But it is now, because everybody politicizes everything. So the lyrics talk about how people are so entrenched ideologically now on one side or the other, but life is not that black and white. There’s shades of gray.” **Poison Dream (feat. Jamey Jasta)** “I was looking up stuff about water pollution one day and I realized that every single place I’ve ever lived has had horrific water pollution. Everywhere we need water to survive, but people are poisoning it in the name of commerce. And these companies can do this because they\'re making so much money. It\'s not that the EPA is not finding them—some of these places just have enough money to pay the fines. So that’s where I’m coming from in the song. Not far from where Jamey lives, there’s a plant that dumps all this pollution in the water too. We were talking about that, and I’ve wanted him to be on a Lamb of God record for a long time—he’s a dear friend of the band, and I just love him as a person. I thought he’d be perfect for this song, and luckily he agreed to do it.” **Routes (feat. Chuck Billy)** “I went to Standing Rock, North Dakota, during the NODAPL movement, which of course was held on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. It started with just a few women and children trying to protect their water source, and then soon people from other Indigenous nations joined them. I went there to support them and bring supplies. I was out there for about a week, and it was a very profound experience because of the way these people were being treated by both the government and the private security corporations that were hired to protect the interests of this freaking oil company. If that had happened anywhere in a city or even a suburb that wasn’t the middle of nowhere, North Dakota, and it wasn’t Native American land, there would’ve been massive riots. Naturally, I wanted to write a song about my experience there, but because it was an Indigenous-led movement it felt super important for me to have an Indigenous voice on it. Chuck Billy is a member of the Pomo Indian tribe, and he’s a dear friend. We’d talked about the situation before, so I reached out to him and he said yeah. It worked out really great, and this one’s for the Natives.”

If there’s one thing that defines UK doom/death progenitors Paradise Lost, it’s consistency. Not musical consistency—the band has taken detours through hard rock, goth, and even dark synth-pop since forming in Halifax, England, in 1988—but in terms of quality control. Which is no easy feat considering that *Obsidian* is the band’s 16th album featuring original members Nick Holmes (vocals), Gregor Mackintosh (guitar), Stephen Edmondson (bass), and Aaron Aedy (guitar)—not to mention their second with Finnish drum wizard Waltteri Väyrynen. As esteemed metal veterans, Paradise Lost has had time to appreciate the perspective that experience has given them. “When you’re older, you understand the consequences of your actions,” Holmes tells Apple Music. “When you’re a teenager, you make rash decisions that can really impact you later on. My children are at the age where they’re young adults, and I just think about what they’re going to be doing in ten years. I think that impacted me somehow when I was writing the lyrics.” Below, Holmes takes us through *Obsidian*’s shadowy depths. **Darker Thoughts** “This originally started as an intro piece for the album. Greg sent the acoustic recording to me, and I just came in with a singing line for it. The song was written so incredibly fast that I can hardly remember doing it. Usually it takes us weeks and weeks, if not months, to write songs. But I think it came out better for it, because it\'s quite a different song to the rest of the album as well. It’s probably one of my favorite songs on the album, if not the favorite, actually.” **Fall From Grace** “This is about the cracks appearing in a situation, and everyone else sees it but you don’t. So it’s literally a fall from grace. I think Ash Pears, the video director, ran with the lyrics a little bit in his own artistic way for the video, but the video is more like a mini-film that we wanted the song to be a soundtrack for. We’ve always liked that type of video. The old Radiohead videos were always great in that way, and that’s what we wanted to do with this.” **Ghosts** “I think it’s one of the most direct and instant songs on the album. The band was paying homage to the music that we grew up with—we were always metal guys, but goth music was always there in the background. If we ever went out to nightclubs, they were always goth clubs, and you might hear Motörhead’s ‘Ace of Spades’ or ‘Run to the Hills’ by Iron Maiden, but everything else would have been Bauhaus or The Call or Sisters of Mercy. It was always there and very much the soundtrack to our young teen lives, so this is kind of a tipping of the hat to that.” **The Devil Embraced** “This is a mishmash of different styles. It’s obviously very dark, with a very heavy chorus. Lyrically, it’s a similar kind of topic to ‘Ghosts,’ about perhaps seeking some kind of religious belief later in life to try and cushion yourself if you believe in some kind of afterlife. I find it fascinating when people to turn to religion later in life, but I could never imagine doing it. Even the most hardcore atheist I’ve known turning to religion—I just wonder what makes that happen. Maybe I’ll find out. Probably not, though.” **Forsaken** “This song is very reminiscent of something we might have written in the early 2000s. It\'s a period of music that we haven\'t touched upon since that time, really. With that said, the musical approach seems quite fresh, and we’ve got the choir on it. I remember we changed the chorus at the last minute. But yeah, it’s the only song that’s really like this on the album. It’s quite out there on its own, I think.” **Serenity** “If you were listening to this on vinyl, this would be the B-side opener. Musically, it’s got a faster, galloping pace. Lyrically, it has to do with the horrors of a medieval battle and the aftermath—and who decides when it’s won. There must’ve been a lot of people that died after these battles had been won, so I was thinking about being out in the field still fighting even though it’s finished. It’s kind of like a Monty Python thing, but it must’ve been so horrendous.” **Ending Days** “Someone called this a ballad. I wouldn’t say it’s a ballad, but it’s probably the saddest song on the album. If I was in a particularly melancholic mood, I could have a good cry to this one. Lyrically, I was thinking about when people fall out through petty grudges and lose contact—particularly when families do this. And then when you hear someone’s dying or they’re really ill, you make friends with them again. It hasn’t happened to me directly, but it has happened to people I know. And you think about all those decades wasted, but I guess people are just too busy getting on with their lives to realize the time’s passing by.” **Hope Dies Young** “I was thinking about the phrase ‘teenage dreams so hard to beat’ \[from the Undertones song ‘Teenage Kicks’\] because I used to listen to John Peel’s radio show and he used to say it all the time. I think he’s even got it on his gravestone. But I never really got my head round it ’til I got older. And it’s such a true statement, because I do find the teenage years were such a good time—no cynicism; just excited about things. Especially music. It was the only thing I cared about as a teenager.” **Ravenghast** “Greg came up with the title, and I don’t even know what it means. I think maybe it’s an evil ghost or something, but not everything has to have a great meaning. It\'s like a painting—I know I just like it or I don\'t. And this is one of those kind of moments where I just thought, ‘Well, that\'s a great title,’ so we went with that. Lyrically, it’s about how the higher you are, the harder you’re going to fall. So it’s better to be three-quarters of the way up than right at the top.” **Hear the Night** “This song and the next one are bonus tracks. They didn’t make the album because we thought it was complete as it was. But ‘Hear the Night’ is actually one of my favorites. Greg’s wife Heather sang the chorus on this, so it’s got a very catchy hook, but the rest of the song is crushingly heavy.” **Defiler** “This song has a very traditional rock riff to it, which is quite unusual for us. It’s going to raise some eyebrows. The chorus is very Paradise Lost, but you kind of need the rock riff for the chorus to work. When you hear it, you’ll know what I mean. I’m interested to see what people say about it. This one was a bit too different for the album, but it’s still interesting, hopefully.”

“In my mind, I honestly think we\'re the greatest band in the world,” Densil McFarlane tells Apple Music. The singer/guitarist for The OBGMs (aka The oOohh Baby Gimme Mores) doesn’t give mere interviews—he delivers each answer like a sermon, projecting an outsize confidence that would make Liam Gallagher seem humble. But for McFarlane, such brash talk is more than just idle boasting; it’s a necessary psychic survival tactic. Though his group has been working around the fringes of the Toronto indie scene since the late 2000s, self-releasing an EP and full-length along the way, *The Ends* represents the true birth of The OBGMs in McFarlane’s eyes, following an extended bout of self-doubt where he considered walking away from the band to start a solo career. But instead of breaking up, The OBGMs shed their skin, paring down from a synth-spiked dance-punk quartet into a pure garage-rock power trio (with some song-doctoring assistance from their friend Stefan Babcock of PUP). It’s the sound of a decade’s worth of frustrations—be it the struggle to keep the group together in the face of little reward, or the unsubtle racism they face as Black men performing in largely white spaces—being unleashed in a feral howl that channels The White Stripes and Nirvana in their most primitive states. But the combative, competitive nature of McFarlane’s lyrics feels much closer to the gritty spirit of gangsta rap than the self-loathing of grunge, resulting in a new kind of rap/rock hybrid that’s less about combining rhymes and riffs than fusing attitude and energy. “As a Black man, hip-hop is just in my soul, so that\'s gonna be in anything I do,” McFarlane says. “But I\'m not trying to stay in a box. We don\'t listen to just one genre, so how are we going to make just one genre? You want to call it rap-rock? Sure. I would just call me a rock star instead.” Here, McFarlane offers a track-by-track explanation of why *The Ends* is just the beginning. **Outsah** “I was like, \'How are we gonna make a song that tells people how I feel right now and not say too many words?\' This song is a statement of intent. In the studio, we had almost finished the song, but we had a bunch of extra days, and I brought in my friend Roberto Molina from the band TOnX and he put some bongos on it, and then \[producer\] Dave Schiffman was at the board, moving things around. It was supposed to be drums at the intro, and he pushed them to the start of the first verse. He dropped the drums in, took a step back, and said, \'That\'s how you start a record!\'” **Cash** “I was playing around with this riff for years, actually—it was in a different song with different lyrics. My issue is that I write until the very last day, until I actually have to record the lyrics. So I rewrote this song after we did \'Outsah,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, we\'re making statements now.’ Like, this album has changed from being an album that\'s about the end of everything and it\'s now more about the start of how I want to be perceived. I don\'t want people to think that we are just guests here; we earned a spot. We\'re not trying to be the best indie band that\'s not known. We’re coming for the top spot. So you need to know that when you see us, we\'re going to ask you to run your shit. We\'re looking for the cash!” **All My Friends** “On this song, I\'m telling lies to myself, and the people around me are also telling lies, and I don\'t know who to trust. But I do know I\'ve got my lady, and we\'re in it together. So if we\'re in the car together, we\'re going to drive, even if it means driving off of this cliff.” **Fight Song** “I don\'t think there\'s an artist that I look to and say ‘Man, that’s cool, I want to do that’ and try to copy their sound. But I will say that I\'m attracted to loudness in things that people are required to pay attention to. And you\'ll find that in a bunch of different artists across genres—you have Kanye West, you have JAY-Z, you have Beyoncé, you have Pharrell Williams or N.E.R.D, you have Kurt Cobain. Without them saying a word, their music and their image makes you pay attention to them. And I think that\'s what I want to channel. We\'re making something new over here.” **Not Again** “I am the singer of The OBGMs by glorious default. I never intended to be the singer of the band. When we started, we were auditioning singers for a very long time. I never learned how to properly sing, but I got better over the years. And I was able to demonstrate the things I learned on this album—just cool ways to project, different things to enunciate, and how to flip a song and change your cadence a bit, just to keep it interesting. At the end of the day, I feel this song is kind of vanilla—the aim of it was to show people that we can do a bunch of different things, and see what kind of traction we could get in rock playlisting or punk playlisting. But the thing that makes it stand out is what I do vocally at the end, which is cool.” **Triggered** “This song is one of the first songs I wrote when I was coming back to music. I always get caught up in the first line—like, how do I get you to stay here with the first line? So I go ‘zin zin zin zin zin zin!’ Like, who\'s gonna do that!?! This was when the album was starting to take shape, and I was like, \'I want to be harder. We haven\'t shown people where we’re at. We\'re not going to dance around in this happy-go-lucky, bouncy-ass music too much.\' Instead of looking in the mirror at myself—because I think I\'ve done enough of that—it\'s time for me to start looking at you as the problem.” **WTFRU** “Something that we run into often is that people question our place in this space, in rock \'n\' roll music. I\'m very wildly insecure, so any time The OBGMs release a song, I\'m reading every single thing that\'s written about us. And a lot of the comments are like, ‘They\'re cool, but they\'re not rock,’ or ‘They\'re cool, but they\'re not this, they\'re not that.’ And a lot of that is just rooted in racism. They don\'t value us in this space, so it\'s super important that we question those people—who the fuck are you? And what the hell are you gonna do when I question you about this directly in your face? If you believe something, you gotta have some backbone and believe in it, and wildly, until the wheels fall off.” **Karen O’s** “The way I make music is I beatbox the track into my phone, and I’ll think it\'s the best song ever...and then I go into the studio and it may not translate into the best song ever. So by the time I got to the studio with this track, it started out as my favorite song on the record, and in the car ride there, I was listening to Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ *Show Your Bones*. Originally, the lyrics were different—they were literally about how I love Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But this was one of the songs that I changed all of the lyrics to after writing \'Outsah,\' because I was like, \'I can\'t write odes to other bands—we\'re making this whole album an ode to ourselves.\' But I kept the title, just because when I started listening to rock music, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were one of the bands I was pumping the most. And the \'yeah, yeah, yeah\' hook was put there for them.” **To Death** “We went into the studio with the intention of putting this down as an acoustic song, similar to one on our original record \[2017\'s *The OBGMs*\] titled \'Paranoid Paranoia.\' So I rented this nice acoustic, and Schiffman was like, \'Put that shit away! Go pick up your electric guitar!\' And the song came out way better than how I thought it was gonna go. The song speaks to a time in my life where I was dealing with a jumble of relationships that went horribly and it wasn’t my fault. I was actually going to name the album *To Death* after this song, because when I started thinking of the album, that was the theme: This is the last hurrah, the last show. And it kind of just evolved into being something way deeper than that.” **Move On** “I didn\'t know what my direction was. You\'re talking to a guy that\'s thought—and maybe still thinks—he\'s John Lennon. So it\'s maddening when you think you\'re doing really well and it\'s not received in that way. So this song is about moving on from that emotion of feeling like I\'m a failure and that I\'ve wasted 13 years of my life chasing a dream that I feel like I deserve. I\'d love to move on from that emotion, and go to the part where we are accepted and promoted.”

