Loudwire's 25 Best Rock + Metal Albums of 2023

With their first album since 2016, Avenged Sevenfold takes an unexpected turn into existentialism. Written over a span of four years that included the pandemic, *Life Is But a Dream…* was inspired by the philosophy and writings of French author and Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus. The hypnotic lead single “Nobody” sets a reflective and pensive tone with orchestral strings as singer M. Shadows delivers snaky, overlapping vocal lines. Follow-up “We Love You” is an abrupt change of pace, with dissonant guitar bursts and a frenetic, Mr. Bungle-like arrangement that smashes dizzying old-school thrash into a slide guitar interlude. The entire album is all over the place—ragtime piano (title track), chamber music (part of “Game Over”), electro-pop (a few songs)—but for A7X, it’s a good place to be.

blink-182’s ninth album—and first in 12 years with guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge in the lineup—is far from a self-satisfied victory lap. Even after all these years, the band’s irrepressible cheekiness animates their insouciant riffs, whirlwind drums, and yelped vocals. They may be elder statesmen of punk rock at this point, but they’re still kicking against anyone who might get in their way. The reunion of DeLonge with bassist/vocalist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