*Tap* More *to read our track-by-track guide with Trevor Dunn.* It’s almost impossible to quantify the volume of music that’s come from Trevor Dunn, Mike Patton, and Trey Spruance since they founded Mr. Bungle in 1985 as high school metalheads in Eureka, California. It laid the foundation for the bands, collaborations, performances, and compositions across every imaginable corner of music that came after. And though they were known as experimental, avant-garde Frankensteins in their approach to metal, punk, ska, surf, jazz fusion, pop, and much, much more, it all comes back to *The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny*, their insane thrash metal demo that for years has mostly been available as a shoddy YouTube stream. “For whatever reason, that demo was always close to our hearts,” bassist Trevor Dunn tells Apple Music. “It represents a really specific period of our life. We took the writing of that music really seriously, it just never had its proper representation.” Mr. Bungle disbanded in 2000. Reunion rumors popped up anytime members performed together in their many other groups, and eventually, Dunn, Patton, and Spruance found themselves backstage at a Dead Cross show (one of Patton’s other bands, which also includes ex-Slayer and Suicidal Tendencies drummer Dave Lombardo). It was here that Dunn floated the idea to re-record with Lombardo—Slayer had been a massive influence when they first wrote it. “He essentially invented that style of drumming,” he says. “That was the whole catalyst, because he was the guy we had in mind when we were writing it in the ’80s.” Patton later suggested adding Anthrax and Stormtroopers of Death guitarist Scott Ian, who, it turns out, was already a massive fan. “That blew our minds,” says Dunn. “The first Anthrax record was big for us, too.” Mr. Bungle’s first live shows since 2000 took place right before the pandemic hit, but it allowed them time to warm up and relearn the music. “It wasn\'t easy,” he says. “I could pick a lot faster when I was 17 and full of angst. But it was super fun.” All but one track from the original demo was rerecorded, alongside three extra songs written at the time and two covers. “In the studio, Trey, Mike, and I were looking at each other as we were recording, like, ‘Can you believe this? We got these guys to agree to do this?’” Below, Dunn talks through each track on *The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo*. **Grizzly Adams** “‘Grizzly Adams’ was Trey\'s creation. It’s a song we\'ve never played live, ever. Initially we just decided the band needed an intro. So he went home and made this. It\'s still hilarious to me because it’s too long for an intro, but that\'s what\'s great about it. I think Mike came up with the title. We didn\'t have a title for it—and this is the typical Bungle attitude—it’s just the most inappropriate title we can think of. It has nothing to do with Grizzly Adams, but in a way it’s this kind of heroic, melancholy piece.” **Anarchy Up Your Anus** “It\'s hard to remember exactly why we decided to \[sample Disney\'s *Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House*\]. We always liked that ungodly scream after the narration. It\'s supposed to be a ghoul or something. And screaming at the top of the song, when the beat kicks in, is such a metal thing to do. We decided it was going to be too much trouble to get the rights to use the actual Walt Disney version. We happen to know Danny DeVito, so we asked Rhea \[Perlman\] if she would narrate it. I think the way she did was really great. She’s also one of the most un-metal people you can think of. That\'s part of our MO.” **Raping Your Mind** “I feel like songwriting-wise, and lyrically, I can definitely tell it was written by a 17-year-old. At a pretty young age I definitely liked to mess around lyrically with the figurative and the literal. That\'s why I\'m using this sort of like a brainwashing metaphor—the idea of the brain being something that can actually be ‘raped.’” **Hypocrites / Habla Español O Muere** “‘Hypocrites’ on the original demo is a bit of a joke song. It was premeditating the direction we started to go in later, which is why we chopped off the second part—it didn\'t really fit with the rest. The lyrics are acknowledging our own hypocrisy. Now that I\'m a little bit wiser, I feel like it could be a mantra for human beings in general, if they\'re willing to self-reflect. With adding the Stormtroopers \[of Death\] song on there, well, we did a Slayer cover in the live set, and we wanted to do either Anthrax or Stormtroopers. It just became part of ‘Hypocrites,’ and plays into that because the original is a big, sarcastic joke that a lot of people might not get. So to redo it but then flip it around with the Spanish seemed to make sense.” **Bungle Grind** “That\'s Trey\'s song. When Bungle started, me and Mike were 17, and Trey was 15. Trey was sort of this guitar whiz kid who I met in a music class in high school, and he already had a really developed ear. That was always my favorite song on the demo because it\'s got this really interesting harmonic movement to it. It\'s unusual, almost leaning towards prog in a way. Trey wrote the lyrics too. I don\'t even know if he knows what it\'s about. Who knows what the Bungle Grind is? We\'re not sure.” **Methematics** “This one has complicated history. I think I wrote it after we recorded the demo, thinking we would eventually record more songs. At that point, we changed drummers, added a horn section, and totally started going in different directions. We never even learned those songs. They only existed as guitar demos I made at home. Then, as we were relearning this stuff, I started thinking it would be cool to ‘pay tribute’ to our hometown—I mean, there is some tribute in the lyrics that Mike wrote, but there\'s also some references to things that were kind of dark up in this part of north California. I sent Trey an email, asking for some stories. He sent me some ideas, and I had some other ideas, and then we gave it to Mike, who went with it and wrote these great lyrics. I think there are some definitely some references to meth addicts, and that\'s when we thought of the title, which totally worked.” **Eracist** “It’s almost a brand-new song, except for the main riff that was written in the ’80s. Mike had those two main riffs. I don\'t even know if there was a recording of it, but for some reason Trey remembered the riffs. So Mike arranged it and wrote a bridge for it, which is that double-time section in the middle, and he wrote the lyrics. We had the other \[previously unreleased\] songs on a cassette at my parents\' house. I’m a bit of a hoarder, and I have this box of tapes from my youth. Rehearsals, or riffs I was working on, songwriting stuff. So I had them in there and I knew where to find them. I had to digitize those from a cassette tape to send to the other guys. Keep all your crap. We\'re like the anti-Marie Kondo.” **Spreading the Thighs of Death** “The whole song is based on specific intervals. I was treating it like a composition, like, ‘What can I do with this one scale?’ The lyrics are somewhat existentialist in a way. I can\'t remember what it\'s called now, but there was some movie from the early ’80s where some geek kid keeps being harassed, being bullied by other people, and then he turns to the occult and conjures up evil spirits. Then it all goes haywire, of course, because he can\'t control him. It’s also making fun of Satanism in metal. And obviously the title has this sexual reference—I won\'t go into detail, but as a teenager there were some personal references there. Like, don\'t mess around with something you don\'t know about. Being horrified by the opposite sex at a young age is probably a better way to describe it.” **Loss for Words** “We used to play it in the ’90s with Bungle ‘proper,’ with Danny \[Heifetz, drummer\] and Bär \[Clinton McKinnon, saxophonist\]. That record, *Animosity* \[by Corrosion of Conformity\], was big for all of us in high school. We were rehearsing for the live shows when we found out that Reed \[Mullin\] had died. But that song was already in the set list. The slower section played into the sequencing for the record, especially after a song like ‘Spreading’ which is really intense.” **Glutton for Punishment** “It’s another one of the songs I dug out of my archives. The songs were so unclear from the YouTube feed, which is the only way we had access to them. So me and Trey went back and sort of re-demoed them so they were clear for everyone else, especially for Dave and Scott. The lyrics were complete; they\'re typical of where my mind was as a 17-year-old. Totally indecisive about how to deal socially with people, what I was going to do with the rest of my life, all that sort of stuff.” **Sudden Death** “The lyrics are so ’80s. It\'s essentially about fear of nuclear war. The heartfelt fear, the Cold War, worrying about whether the Russians are going to blow us up or not. For me, it\'s probably one of the hardest songs. Mike wrote it—aside from the main parts of ‘Hypocrites,’ it was his one contribution to the original demo. It\'s funny because he\'s the one guy who didn\'t have any musical training. He writes everything by ear. It rarely goes back to any previous idea. It’s hard to remember. You just have to keep playing it over and over again.”

With their 15th studio album, Brazilian metal monarchs Sepultura deliver *Quadra*, a collection of 12 new songs divided evenly into four distinct musical themes. “The first part is influenced by the old school, like \[our albums\] *Beneath the Remains* and *Arise*—and all the bands we used to listen to from the thrash scenes of Germany and the Bay Area,” guitarist Andreas Kisser tells Apple Music. “Part two was more influenced by the *Roots* and *Against* era, where we incorporated more percussion and the tribal elements. Part three is from the instrumental world, like when we did ‘Inquisition Symphony’ on *Schizophrenia* in ’87 or ‘Iceberg Dances’ on *Machine Messiah*. And then the last part is all about melody, especially in the vocals, with a female singer as a guest on the last song. So it’s a little bit of everything that Sepultura did, but with the energy and attitude of today.” Below, Kisser takes us track by track through *Quadra*’s four movements. **Isolation** “This is the first song that was written for the album. It’s got that thrash element with the energy of today, and then \[producer\] Jens \[Bogren\] brought in a lot of the orchestra and choir elements. At first I wanted to keep it a little more raw like the old days, but we experimented a lot and it really worked out. So ‘Isolation’ is a very strong opener with a very traditional heavy metal intro into a very fast song.” **Means to an End** “‘Means to an End’ started when \[drummer\] Eloy \[Casagrande\] sent me this crazy drum loop and I wrote the riff over it. It’s a very powerful, very aggressive and difficult rhythm track. It was a big challenge to record and even write that song, because it’s a really crazy tempo, but it has a great atmosphere. I think it was exciting to start writing the song that way—with the drums and guitars making something really crazy together. We wrote ‘Territory’ like that \[in 1993\] and ‘Sepulnation’ started like that \[in 2001\]. I really encourage drummers to do that for me, because it’s a great way to find different ways of playing guitar.” **Last Time** “This was a very difficult song to finish, because throughout the whole process I did so many different edits and threw away things and brought back riffs and changed parts around. It was a very intense but necessary process, because as you hear in the song, it’s very chaotic, with vocals all over the place and really sharp structural changes, but still very powerful, very aggressive. The intention was really to close this first part of the album with a more *Schizophrenia* atmosphere, and the song talks about addiction to drugs or video games or sex—or anything. It’s not a pretty situation for anyone who goes through something like that.” **Capital Enslavement** “This is the first song of the second part. These three songs, as I said, have the groovier and more percussive stuff, and ‘Capital Enslavement’ was the first song that we wrote with that intention. The intro is very Brazilian, very tribal—a ritualistic kind of vibe—but the song is very heavy and groovy, with a kind of rock ’n’ roll feeling that is very rare for us to bring to Sepultura music. It’s a great opener for this part of the record because it really represents what this part is all about.” **Ali** “This song was inspired by Muhammad Ali. I think he was probably one of the best human beings around. He had such an amazing, clear mind and could express facing the challenges of his time. The song is kind of divided into three: The first part represents Cassius Clay, the Olympic champion. The second part has a musical bridge that changes the whole atmosphere of the song, which represents when he changed his name to Muhammad Ali and he said no to the Vietnam War and changed his religion and everything—as a black guy in the ’60s in America. But he was right, and so ahead of his time. And then for the last part, we have Paulo Cyrino from Babylons P—he does dub music, which kind of represents Ali’s Parkinson’s disease, which did not stop him, because he was at the Olympic Games holding the torch, even with his illness.” **Raging Void** “‘Raging Void’ is another one of those challenges between me and Eloy, because the tempo of the drums is completely different from the guitar, but somehow they fit together and it creates this really weird sensation. It was another situation where Eloy wrote a loop and I wrote the riff around it to create the atmosphere. We also put some melody on the vocals—the chorus is very melodic—so it gives a hint of what’s coming next as well.” **Guardians of Earth** “This song opens the instrumental part of the album, and I think it’s one of the most complex and crazy songs that we ever did. Musically, I think it’s one of our greatest achievements, because it brings together all the elements that Sepultura use in a very special way. I’m really proud of the guitar lead in this one—it’s my humble tribute to Ritchie Blackmore and all the Deep Purple music I love so much. I also put in a lot of acoustic and classical guitar, which was inspired by ‘Iceberg Dances,’ because we had a great time playing that song live. Lyrically, the song talks about the Amazon forest and the Indians losing their territories, especially in Brazil with this government we have. It’s a subject we always have to bring attention to, or at least try to.” **The Pentagram** “‘The Pentagram’ was born and conceived to be an instrumental song, and the idea was to do something in 5/4—hence the ‘pentagram’ name. Of course the upside-down pentagram is so common and popular in metal music and black metal, but we used the title because of the time signature. Again, it was a challenge, but I think \[bassist\] Paulo \[Jr.\] did his best work ever in Sepultura on this track. I think it’s an achievement really as a trio to present a song like this.” **Autem** “This song started also with an instrumental attitude, because it has kind of a long intro which is very percussive but also very heavy. When the song comes in, it’s very death-metal-oriented with very simple raw riffs that relate to Brazilian rhythm. I think the idea was to try to bring those two worlds together, and ‘Autem’ is what we came up with to capture that feeling.” **Quadra** “This was inspired by the quadrivium, the four liberal arts—geometry, numbers, music, and cosmology—which is the source of how we divided the album. It’s a classical guitar quartet in 47 seconds. I wanted to make it 44, to express this number four, the source of everything that’s happening on the album, but the music was great the way it was.” **Agony of Defeat** “This song has a little bit of the concept of ‘Boléro’ from \[Maurice\] Ravel, where you have a kind of structure that happens over and over, but when it repeats, a new element comes in. So that was the source of inspiration, and of course trying to write something in the ‘Machine Messiah’ vibe or Massive Attack vibe, with a slow pace and moods and melodic vocals. I’m very happy with the solo on this one as well. The lead guitar is something I really took my time with to make sure to put the right notes in the right place—not really improvising or anything like that.” **Fear, Pain, Chaos, Suffering** “On this song we have Emmily Barreto, from a Brazilian band called Far From Alaska. They’re not metal at all, but last year while we were finishing the pre-production here in São Paulo, I was invited to be part of a TV show where they put together Far From Alaska and myself to play together. We did two songs—a Bob Marley cover and ‘Ratamahatta’ by Sepultura. It was fantastic. They’re very creative and use a lot of weird instruments, and Emmily is a fantastic singer. So I invited her to do this song with us, and once she did her part, we really found the direction for the song. We actually threw away a few riffs and built the song around her voice. It was really different for us to work with a female singer, but I think it was a great way to end the album—to open new possibilities for the future.”

Code Orange vocalist, drummer, and bandleader Jami Morgan says his band’s fourth album is all about duality. “It’s about societal introspection and looking at where we’re at as a youth culture,” he tells Apple Music. “But it’s also about looking at yourself as a person—and what you present to the world in this digital age versus what’s inside.” On *Underneath*, the unclassifiable Pittsburgh band—equal parts hardcore crew and groove metal enthusiasts, punk rabble-rousers and industrial technicians—imbue their hyper-modern musical style with cold-eyed sociological observations and deep existential malaise. “There’s a journey down this rabbit hole of anxiety and fear and all these regrets and pain,” Morgan explains. “You’re looking at the world and looking at the bitterness and negative stuff you have and trying to work through it and see where it’s leading us in this very noisy world where it’s very hard to stand out but everyone’s constantly talking.” Below, Morgan and guitarist/vocalist Reba Meyers guide us through their new underworld. **(Deeperthanbefore)** Jami Morgan: “This intro is a trailer, in some ways—or the scene before the opening titles. It’s introducing a little bit of our narrative voice and setting up a feeling of dread. And it starts off with the theme from the end of our last record, which we continued on some of the EPs that came in between. It’s the theme song, in a lot of ways, for the last era of our career that phased out and this new voice phased in.” **Swallowing the Rabbit Whole** JM: “This is about taking that first step into the realization that you\'re going to have to go on an internal journey—going down the rabbit hole of success and hurt and envy and self-worth. And you can continue to live in shame, or decide to confront this monster that\'s been depicted in our last three albums, and that\'s on the cover of this album as well.” Reba Meyers: “It took us a really long time to put this song together. It was like we were trying to figure out what kind of album we wanted to write. But once we were able to put that song together, it was the centerpiece to everything. It made everything else fall into place. It was almost a testing ground for a lot of the glitchier guitars and layering and overdubs and bringing in the pianos and synths and everything that would really take the main stage on a lot of the verses and everything of the song. It gave us a place to work off of for the other songs.” **In Fear** JM: “In some ways it’s about this culture we have of throwing each other to the wolves, where the jury of public opinion is almost the most important thing. We have to live in fear now of what we do and say and how we behave. And that’s good in some ways. But in some ways you can be stripped of what makes you an individual. So this isn’t anti-callout-culture, because some of that is important. It’s about how important social currency is, and how it’s our most important currency in a lot of ways.” **You and You Alone** JM: “‘You and You Alone’ is the first real touch of bitterness and anger on the record. We find ourselves at odds with all this hate and resentment we have towards those around us. It\'s looking at this bitterness and saying, ‘Is it totally justified, or in my mind? Or even if it is justified, is this something that I need to hang on to?’ But on the other end, I’m saying this to myself: If I have to carry this burden, what’s my part in it?” RM: “Creating this was like bringing back the old-school chaos of the style of writing we did in our riffs. But we then took it to another dimension almost with bringing in all these digital clippings and glitches. The verses started out as a simple chaotic guitar riff, but we gave it to our keyboard player, Shade, and he looped them and added all these accents and spit it back out. Then we went back and relearned the riff that way. So it was a very cool, very modern back-and-forth process.” **Who I Am** JM: “This is an observation on obsession through the lens of stalkers, and how that was looked at in the past, versus how people present themselves through social media. It\'s this unrequited idealization. In the past—and still, obviously—it’s driven people mad and they\'ve done horrible things. But now it’s something that\'s just totally normal: constantly looking at people; stalking them. And using that new media to make excuses for our shortcomings.” **Cold.Metal.Place** JM: “‘Cold.Metal.Place’ is like the environment of the record. It\'s where I\'m envisioning the birthplace of our main character—or our main antagonist, if you\'re thinking of it that way. It\'s like this merciless, barren, glass world—a machine world. This world we\'re depicting inside the record layout and on the cover. It\'s this environmental embodiment of our own self-destructive thoughts and ideas. We’re abused by this echoing noise of criticism that is sometimes necessary and sometimes just pushes you deeper into your own head. And you go into the cold metal place.” RM: “We, as a unit, have all felt like we’re in that landscape and we’re able to relate in that way—which made it so much easier to connect on writing these songs. It\'s almost like being able to see it visualized has helped me, especially, be able to get through that trial of pointed fingers at all of us. And it\'s a very special thing to feel and have gone through that as a unit through our whole journey of all these albums and coming to this one.” **Sulfur Surrounding** JM: “This is about how we manipulate each other without even meaning to. And sometimes, people mean to. Are you corroding your group by making everyone so connected and having to go on? That’s something I’ve struggled with. Is this the wrong thing for these people who are my friends? I want to do the right thing, but these feelings take over. And I feel everyone can relate to that in a way.” **The Easy Way** JM: “This song is like the bridge between the two halves of the album. We had a song called ‘Only One Way’ that we put out a year or two ago, and this is the sequel. And there\'s a part at the end of ‘Only One Way,’ melodically, that actually is the chorus of this song. Reba sings ‘Only One Way’—it\'s awesome—and then at the end, I creep in with this vocal melody, and that\'s the chorus of this song.” RM: “I think all of us knew when we were writing ‘Only One Way’ that it was going to come back around, just because of how strong the melody was at the end. It didn’t feel like it got its full time in the spotlight. And we always like having things connect and weave together so it doesn\'t just feel like a bunch of songs slapped together on an album. We always try to make it more of a journey—not just through this album, but through our whole trajectory as a band. And I think a lot of people who like our band like us because of that. We\'re all very obsessive about music that has more of an overall vision to it. And obviously, you can see Jami has planned all of this out.” **Erasure Scan** JM: “‘Erasure Scan’ is probably the darkest song on the album. Lyrically, it\'s about the school shooting epidemic, and maybe the events and brain trauma that turn people to committing these horrible atrocities. It gets into some light, probably bullshit, very poorly researched psychology, but I was just looking into the Triune Brain theory—about how the three brains can become rigidly locked. That\'s been seen in a lot of school shooters under psychological evaluation. They become very fixated on the external goal and mission that they\'re unable to divert from. We also talk about this parasite that we get deeper into later on ‘Back Inside the Glass,’ but it’s this aquatic worm that exists in grasshoppers, fucks with their brain and controls them and influences their behavior. So I was relating that to these shootings and talking about the government swaying public opinion with pointless gun and freedom debates, but nothing is really done to help reduce it.” **Last Ones Left** JM: “Other than ‘You and You Alone,’ I would say ‘Last Ones Left’ is pretty much the most bitter-ass fucking song on the album. It\'s about pride and it\'s about social climbing. It\'s pretty much saying we\'re the last ones left on the surface of real bands that have worked and climbed that fucking ladder through hard work and not through bootlicking.” RM: “We\'ve always needed to have that song on every record that empowers us. And for me, and I know the other guys, when we play that song, it definitely has that feeling to it—even at shows when we feel like it\'s us against the world, and no one there even cares or wants to see us—we can use that as an empowering song, and we\'re almost screaming it and singing it to ourselves at times.” **Autumn and Carbine** JM: “On the surface, the song is about the quick lives and deaths of these flavor-of-the-year new artists that are being propped up by corporations. They\'re told to be bombastic and loud, and their demise is very similar. It\'s quick and it\'s loud and then it\'s gone.” **Back Inside the Glass** JM: “Sonically, this song is very sci-fi hardcore in a lot of ways. Our main character, the monster on the front cover that we call The Cutter, is trapped inside this glass shell of how the world sees him—and how maybe even you envision yourself, for better or worse. And it’s that monster trying to get out. It’s your own mania getting the best of you. So you want to kill this thing inside you, but it’s going to come out like that monster. So you want it to go back inside the glass.” **A Sliver** JM: “Thematically, ‘A Sliver’ is the culmination of years of overexposure and noise that almost leads us to become deaf to the cries of everyone around us. Because we all watch these tragedies like they\'re a TV show. But it seems in the past, everything matters only for a sliver of time, and then it’s on to the next thing. We’re lost in the rat race, and it’s all been engineered by corporations for this exact purpose. So we all keep posting; we keep promising. But it\'s really for nothing. We\'re not heard at all. You\'re just a dollar or another voice in a sea of voices. Even that only matters for a second, and then people move on.” **Underneath** JM: ‘‘Underneath’ is really about being in that final, most important moment, facing this monster—whether that be proverbial or inner self. It’s the most positive song on the record, I think, because a lot of it is about redemption. It doesn’t really give you a clear ending as to what happened, but there’s a truth and you’re going to find out what it is. So we have to shed who we are and remove that machine inside. We either stand up to it or just disappear and become it.”

As Jason Isbell inched deeper and deeper into writing what would become *Reunions*, he noticed a theme begin to emerge in its songs. “I looked around and thought, ‘There’s so many ghosts here,’” he tells Apple Music. “To me, ghosts always mean a reunion with somebody you’ve known before, or yourself coming back to tell you something that you might have missed.” It’s possible that the Alabama native had missed more than most: Starting with a promising but fairly turbulent stint as a member of Drive-By Truckers in the 2000s, the first act and decade of the Jason Isbell origin story had been largely defined by his kryptonite-like relationship with alcohol. His fourth LP since becoming sober in 2012, *Reunions* is another set of finely rendered rock and roots music that finds Isbell—now A Great American Songwriter—making peace with the person he used to be. It’s an album whose scenes of love and anger and grief and parenthood are every bit as rich as its sonics. “Up until the last couple of years, I didn’t necessarily feel safe because I thought there was a risk that I might fall back into those old ways,” he says of revisiting his past. “These songs and the way the record sounds reflects something that was my intention 15 or 12 years ago, but I just didn’t have the ability and the focus and the means to get there as a songwriter or a recording artist.” Here, he takes us inside each song on the album. **What’ve I Done to Help** “It seems like this song set the right mood for the record. It\'s a little bit indicting of myself, but I think it\'s also a positive message: Most of what I\'m talking about on this album is trying to be as aware as possible and not just get lost in your own selfish bubble, because sometimes the hardest thing to do is to be honest with yourself. Incidentally, I started singing this song as I was driving around close to my house. \[The chorus\] was just something that I found myself repeating over and over to myself. Of course, all that happened before the virus came through, but I was writing, I think, about preexisting social conditions that really the virus just exacerbated or at least turned a light on. We had a lot of division between the people that have and the people that don\'t, and I think it\'s made pretty obvious now.” **Dreamsicle** “It\'s a sad story about a child who\'s in the middle of a home that\'s breaking apart. But I find that if you can find positive anchors for those kinds of stories, if you can go back to a memory that is positive—and that\'s what the chorus does—then once you\'re there, inside that time period in your life, it makes it a little easier to look around and pay attention to the darker things. This kind of song could have easily been too sad. It\'s sad enough as it is, but there are some very positive moments, the chorus being the most important: You\'re just sitting in a chair having a popsicle on a summer night, which is what kids are supposed to be doing. But then, you see that things are pretty heavy at home.” **Only Children** “My wife Amanda \[Shires\] and I were in Greece, on Hydra, the island Leonard Cohen had lived on and, I think, the first place he ever performed one of his songs for people. We were there with a couple of friends of ours, Will Welch and his wife Heidi \[Smith\]. Will was working on a piece on Ram Dass for his magazine and I was working on this song and Amanda was working on a song and Heidi was working on a book, and we all just sort of sat around and read, sharing what we were working on with each other. And it occurred to me that you don\'t do that as much as you did when you were a kid, just starting to write songs and play music with people. It started off as sort of a love song to that and that particular time, and then from there people started emerging from my past, people who I had spent time with in my formative years as a creative person. There was one friend that I lost a few years ago, and she and I hadn\'t been in touch for a long time, but I didn\'t really realize I was writing about her until after I finished the song and other people heard it and they asked if that was who it was about. I said I guess it was—I didn\'t necessarily do that intentionally, but that\'s what happens if you\'re writing from the heart and from the hip.” **Overseas** “Eric Clapton said in an interview once that he was a good songwriter, but not a great songwriter—he didn’t feel like he would ever be great because he wasn\'t able to write allegorically. I was probably 12 or 13 when I read that, and it stuck with me: To write an entire song that\'s about multiple things at once can be a pretty big challenge, and that’s what I was trying to do with ‘Overseas.’ On one hand, you have an expatriate who had just had enough of the country that they\'re living in and moved on and left a family behind. And the other is more about my own personal story, where I was home with our daughter when my wife was on tour for a few months. I was feeling some of the same emotions and there were some parallels. I think the most important thing to me was getting the song right: I needed it to feel like the person who has left had done it with good reason and that the person\'s reasons had to be clearly understandable. It’s not really a story about somebody being left behind as much as it\'s a story about circumstances.” **Running With Our Eyes Closed** “It\'s a love song, but I try really hard to look at relationships from different angles, because songs about the initial spark of a relationship—that territory has been covered so many times before and so well that I don\'t know that I would have anything new to bring. I try to look at what it’s like years down the road, when you\'re actually having to negotiate your existence on a daily basis with another human being or try to figure out what continues to make the relationship worth the work. And that\'s what this song is about: It\'s about reevaluating and thinking, ‘Okay, what is it about this relationship that makes it worth it for me?’\" **River** “I think that song is about the idea that as a man—and I was raised this way to some extent—you aren\'t supposed to express your emotions freely. It sounds almost like a gospel song, and the character is going to this body of water to cast off his sins. The problem with that is that it doesn\'t actually do him any good and it doesn\'t help him deal with the consequences of his actions and it doesn\'t help him understand why he keeps making these decisions. He\'s really just speaking to nobody. And the song is a cautionary tale against that. I think it\'s me trying to paint a portrait of somebody who is living in a pretty toxic form of being a man. I\'m always trying to take stock of how I\'m doing as a dad and as a husband. And it\'s an interesting challenge, because to support my wife and my daughter without exerting my will as a man over the household is something that takes work, and it\'s something that I wouldn\'t want to turn away from. There’s a constant evaluation for me: Am I being supportive without being overbearing, and am I doing a good job of leading by example? Because that\'s really honestly all you can do for your kids. If my daughter sees me go to therapy to talk about things that are troubling me and not allow those things to cause me to make bad choices, then she\'s going to feel like it\'s okay to talk about things herself. And if I ever have a boy, I want him to think the same thing.” **Be Afraid** “It\'s a rock song and it\'s uptempo and I love those. But those are hard to write sometimes. It helps when you\'re angry about something, and on ‘Be Afraid,’ I was definitely angry. I felt like I stick my neck out and I think a lot of us recording artists end up sticking our neck out pretty often to talk about what we think is right. And then, you turn around and see a whole community of singers and entertainers who just keep their mouth shut. I mean, it\'s not up to me to tell somebody how to go about their business, but I think if you have a platform and you\'re somebody who is trying to make art, then I think it\'s impossible to do that without speaking your mind. For me, it\'s important to stay mindful of the fact that there are a lot of people in this world that don\'t have any voice at all and nobody is paying any attention to what they\'re complaining about and they have some real valid complaints. I\'m not turning my anger toward the people in the comments, though—I\'m turning my anger toward the people who don\'t realize that as an entertainer who sometimes falls under scrutiny for making these kinds of statements, you still are in a much better position than the regular, everyday American who doesn\'t have any voice at all.” **St. Peter’s Autograph** “When you\'re in a partnership with somebody—whether it\'s a marriage or a friendship—you have to be able to let that person grieve in their own way. I was writing about my perspective on someone else\'s loss, because my wife and I lost a friend and she was much closer to him than I was and had known him for a long time. What I was trying to say in that song was ‘It\'s okay to feel whatever you need to feel, and I\'m not going to let my male-pattern jealousy get in the way of that.’ A lot of the things that I still work on as an adult are being a more mature person, and a lot of it comes from untying all these knots of manhood that I had sort of tied into my brain growing up in Alabama. Something I\'ve had to outgrow has been this idea of possession in a relationship and this jealousy that I think comes from judgment on yourself, from questioning yourself. You wind up thinking, \'Well, do I deserve this person, and if not, what\'s going to happen next?\' And part of it was coming to terms with the fact that it didn\'t matter what I deserved—it’s just what I have. It’s realizing something so simple as your partner is another human being, just like you are. Writing is a really great way for me to explain how I feel to myself and also sometimes to somebody else—this song I was trying to speak to my wife and addressing her pretty directly, saying, ‘I want you to know that I\'m aware of this. I know that I\'m capable of doing this. I\'m going to try my best to stay out of the way.’ And that\'s about the best you can do sometimes.” **It Gets Easier** “I was awake until four in the morning, just sort of laying there, not terribly concerned or worried about anything. And there was a time where I thought, ‘Well, if I was just drunk, I could go to sleep.’ But then I also thought, ‘Well, yeah, but I would wake up a couple hours later when the liquor wore off.’ I think it\'s important for me to remember how it felt to be handicapped by this disease and how my days actually went. I\'ve finally gotten to the point now where I don\'t really hate that guy anymore, and I think that\'s even helped me because I can go back and actually revisit emotions and memories from those times without having to wear a suit of armor. For a many years, it was like, ‘Okay, if you\'re going to go back there, then you\'re going to have to put this armor on. You\'re going to have to plan your trip. You\'re going to have to get in and get out, like you\'re stealing a fucking diamond or something. Because if you stay there too long or if you wind up romanticizing the way your life was in those days, then there\'s a good chance that you might slip.\' I think the more honest I am with myself, the less likely I am to collapse and go back to who I used to be. It\'s not easy to constantly remind yourself of how much it sucked to be an active alcoholic, but it\'s necessary. I wrote this song for people who would get a lot of the inside references, and definitely for people who have been in recovery for a long period of time. I wrote it for people who have been going through that particular challenge and people who have those conversations with themselves. And really that\'s what it is at its root: a song about people who are trying to keep an open dialogue with themselves and explain, this is how it\'s going to be okay. Because if you stop doing that and then you lose touch with the reasons that you got sober in the first place and you go on cruise control, then you slip up or you just wind up white-knuckling it, miserable for the rest of your life. And I can\'t make either of those a possibility.” **Letting You Go** “Once, when my daughter was really little, my wife said, ‘Every day, they get a little bit farther away from you.’ And that\'s the truth of it: It’s a long letting-go process. This is a simple song, a country song—something that I was trying to write like a Billy Joe Shaver or Willie Nelson song. I think it works emotionally because it’s stuff that a lot of people have felt, but it\'s tough to do in a way that wasn\'t cheesy, so I started with when we first met her and then tried to leave on a note of ‘Eventually, I know these things are going to happen. You’re going to have to leave.’ And that\'s the whole point. Some people think, ‘Well, my life is insignificant, none of this matters.’ And that makes them really depressed. But then some people, like me, think, ‘Man, my life is insignificant. None of this matters. This is fucking awesome.’ I think that might be why I wound up being such a drunk, but it helps now, still, for me to say, ‘I can\'t really fuck this up too bad. So I might as well enjoy it.’”

“I had a lot to write about,” beabadoobee tells Apple Music of her debut album *Fake It Flowers*. “I’m just a girl with girl problems, and I feel like there are a lot of girls who have the same problems.” Over 12 songs, Beatrice Laus explores those issues in what she calls “diary entries,” written in her bedroom over just a couple of months in late 2019. Here, she shakes off what people think of her (“Further Away,” the hook-laden “Care”), screams out her sadness (“Charlie Brown”), and gives way to the abandon of young love (the woozy, self-aware “Horen Sarrison”). “I made sure that there was a song for every mood and for every Bea that exists,” says the Philippines-born, London-raised singer. “This is a very personal album. It was everything I was supposed to tell someone but couldn’t, or just, like, never did.” The songs here are an unabashed love letter to the \'90s artists—and movies—she was devoted to growing up. (“Everyone glorifies the past,” says Laus of her obsession with a decade that ended a year before her birth.) Only three years after the first song she ever wrote, the hushed, ultra-lo-fi “Coffee,” earmarked beabadoobee as a name to know, the singer wants *Fake It Flowers* to do for other young women what those artists—from The Cardigans to Oasis, via Elliott Smith and Alanis Morissette—did for her. “When I’m really sad, I like to dance in my underpants in front of my mirror,” she says. “I always pick a good album to dance to. And I want *Fake It Flowers* to be that album for someone.” Hairbrushes at the ready: Let beabadoobee take you through her raw debut, track by track. **Care** “As soon as this came to life, I was like, ‘This is the first song.’ It describes the whole sound of *Fake It Flowers*—the big guitars, that nostalgic feeling. And lyrically the song talks about the fact that no one is ever going to get me. But it’s the idea that I\'m going to sing my heart out and not give a fuck if you don\'t like it. I just wanted a really good radio pop song, something that could end \[1999 rom-com\] *10 Things I Hate About You*.” **Worth It** “This song is about the temptations you get when you\'re on tour and when you\'re away—the stupid things you can do when you\'re alone in a hotel room. It was hard to get through it, but I\'m glad I wrote it because it was like an ending of that bit of my life. But sonically, it’s something good out of a bad situation. I wanted to make an album for people to dance to in their bedrooms, despite how depressing the songs are.” **Dye It Red** “This song isn’t actually about me. It\'s stories I\'ve heard from other people, and it’s about stupid boys. I have no filter with the lyrics. It’s also about being comfortable with who you are. At times, I feel like a hypocrite for singing this song, because I always care about what my boyfriend thinks. But I shouldn\'t, right? I wanted ‘Dye It Red’ to fizzle out into a beautiful mess at the end, especially around the lyrics where I\'m like, ‘You\'re not even that cute, that cute.’ I thought it was funny and sassy.” **Back to Mars** “I feel like this is where the album takes a shift into a darker-sounding side. ‘Care’ and ‘Worth It’ are the surface level of my problems. This is where it gets really deep into, like, ‘This is why I\'m fucked up.’ This song pays homage to the space theme of my EP *Space Cadet*, which this song was originally supposed to be for. This was the second take I did—it was just me and my guitar, and then Pete \[Robertson\] put all these amazing atmospheric sounds around it. It was meant to be a really fast-paced track with loads of drums, but it’s a very innocent song.” **Charlie Brown** “This is very heavy! And screaming on this song was probably the funnest moment of recording this album. They asked, ‘Are you sure you can scream?’ But I scream so much in my bedroom when I’m alone, so I was like: ‘I was born ready.’ I wanted to talk about a situation in my life as if I was just taking it out of my system. And what better way to do that than scream? I have a Charlie Brown strip tattooed on my arm—I was obsessed with Snoopy when I was a kid.” **Emo Song** “Originally, this was going to be another heavy one, but Pete suggested making it a super sad and slow one. The songs at this point all bleed into one another. And I did that on purpose, because they were all made together. The song talks about my childhood and how it affected me during my teenage life and what I did to kind of just drag myself of everything that happened to me.” **Sorry** “If my voice sounds vulnerable in this song, it’s because I was half crying while I was singing it. And it was a hard one to sing, because it is just so honest. It speaks about a really sad situation with someone I know and someone I really love. I had a pretty wild teenage life. I think me and my friendship group did what college kids did when we were 15. Anything in excess is bad. And we just did a bit too many drugs, really. And for some, \[it was\] too much—to the point they had to get \[involuntarily hospitalized\]. It\'s just sad to watch someone\'s life kind of wither away, especially knowing that they could have had an amazing life ahead of them. I wish I was more involved. But when something\'s too hard to watch, you just kind of separate yourself from it. Getting all of that off my chest was so relieving. And I said sorry. At least, in my head, I apologized.” **Further Away** “I\'ve always wanted to be a Disney princess. The strings come into play and I wanted to feel like a princess. This is where the positivity comes in the album—there’s a feeling of hope. This song is about all the people who were really mean to me growing up, and I’m just saying how dumb they were. But really, nothing’s real. They were going through the same shit.” **Horen Sarrison** “Literally a six-minute love song of me saying, ‘I\'m in love.’ It\'s supposed to be ridiculous. It\'s supposed to be very outwardly Disney Princess vibes. I was playing it to Pete and I was like, ‘And then the strings go like this,’ humming how I wanted it to sound. And he really brought it to life, and I owe it to him. It definitely is the most grand song on the album. And it’s really fun to play as well, because it just is me talking about how in love I am. I wanted a song for every mood, and this is definitely for that happy mood. And it\'s about Soren Harrison. I thought it was kind of funny to switch the two letters and call it ‘Horen Sarrison.’ It’s just so stupid.” **How Was Your Day?** “I recorded it in my boyfriend’s garden. Lyrically, it talks about my journey and about how hard it was being away from home and missing people. And I feel like it only made sense to go back to my roots on the way I recorded it, on a really shitty four-track, just me and my guitar with a missing string. It was really refreshing. There was always talk about doing a ‘Coffee’ moment on this album. Like, ‘Let\'s strip it back to just you and your guitar.’ And I really wanted it, but we didn\'t know how we were going to do it. Then lockdown happened and I was like, ‘I\'m going to do it, Daniel Johnston style.’” **Together** “This is paying homage to chicks who rock onstage. Like Veruca Salt and Hole. Writing this song made me realize a lot of things—for example, that I have this dependency thing as a person. But ‘Together’ made me realize that sometimes it\'s okay to be by yourself. Togetherness is cool, but being together all the time is kind of unhealthy. Again, I guess it was taking a sad situation and pouring my heart out into a song, and screaming it. And that felt pretty empowering.” **Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene** “The name of this song is simply the names I want to call my children. I\'m literally saying in the song, ‘You\'ll never leave me because you think I\'m pretty, so we\'ll have lots of babies called Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene.’ And it\'s supposed to be really stupid and fun to finish the album off on a positive note. I wanted it to be very messy—like so disgustingly distorted that you can\'t even hear a sound. We recorded it live in Wandsworth in a studio. There were two drum kits and we were just bashing the drums. It was fun, and very Flaming Lips-inspired. The last mood of this album is the really strange, weird Bea. And I think that’s my favorite one.”

This album is about my version of forgiveness and things that I need to face in order to reach my version of that

Drive-By Truckers’ 13th studio album arrives with little notice, announced just a few days before release—but for fans of Patterson Hood’s long-running Southern rock band, the of-the-moment topicality of these nine songs is anything but surprising. DBTs’ second album of 2020 finds the quintet turning their searing, soulful songwriting towards civil unrest and our fractured collective psyche, throwing in a rip-roaring cover of the Ramones’ “The KKK Took My Baby Away” for good measure. Twenty-five years in, Drive-By Truckers have lost none of their Southern-fried bite, continuing to proudly sound like no one except themselves.

SONGHOY BLUES is a band whose experiences in Mali have opened their eyes to universal problems plaguing people everywhere. Using the pain and lessons learned from having to leave their hometowns in northern Mali, the band realizes that human rights is a concept that extends far beyond what they have seen with their own eyes and far beyond just the borders of Mali. In order for the band to see their homes restored, they understand the fight must be fought on all fronts, for everybody across the spectrum. They are no longer refugees or exiles or four people with instruments—they are SONGHOY BLUES, a musical voice for empowerment and equality. Working with Matt Sweeney, who encouraged the band to make the album they want to make, OPTIMISME confronts our world today. On “BADALA” and “GABI,” SONGHOY BLUES seeks the empowerment of women, asking for centuries-old misogynistic practices to be done away with. With “WORRY,” the band advises both the young and the old that positive vibes and persistence are the best tools to fight our struggles. In “ASSADA,” the band praises and thanks the everyday warriors who wake up everyday to sweat for the betterment of their communities and in “DOURNIA,” the band laments the lack of compassion and empathy between humans today in the face of increasing materialism and selfishness. “BON BON” warns of being fooled by shiny promises, and in “BARRE” the band asks for the youth to get involved at home for change while warning off those who wish to divide in “FEY FEY.” Each time SONGHOY BLUES steps to the mic on OPTIMISME the band confronts, consoles, praises, thanks, and encourages the listener toward a better world tomorrow.

“This band has been going for a very long time,” Katatonia vocalist Jonas Renske tells Apple Music. In fact, Sweden’s reigning kings of melancholy have been at it for nearly 30 years, a timespan that led the Stockholm-based group to go on hiatus after the touring cycle for 2016’s *The Fall of Hearts*. “We never really had a proper break before,” Renske explains. “We wanted to get some perspective and see if the band is really what we want to do. It turns out we all missed it very much.” In his downtime, Renske wrote the bulk of the music and all of the lyrics for Katatonia’s 11th album, *City Burials*. “It’s a pretty lonely job to write music,” he says. “The whole creative process can be very tedious—if you’re struggling with something, it takes forever if you’re just by yourself. But of course it’s very rewarding when it’s done.” Below, Renske guides us through the many rewards of *City Burials*. **Heart Set to Divide** “To me, it\'s a pretty epic track. I think it sort of starts where the previous album left off, because it\'s very adventurous and there\'s a lot of things going on—a lot of layers. And it\'s kind of long, but it still has some kind of heaviness to it. It sets the tone and the standard, pretty much. It’s hard to explain the lyrics, but it’s about changing your mind and doing something that maybe you didn’t expect yourself to do—maybe because there’s something difficult about it.” **Behind the Blood** “This song is a little bit different for Katatonia. When we did our last tour, we ended the set every night playing a Judas Priest cover—‘Night Comes Down’ from *Defenders of the Faith*. I think it had something to do with why I started writing ‘Behind the Blood,’ because it definitely brought me back to the music I grew up listening to. I just had this idea that I wanted to try and write a song like that for Katatonia, but in our style. Lyrically, it’s not the usual gloomy atmosphere because the song is more uptempo, so it ended up being about drinking—but in an abstract way, of course. We can’t wait to play it live.” **Lacquer** “We had already started the recording of this album—we were doing the drums—and I felt that maybe we should have one more song to record, maybe to become a B-side or something. So I started working on this song, and by the end of the drum recording, the whole song was finished. But we couldn’t put any real drums on it by that time, so we kept it electronic. And then we decided it should be on the album. It’s very atmospheric, and it’s one of my favorite performances for myself as a singer.” **Rein** “This is one of my favorite songs on the record. It’s kind of a heavier track, and it also has a special style or feeling to it that was inspired by the band 16 Horsepower. They’ve been one of my favorite bands for a very long time, and I wanted to do something just a little bit in that style, but of course in a more metal way for Katatonia. So it has this bottleneck guitar that’s going on in the verses, and with a little bit of a country twang to it, I think. We called it the ‘cowboy track’ when we worked on it.” **The Winter of Our Passing** “It’s one of the earlier songs I wrote for the album. It’s kind of like older Katatonia—not way back, but maybe 10 or 15 years back—mixed up with some electronic stuff. I think it portrays a lot of emotion, and it has a chorus that you could sing along to, probably. This is also one of the songs we really want to try onstage. It’s very short and compact, and I think it would do very well live. It’s going to be the third single off the album. It’s a bit of a ‘hit’ song, I would say.” **Vanishers** “This song is very electronic, and it’s kind of a calm song, very atmospheric. I was playing the music for \[guitarist\] Anders \[Nyström\] and he said it sounds like there’s a lot of space for something different to happen here, so he came up with the idea that we should ask Anni \[Bernhard\] from Full of Keys to be on it. She’s been a favorite singer of me and Anders for some years now. So we sent her my demo and she was straight into the idea of doing it. She totally got the vibe of the song instantly, and I think the final result is perfect.” **City Glaciers** “This song is probably the first song I started writing after the release of the previous album, so it has a little bit of that style. It’s a little bit more progressive, maybe. Like the opening track, it’s kind of an adventurous song with a lot of layers of guitars and keyboards and vocals. Lyrically, it’s about being in a relationship or friendship for a long time and maybe you don’t see a reason to go on—you’re fed up with someone, basically. But you also know subconsciously that things will eventually change for the better. And the song is just about that wait, I would say.” **Flicker** “Another one that’s a bit more uptempo, especially in the choruses. They’re very classic Katatonia, I think. There’s some electronic elements as well. Lyrically, it’s about trying to break free from something. And it has a few moments of magic guitar playing by Roger \[Öjersson\].” **Lachesis** “On our previous album we have a song called ‘Decima,’ which is about one of the Fates from Roman mythology—a woman that is measuring the thread of life. There were three sisters in the mythology that were basically deciding when people were going to die. It turns out that in Greek mythology there is an equivalent, and that is Lachesis. I wanted to have a connection between the two albums, so once again we have the theme of life and death. We all have a measured thread of life. We don’t know exactly when it’s going to be cut off.” **Neon Epitaph** “It’s one of the last songs I wrote for the album. I think it was actually finished just before entering the studio. It’s not the easiest song to play on drums, I think, so the drummer had a lot of stuff to learn for this—but he definitely nailed it. Lyrically it deals with becoming a parent, which makes you also reflect on your own personality when you have someone that’s going to walk in your footsteps pretty much through their whole life. It was written because I had my third son a year and a half ago, and it’s kind of a beautiful little theme to write about, I think.” **Untrodden** “As with ‘Neon Epitaph,’ this song has these light and shade moments. Lyrically, it’s a little bit about wondering what’s in the afterlife—the people we might have known that are already there…will they wait for us? Is there something that still connects us when we go there? That kind of stuff. There’s also a guitar solo by Roger which I think is one of the best guitar solos I’ve ever heard—and I would say that even if it was not in Katatonia. It’s a great closing song for an album like *City Burials*.” **Fighters** “This is a digital bonus song that’s not on the album. It’s a cover track by a short-lived Swedish metal band that was active in the beginning of the 2000s called Enter the Hunt. Their singer is Krister Linder, who was doing some guest vocals for us on our album *Night Is the New Day*—on the song ‘Departer.’ Enter the Hunt only did one album and an EP, I think. The song ‘Fighters’ was only released digitally, so it’s not very well-known. But me and Anders thought that song was so good and we felt a bit sorry for them because they split up before anything could happen with it. So we decided to cover it to try and get it further up into the world.”

City Burials - Katatonia’s new studio opus of absorbing, soaring progressive rock & meticulously crafted doses of melancholy on CD Formed in 1991 by Jonas Renkse & Anders Nyström, and transitioning from early pioneers of the rising black/death/doom movement, to powerhouses of the progressive metallic rock genre, the Swedish connoisseurs of melancholy return with their stellar new opus, City Burials - the band’s eleventh studio album, & first since 2016’s haunting The Fall of Hearts was brought before the world. With the winds of a new direction steering the band on their latest journey, City Burials stands as Katatonia’s new triumph of deep & enigmatic progressive rock – the fruits of a rejuvenating and profound chapter in the band’s legacy; a catalyst for its creators, with a collection of moments constructed out of the fragments of an ever-evolving life. Compiled into one of their most important modern works and statements to date, the finely-honed instrumentation provides a multi-textured backdrop with the voice of Jonas Renkse guiding us through these latest trials of loss and ruin. Beyond their core creative duo, Katatonia are very much a full-blown band, and the chemistry between Jonas, Anders and their band mates – bassist Niklas Sandin, drummer Daniel Moilanen and most recent recruit, guitarist Roger Öjersson – has never sounded more potent, with City Burials being the first album Katatonia have made since Öjersson became a full-time member. Inspired by an injection of fresh blood into Katatonia’s creative brew, City Burials is an album that sees the band reclaim part of their heavy metal roots, via several moments of exuberant, old school classicism, deftly woven into these new songs’ kaleidoscopic fabric. City Burials was produced by Nyström/Renkse and recorded at Soundtrade Studios, Tri-Lamb Studios & The City Of Glass, throughout October & November 2019, with engineering work handled by Karl Daniel Lidén. The album also features a guest appearance by Anni Bernhard, the voice behind Stockholm based act Full of Keys. Artwork appears courtesy of Lasse Hoile, the image itself representing the ongoing era of the Dead End King.

Keyboard legend Rick Wakeman returns to Prog on new album The Red Planet Rick Wakeman, best known as keyboard player in progressive rock band Yes (across five tenures between 1971 and 2004), releases new solo album The Red Planet - a serious return to "Wakeman Prog". Harking back to Wakeman's critically acclaimed 1973 debut The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Red Planet features 8 newly composed pieces based around a central subject matter. Rick’s blown the dust off his favourite analogue keyboards and along with his latest keys has used the same formula he devised when making his debut album and the equally legendary Criminal Record. Upon being asked about the expectations of his Prog fans, that they are hoping he will have shoved the "Prog Fader" up to 11, he replied, “That could be a problem... as it's already at 14!!!” “This is far and away the best thing I've done for as far back as I can remember” - Rick Wakeman

On their 15th album, Norwegian prog-metal warriors Enslaved explore a landscape from Norse mythology known as Utgard. “It\'s where the giants dwell,” bassist/vocalist Grutle Kjellson tells Apple Music. “The giants are a metaphor for the more uncontrollable forces in nature and in your own mind, so it’s a realm of chaos, of dreams, of the more frightful fantasies you have. It’s something you can’t control, but also something you are deeply in need of, because it’s the realm where creativity, humor, and your wild side dwell.” *Utgard* also marks the official debut of Enslaved’s not-so-secret weapon, new drummer/vocalist Iver Sandøy, who has worked with the band as an engineer and coproducer as far back as 2010’s *Axioma Ethica Odini*. “He also did some backing vocals on *E* and *In Times*, so this was like a continuation of the collaboration, but this time we have some lead vocals and drumming from him as well,” Kjellson explains. Below, the bassist guides us on a journey through *Utgard*. **Fires in the Dark** “This begins with some chanting in Old Norse, and it deals with the creation of the world according to the Norse mythology. It is also very much touching on the concept of Utgard, because it\'s kind of, ‘In the beginning, there was nothing—only fire and ice.’ And it\'s really connected to the lyrics, with the fires in the dark, something in the making, something both wonderful and hostile at the same time, really uncontrollable. Interestingly enough, it was the first song that was written for the album and ended up as a natural opener. I think that’s the first time that’s ever happened.” **Jettegryta** “In English, ‘Jettegryta’ can be translated into ‘the giant\'s cauldron.’ There are these holes all over the world called ‘giant’s cauldrons’—they were made by waterfalls after the Ice Age. In folklore, it’s said that they were made by the giants because they’re really big and look like big pots or cauldrons for the giants to cook food in. It connects back to Utgard as well, and it’s easy to picture the people that lived thousands of years ago—they obviously didn\'t have the kind of science to explain phenomenon like we have. So to them, that was a totally logical explanation. Musically, we always end up making a song that sounds like Bathory, without being conscious about it. And this ended up being that song on this album. \[Departed Bathory mastermind\] Quorthon is still there, fucking with our lives—in a good way.” **Sequence** “I think that was the second song we wrote for the album. It’s a surprisingly catchy song, but then we kind of tore everything apart with the inclusion of a session performer at the end of the song—a musician called Martin Horntveth. He is playing some electronics, some bells and xylophones and stuff like that. So he takes this mellow, esoteric part and turns it into kind of a sonic nightmare in the background there. You feel you are listening to something really beautiful, but don’t be tricked, because there’s always a dark side to things. There’s something disturbing in the beauty there.” **Homebound** “This one has lead vocals by our new drummer, Iver. Such a nightmare, right? A combination of a drummer and a singer, like the worst of both worlds. You have the nutcase and the diva in one. No, seriously—he is a fantastic drummer and a great vocalist, a great musician. He’s been in the background ever since *Axioma* in 2010, working with us as a coproducer and engineer for many albums. So he was the natural choice when \[former Enslaved drummer\] Cato \[Bekkevold\] decided to leave. We’re really, really satisfied with him.” **Utgarđr** “In the song ‘Utgarđr,’ we have a spoken thing in an archaic dialect that used to be spoken in our area. It’s a sort of concentrated narrative of the whole album. It really somehow tells you everything. It’s both an epilogue for the first songs and an introduction for the remaining songs. And it was actually recorded in my living room. It was probably the last recording we did for the whole album, and all the guys in the band were present and it was late at night. We had many drinks. It somehow concludes and introduces the album.” **Urjotun** “Many people look upon this opening as a dance beat or like a modern electronica thing, but it’s actually the most old-school part of the whole album, because it’s an analog Moog sequencer like they used in the late ’60s with bands like Silver Apples and the Krautrock scene later. And then comes this distorted bass, so we like to explain this song as a fusion between Kraftwerk and Hawkwind, with a little Scott Walker/David Bowie influence on vocals. So that’s really perhaps the most old-school song we’ve ever done, and it might be my favorite song on the album.” **Flight of Thought and Memory** “This is the story of Odin’s ravens, basically. The ravens are called Huginn and Muninn, and they represent thought and mind. So it\'s basically a dream about a flight into the realm of Utgard and all the things that are. It’s about accepting something you cannot conquer, but also a thing that you have to remain trying to conquer—otherwise you will pretty much cease to exist. You have to be a seeker or you will die. It also has the longest guitar solo we have ever done—it’s like one and a half minutes. It’s like I can almost hear the chest hair growing on \[guitarist\] Ice \[Dale\], because it’s a really cool rock ’n’ roll solo.” **Storms of Utgard** “I remember me and Iver, our new drummer/vocalist, arranged that song and did the demo recordings in a hotel room when he was on tour with one of his other bands—he plays drums for this woman that records children’s music. This song is really like hard rock, so I thought maybe Iver finally has been listening to classic hard rock albums. I’m a really big fan of early Scorpions and UFO, but I don’t think Iver has ever picked up a UFO album. So I think it sounds like this by accident, but I really love the vibe in this song. It’s another one of my favorites.” **Distant Seasons** “This is the really mellow closer, and \[guitarist\] Ivar \[Bjørnson\] wrote this song to his daughters. They are even participating in the last chorus, singing on the album. I really love this song. It’s sort of like an airy Pink Floyd-ish tune. And it’s a perfect song to conclude such an album. It really connects with the other songs, and it was the last song we made for the album as well. So the opener is the first song we wrote, and ‘Distant Seasons’ is the last one. So it was really, really logical.”

Making her stage debut in April 2019 and selling out her first headline show at London’s prestigious Southbank Centre less than a year later, A.A. Williams has hit the ground running. Similarly, the acclaim for her performances and her music has been unanimous from the start. After one self-titled EP and the 10” vinyl collaboration Exit in Darkness with Japanese post-rockers MONO, the London-based singer-songwriter has signed to Bella Union and made a stunning debut album, Forever Blue. A rapturous blend of post-rock and post-classical, Forever Blue smoulders with uncoiling melodies and haunted atmospheres, shifting from serenity to explosive drama, often within the same song. Williams is a fantastic musician as well as songwriter, playing the guitar, cello and piano, and her voice has the controlled delivery of a seasoned chanteuse whilst still channelling the rawest of emotions. Forever Blue is named after a song that didn’t make the album’s final cut, “but it still encapsulated these songs,” Williams explains. “It sounded timeless and in the right place.” The album’s threads encapsulate the anxieties and addiction of love and loss with haunting detail, for example ‘Glimmer’(“I wasn’t meant to see the sun washed out and pale / I wait undone / I wasn’t meant to be the one hollow and hurt and meant for none”), though Williams admits the theme was shaped more by her subconscious than any grand plan. “The lyrics come at the end, they fall into place, rhythmically, and link together,” she explains. “And then it’s my job to decipher what I’ve written! I want the words to get my point across but still let the listener map on their own experiences. I find it really therapeutic.” Therapy is intrinsic to Williams’ approach: to not just express and unpick her feelings of longing and loss but to work through them. “Verbalising something, you feel a weight has been lifted,” she says. The transition can be mirrored in the dynamic shift from ‘quiet’ to ‘loud’, as on ‘Glimmer’ and arguably at its most euphoric on ‘Melt’. “There’s something very satisfying and elating about songs that have that drop in them, to stomp on the guitar pedal on and let it all out.” It’s testament to Williams’ skills, and those of husband and bassist Thomas Williams, that Forever Blue’s commanding sound was largely captured at the couple’s two-bedroom flat in North London. Drums by Geoff Holroyde were added at engineer Adrian Hall’s studio in South London, with guest vocals from Johannes Persson (Cult Of Luna), who adds his deep-trawling growl to ‘Fearless’ (“he sounds like Tectonic plates moving” Williams feels), Fredrik Kihlberg (Cult Of Luna) on ‘Glimmer’ and Tom Fleming (ex-Wild Beasts) on ‘Dirt’. Williams can scarcely believe she’s in such exalted company, or that her band has toured with Cult Of Luna, Russian Circles, Explosions In The Sky, Nordic Giants and Sisters Of Mercy, whilst performing with MONO at their 10th anniversary show. It’s not because she doesn’t trust her own worth but that Williams only became a singer-songwriter by chance. Having taken music lessons from the age of six and been immersed in classical music, Williams’ life was forever changed when she discovered Deftones in her mid-teens, “and after them, all things heavy,” she recalls. “It was music that made me feel included, that tapped into me.” Yet it was only years later, when she found a guitar in the street with a note attached, “please take me, just needs work,” that Williams started playing guitar, and only started writing songs as a way of learning how to play. “I wrote in different styles to find a sound I was comfortable with,” she says. “Likewise, with singing. I’d never before thought of singing with a microphone in front of other people. It’s been quite a journey.” That journey was thrown off course by the Coronavirus lockdown, but Williams’ response has been the ‘Songs From Isolation’ video project, solo renditions of songs suggested by her fans. At the time of writing, she has performed Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ (“to take on a song like that, you either have to be brave or dumb, and I thought, let’s be brave!”), Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ and Nick Cave’s ‘Into Your Arms’. As ‘Songs From Isolation’ keeps posting intimate messages from a place of solitude, Forever Blue will spread the news of A.A. Williams’ extraordinary talent far and wide - and once lockdown is over, she and her band will be taking the next steps on her journey by touring the record. She’s already come so far but this story is only just beginning.

While singer and multi-instrumentalist Bonnie Bloomgarden and guitarist Larry Schemel knew their intention for the album before a single note was written, the actual nature and direction of the music was a mystery. The initial inspiration for the record came from the jubilant spirit of Ethiopian funk records the band had been listening to on tour, but once they began to channel the songs it seemed like the music came from somewhere not in the past but in the future. In the weeks leading up to recording, Death Valley Girls relied on their subconscious and effortlessly conjured Under the Spell of Joy’s eleven tracks as if they’d tapped into the Akashic Chronicle and pulled the music from the ether. The album opens with “Hypnagogia,” an ode to the space between sleep and wakefulness where we are open to other realms of consciousness. The song slowly builds along a steady pulse provided by bassist Pickle (Nicole Smith) and drummer Rikki Styxx. Tripped out saxophone bleats from guest player Gabe Flores swirl on top of the organ drones laid out by guest keyboardist Gregg Foreman. The band’s choral objectives for Under the Spell of Joy are established right off the bat, with Bloomgarden’s melodic invocations bolstered by a choir, giving the album a rich and vibrant wall-of-sound aesthetic. The song ominously builds on its hypnotic foundation until it opens up into a raucous revelry at the four-minute mark. The portentous simmer of the opening track yields to the ecstatic rocker “Hold My Hand,” where verses reminiscent of Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For The Man” explode into big triumphant choruses. From there the band launches into the title track, which marries the griminess of The Stooges with an innocence provided by a children’s choir chanting the album’s primary mantra “under the spell of joy / under the spell of love.” Death Valley Girls have always vacillated between lightness and darkness, and on “Bliss Out” they demonstrate their current exuberant focus with a patina-hued pop song driven by an irrepressibly buoyant organ line laid down by keyboardist The Kid (Laura Kelsey). A similar cosmic euphoria is obtained on “The Universe,” where alternating chords on the organ help elevate soaring saxophone and keyboard lines out beyond the stratosphere. If you’re looking for transcendental rock music, look no further.

“I want to get to that point where I can just write one lyric and people understand what I’m about,” IDLES singer Joe Talbot tells Apple Music. “Maybe it’s ‘Fuck you, I’m a lover.’” Those words, from the song ‘The Lover,’ certainly form an effective tagline for the band’s third album. The Bristol band explored trauma and vulnerability on second album *Joy as an Act of Resistance.*, and here they’re finding ways to heal, galvanize, and move forward—partly informed by mindfulness and being in the present. “I thought about the idea that you only ever have now,” Talbot says. “\[*Ultra Mono*\] is about getting to the crux of who you are and accepting who you are in that moment—which is really about a unification of self.” Those thoughts inspired a solidarity and concision in the way Talbot, guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, bassist Adam Devonshire, and drummer Jon Beavis wrote music. Each song began with a small riff or idea, and everything that was added had to be in the service of that nugget. “That’s where the idea of an orchestra comes in—that you try and sound, from as little as possible, as big as you can,” Talbot says. “Everyone hitting the thing at the same time to sound huge. It might also be as simple as one person playing and everyone else shutting the fuck up. Don’t create noise where it’s not needed.” The music’s visceral force and social awareness will keep the “punk” tag pinned to IDLES, but *Ultra Mono* forges a much broader sound. The self-confidence of hip-hop, the communal spirit of jungle, and the kindness of jazz-pop maestro Jamie Cullum all feed into these 12 songs. Let Talbot explain how in this track-by-track guide. **War** “It was the quickest thing we ever wrote. We got in a room together, I explained the concept, and we just wrote it. We played it—it wasn’t even a writing thing. And that is about as ultra mono as it gets. It had to be the first track because it is the explosion of not overthinking anything and *being*. The big bang of the album is the inner turmoil of trying to get rid of the noise and just be present—so it was perfect. The title’s ‘War’ because it sounded so violent, ballistic. I was really disenfranchised with the internet, like, ‘Why am I listening to assholes? You’ve got to be kind to yourself.’ ‘War’ was like, ‘Yeah, do it, actually learn to love yourself.’ That was the start of a big chapter in my life. It was like the war of self that I had to win.” **Grounds** “We wanted to write a song that was like AC/DC meets Dizzee Rascal, but a bit darker. It’s the march song, the start of the journey: ‘We won the first battle, let’s fucking do this. What do you need to stop apologizing for?’ That’s a conversation you need to have when all these horrible people come to the forefront. I was being criticized for speaking of civil rights–whether that be trans rights or gay rights or Black rights, the war on the working classes. I believe in socialism. Go fuck yourselves. I want to sleep at night knowing that my platform is the voice of reason and an egalitarian want for something beautiful—not the murder of Black people, homophobia at the workplace, racist front lines. We were recording in Paris and Warren Ellis \[of The Bad Seeds and Grinderman\] popped in. He sat with us just chatting about life. I was like, ‘It would be insane if I didn’t ask you to be on this record, man.’ I just wanted him to do a ‘Hey!’ like on a grime record.” **Mr. Motivator** “\[TV fitness guru\] Mr Motivator, that’s my spirit animal. We wrote that song and it felt like a train. I wanted to put a beautiful and joyous face to something rampantly, violently powerful-sounding. ‘Mr. Motivator’ is 90% lethal machine, 10% beautiful, smiley man that brings you joy. The lyrics are all cliches because I think *The Guardian* or someone leaned towards the idea that my sloganeering was something to be scoffed at. So I thought I’d do a whole song of it. We’re trying to rally people together, and if you go around using flowery language or muddying the waters with your insecurities, you’re not going to get your point across. So, I wanted to write nursery rhymes for open-minded people.” **Anxiety** “This was the first song where the lyrics came as we were writing the music. It sounded anxiety-inducing because it was so bombastic and back-and-forth. Then we had the idea of speeding the song up as you go along and becoming more cacophonous. That just seemed like a beautiful thing, because when you start meditating, the first thing that happens is you try to meditate–which isn’t what you’re supposed to do. The noise starts coming in. One of the things they teach you in therapy is that if you feel anxious or scared or sad or angry, don’t just internally try to fight that. Accept that you become anxious and allow yourself the anxiety. Feel angry and accept that, and then think about why, and what triggered it. And obviously 40-cigarettes-a-day Dev \[Adam Devonshire\] can’t really sing that well anymore, so we had to get David Yow of Jesus Lizard in. He’s got an amazing voice. It’s a much better version of what Dev used to be like.” **Kill Them With Kindness** “That’s Jamie Cullum \[on the piano\]. We met him at the Mercury Prize and he said, ‘If you need any piano on your album, just let us know.’ I was like, ‘We don’t, but we definitely do now.’ I like that idea of pushing people’s idea of what cool is. Jamie Cullum is fucking cooler than any of those apathetic nihilists. He believes in something and he works hard at it—and I like that. When I was working in a kitchen, we listened to Radio 2 all the time, and I loved his show. And he’s a beautiful human being. It’s a perfect example of what we’re about: inclusivity and showing what you love. I didn’t write the lyrics until after meeting him. It was just that idea that he seemed kindhearted. Kindness is a massive thing: It’s what empathy derives from, and kindness and empathy is what’ll kill fascism. It should be the spirit of punk and soul music and grime and every other music.” **Model Village** “The part that we wrote around was something that I used to play onstage whenever Bowen was offstage and I stole his guitar. So it had this playfulness, and I wanted to write a kind of take-the-piss song. I’m not antagonistic at all, but I do find things funny, like people who get so angry. I wanted this song to be taking yourself out of your own town and looking at it like it’s a model village. Just to be like, ‘Look how small and insignificant this place is. Don’t be so aggressive and defensive about something you don’t really understand.’ It’s a call for empathy—but to the assholes in a non-apologetic way.” **Ne Touche Pas Moi** “I was getting really down on tours because I felt a bit like an animal in a cage. Dudes are aggressive, and it’s boring when you see it in a crowd. Someone’s being a prick in the crowd and people aren’t comfortable—it’s not a nice feeling. So I wanted to create that idea of a safe arena with an anthem. It’s a violent, cutting anthem. It’s like, ‘I am full of love, but that doesn’t mean you can elbow me in the face or touch my breasts.’ We can play it in sets to give people the confidence that there is a platform here to be safe. I said to Bowen, ‘I really wish there was a woman singing the chorus, because it’s not just about my voice, it’s more often women that get groped.’ A couple of days later, we were in Paris recording Jehnny Beth’s TV show and I told her about this song. It was a nice relief to have someone French backing up my shit French.” **Carcinogenic** “Jungle was a movement based around unity—very different kinds of people getting together under the love of music. It was one of the most forward-thinking, beautiful things to happen to our country, \[and it\] was shut down by police and people who couldn’t make money from it. I wanted to write a song that was part garage rock, part jungle, because both movements have their part to play in building IDLES and also building amazing communities of people and great musicians. Then I thought about jungle and grime and garage and how something positive gets turned into something negative with the media. Basically, any Black music that creates a positive network of people and communities, building something out of love, is dangerous because it’s people thinking outside the box and not relying on the government for reassurance and entertainment and distraction. So then it got me thinking about ‘carcinogenic’ and how everything gives you cancer, when really the most cancerous thing about our society isn’t anything like that, it’s the class war that we’re going through and depriving people of a decent education, decent welfare, decent housing. That’s fucking cancer.” **Reigns** “This was written around the bass, obviously. Again, another movement—techno—and that idea of togetherness and the love in the room is always apparent. Techno is motorik, it’s mesmeric, it is just a singularity—minimal techno, especially. It’s just the beat or the bassline and that carries you through, that’s all you need. Obviously, we’re a chorus band, so we thought we’d throw in something huge to cut through it. But we didn’t want to overcomplicate it. That sinister pound just reminds me of my continual disdain for the Royal Family and everything they represent in our country, from the fascism that it comes from to the smiley-face racism that it perpetuates nowadays.” **The Lover** “I wanted to write a soul song with that wall-of-noise, Phil Spector vibe—but also an IDLES song. What could be more IDLES than writing a song about being a lover but making it really sweary? When I love someone, I swear a lot around them because I trust them, and I want them to feel comfortable and trust me. So I just wrote the most honest love song. It’s like a defiant smile in the face of assholes who can’t just accept that your love is real. It’s like, ‘I’m not lying. I am full of love and you’re a prick.’ That’s it. That song was the answer to the call of ‘Grounds.’ That huge, stabby, all-together orchestra.” **A Hymn** “Bowen and I were trying to write a song together. I had a part and he had a part. Then my part just got kicked out and we wrote the song around the guitar line. We wanted to write a song that was like a hymn, because a hymn is a Christian, or gospel, vision of togetherness and rejoicing at once for something they love. I wanted to write the lyrics around the idea that a hymn nowadays is just about suburban want, material fear. So it’s like a really subdued, sad hymn about materialism, suburban pedestrianism. And it came out really well.” **Danke** “It was going to be an instrumental, a song that made you feel elated and ready for war—and not muddy it with words. A song that embodies the whole album, that just builds and pounds but all the parts change. Each bit changes, but it feels like one part of one thing. And I always finish on a thank you because it’s important to be grateful for what people have given us—so I wanted to call the song ‘Danke.’ Then, on the day of recording it, Daniel Johnston died. So I put in his lyrics \[from ‘True Love Will Find You in the End’\] because they’re some of the most beautiful ever written. It fits the song, fits the album. He could have only written that one lyric and it’d be enough to understand him. I added \[my\] lyrics \[‘I’ll be your hammer, I’ll be your nail/I’ll be the house that allows you to fail’\] at the end because I felt like it was an offering to leave with—like, ‘I’ve got you.’ It’s what I would have said to him, or any friend that needed love.”

Fontaines D.C. singer Grian Chatten was with bandmates Tom Coll and Conor Curley in a pub somewhere in the US when the words “Happy is living in a closed eye” came to him. It was possibly in Chicago, he thinks, and certainly during their 2019 tour. “We were playing pool and drinking some shit Guinness,” he tells Apple Music. “I was drinking an awful lot and there was a sense of running away on that tour—because we were so overworked. The gigs were really good and full of energy, but it almost felt like a synthetic, anxious energy. We were all burning the candle at both ends. I think my subconscious was trying to tell me when I wrote that line that I was not really facing reality properly. Ever since I\'ve read Oscar Wilde, I\'ve always been fascinated by questioning the validity of living soberly or healthily.” The line eventually made its way into “Sunny” a track from the band’s second album *A Hero’s Death*. Like much of the record, that unsteady waltz is an absorbing departure from the rock ’n’ roll punch of their Mercury-nominated debut, *Dogrel*. Released in April 2019, *Dogrel* quickly established the Irish five-piece as one of the most exciting guitar bands on their side of the Atlantic, throwing them into an exacting tour and promo schedule. When the physical and mental strains of life on the road bore down—on many nights, Chatten would have to visit dark memories to reengage with the thoughts and feelings behind some songs—the five-piece sought relief and refuge in other people’s music. “We found ourselves enjoying mostly gentler music that took us out of ourselves and calmed us down, took us away from the fast-paced lifestyle,” says Chatten. “I think we began to associate a particular sound and kind of music, one band in particular would have been The Beach Boys, that helped us feel safe and calm and took us away from the chaos.” That, says Chatten, helps account for the immersive and expansive sound of *A Hero’s Death*. With their world being refracted through the heat haze of interstate highways and the disconcerting fog of days without much sleep, there’s a dreaminess and longing in the music. It’s in the percussive roll of “Love Is the Main Thing” and the harmonies swirling around the title track’s rigorous riffs. It drifts through the uneasy reflection of “Sunny.” “‘Sunny’ is hard for me to sing,” says Chatten, “just because there are so many long fucking notes. And I have up until recently been smoking pretty hard. But I enjoy the character that I feel when I sing it. I really like the embittered persona and the gin-soaked atmosphere.” While *Dogrel*’s lyrics carried poetic renderings of life in modern Dublin, *A Hero’s Death* burrows inward. “Dublin is still in the language that I use, the colloquialisms and the way that I express things,” says Chatten. “But I consider this to be much more a portrait of an inner landscape. More a commentary on a temporal reality. It\'s a lot more about the streets within my own mind.” Throughout, Chatten can be found examining a sense of self. He does it with bracing defiance on “I Don’t Belong” and “I Was Not Born,” and with aching resignation on “Oh Such a Spring”—a lament for people who go to work “just to die.” ”I worked a lot of jobs that gave me no satisfaction and forced me to shelve temporarily who I was,” says Chatten. “I felt very strongly about people I love being in the service industry and having to become somebody else and suppress their own feelings and their own views, their own politics, to make a living. How it feels after a shift like that, that there is blood on your hands almost. You’re perpetuating this lie, because it’s a survival mechanism for yourself.” Ambitious and honest, *A Hero’s Death* is the sound of a band protecting their ideals when the demands of being rock’s next big thing begin to exert themselves. ”One of the things we agreed upon when we started the band was that we wouldn\'t write a song unless there was a purpose for its existence,” says Chatten. “There would be no cases of churning anything out. It got to a point, maybe four or five tunes into writing the album, where we realized that we were on the right track of making art that was necessary for us, as opposed to necessary for our careers. We realized that the heart, the core of the album is truthful.”

In calling their fourth album *Splid*—their native word for “discord”—Norwegian metal squad Kvelertak acknowledges a polarization both external and internal. As political and social conflicts rage across the globe, the band experienced their own divisions when vocalist Erlend Hjelvik and drummer Kjetil Gjermundrød left in 2018 and 2019, respectively. “‘Splid’ is a cool-sounding word and also a good overall description of the lyrical themes on the album, with some of the stuff going on in the world today and band members leaving and new members coming in,” guitarist Vidar Landa tells Apple Music. “Our new singer Ivar \[Nikolaisen\] has brought new energy to the band, so it definitely feels like a new version of Kvelertak.” Below, Landa takes us through the songs of *Splid*. **Rogaland** “Rogaland is the area where most of us are from. So this is sort of a tribute and sort of a mild criticism of that region in Norway, because it brings in a lot of money for the rest of the country. Stavanger, the city where the band started, is the oil capital of Norway—that’s where Norway’s gold was found and distributed to all the citizens. So there’s a lot of resources in Rogaland. It’s a beautiful place, with some amazing beaches and fjords and mountains, but it’s also a place of big industry. A lot of the old black metal bands have songs about the epic Norwegian landscape, so maybe this is a more sarcastic look at those kind of tributes.” **Crack of Doom (feat. Troy Sanders)** “This is sort of the rock song of the album. We always have a couple of those. It was written not long after we were on tour with Mastodon in Europe. We’ve been fans of Mastodon for a long time—even before we started Kvelertak—and they’ve always been very supportive of us, so this was a cool opportunity to do something with them. We have other songs on the album that are maybe more similar to Mastodon, but we wanted to have Troy on a track that wasn’t typical of something he’s done before. This is also one of the only songs we’ve done with English lyrics. We thought it would be easier than having Troy learn Norwegian.” **Necrosoft** “This reminds me of the first couple of songs we did on our early demos and maybe on the first album. It’s a bit hard to translate the lyrics, but it kind of touches upon the idea of always wanting more, but at some point you have to make some choices. For example—even if you switch to a more environmentally friendly industry, as long as people always want more of everything, there’s always going to be a problem. There will come a time when people have to choose between the free flowing river and the electric guitar.” **Discord** “The title ‘Splid’ came up for this song, even though we didn’t have any lyrics for it when we entered the studio. Then we had Nate \[Newton\] from Converge and Doomriders sing on it, so we wrote all the lyrics in English. And then we decided it would be cool to have the song title in English, which is also the title of the album. The song kind of sums up everything the album is about in one song. And the main guitar part in the chorus was very fun to record because we used an arsenal of guitar effects and pedals.” **Bråtebrann** “I haven’t really found a fitting English description for what ‘Bråtebrann’ is, but I think ‘bonfire’ is maybe the closest you get. There’s a tradition with people in the countryside of Norway where they burn things to get rid of them, like grass and leaves. Every spring, some of these fires get out of control and the forest starts burning and the fire department has to come out and clean up. It’s actually a tribute to Ivar and his childhood friend, who used to set fire to stuff when they were kids. His friend would always get blamed, even when he didn’t start the fire. This friend tragically passed away in 2018, around the same time the song came about, so it’s a tribute to him.” **Uglas Hegemoni** “It means ‘owls hegemony,’ and it’s basically a song about us, like our song ‘Kvelertak’ from *Meir*. It’s a song about how awesome we are.” **Fanden Ta Dette Hull!** “The title is a quote that basically means, ‘Damn this hole!’ It was written in an old jail cell where a thief and murderer was held. The guy was named Even Olsen Tagholdt, and he murdered a rich guy in Stavanger in the 1800s. His skeleton was on display at a museum in Stavanger for many, many years. Then a couple of years ago there was this debate about whether it was morally right to have human skeletons on display at the museum. So he was actually buried in 2018, very close to where Ivar grew up. This song is about his life and how he ended up as a thief and a murderer.” **Tevling** “We have a sweet spot for old ’80s and ’90s power rock ballads, so this has a riff inspired by that—even though it takes more of a typical Kvelertak turn in the chorus. So it’s our attempt at a power rock ballad. The riff also has a vibe sort of like The Police song ‘Message in a Bottle.’ The title is an old Norwegian word for…well, sort of like a competition.” **Stevnemøte med Satan** “This means ‘a date with Satan.’ The character described in the song is not doing very well. He’s sort of on a date with Satan. The song talks about how you can’t really get away from your own destiny, and then you sort of come to the end of the line to your final destination—which in this case might be hell. We did a tour with Mutoid Man, and they have a song called ‘Date With the Devil,’ so maybe it was in the back of our heads to have a little tribute to them.” **Delirium Tremens** “I think the music sounds like psychosis, so ‘Delirium Tremens’ felt like a fitting title. I think it’s just a good musical description of how that state of mind can feel. The riffs kind of came out like stream of consciousness, which was very fun to do. So it’s maybe more experimental than anything we’ve done before. And it actually has every one of us singing.” **Ved bredden av Nihil** “The title means ‘On the banks of Nihil.’ The main tremolo riff is one we’ve had laying around for a while. We all like it a lot, so we were very happy when we finally managed to make a whole song out of it. Lyrically, it’s a description of a wealthy middle-aged man with wife and kids, a big villa and a government grant—but he’s yearning for the abyss.”

The theme of the fourth Tame Impala album is evident before hearing a note. It’s in the song names, the album title, even the art: Kevin Parker has time on his mind. Ruminating on memories, nostalgia, uncertainty about the future, and the nature of time itself lies at the heart of *The Slow Rush*. Likewise, the music itself is both a reflection on the sonic evolution of Parker’s project as it’s reached festival headliner status—from warbly psychedelia to hypnotic electronic thumps—and a forward thrust towards something new and deeply fascinating. On “Posthumous Forgiveness,” Parker addresses his relationship with his father over a woozy, bluesy bass and dramatic synths, which later give way to a far brighter, gentle sound. From the heavy horns on “Instant Destiny” and acoustic guitars on “Tomorrow’s Dust” to the choppy synths and deep funk of “One More Year” and “Breathe Deeper,” the album sounds as ambitious as its concept. There’s a lot to think about—and Kevin Parker has plenty to say about it. Here, written exclusively for Apple Music, the Australian artist has provided statements to accompany each track on *The Slow Rush*. **One More Year** “I just realized we were standing right here exactly one year ago, doing the exact same thing. We’re blissfully trapped. Our life is crazy but where is it going? We won’t be young forever but we sure do live like it. Our book needs more chapters. Our time here is short, let’s make it count. I have a plan.” **Instant Destiny** “In love and feeling fearless. Let’s be reckless with our futures. The only thing special about the past is that it got us to where we are now. Free from feeling sentimental…we don’t owe our possessions anything. Let’s do something that can’t be undone just ’cause we can. The future is our oyster.” **Borderline** “Standing at the edge of a strange new world. Any further and I won’t know the way back. The only way to see it is to be in it. I long to be immersed. Unaware and uncontrolled.” **Posthumous Forgiveness** “Wrestling with demons of the past. Something from a long time ago doesn’t add up. I was lied to! Maybe there’s a good explanation but I’ll never get to hear it, so it’s up to me to imagine what it might sound like…” **Breathe Deeper** “First time. I need to be guided. Everything feels new. Like a single-cell organism granted one day as a human. We’re all together. Why isn’t it always like this?” **Tomorrow’s Dust** “Our regrets tomorrow are our actions now. Future memories are present-day current events. Tomorrow’s dust is in today’s air, floating around us as we speak.” **On Track** “A song for the eternal optimist. The pain of holding on to your dreams. Anyone would say it’s impossible from this point. True it will take a miracle, but miracles happen all the time. I’m veering all over the road and occasionally spinning out of control, but strictly speaking I’m still on track.” **Lost in Yesterday** “Nostalgia is a drug, to which some are addicted.” **Is It True** “Young love is uncertain. Let’s not talk about the future. We don’t know what it holds. I hope it’s forever but how do I know? When all is said and done, all you can say is ‘we’ll see.’” **It Might Be Time** “A message from your negative thoughts: ‘Give up now… It’s over.’ The seeds of doubt are hard to un-sow. Randomly appearing throughout the day, trying to derail everything that usually feels natural…*used* to feel natural. You finally found your place, they can’t take this away from you now.” **Glimmer** “A glimmer of hope. A twinkle. Fleeting, but unmistakable. Promising.” **One More Hour** “The time has come. Nothing left to prepare. Nothing left to worry about. Nothing left to do but sit and observe the stillness of everything as time races faster than ever. Even shadows cast by the sun appear to move. My future comes to me in flashes, but it no longer scares me. As long as I remember what I value the most.”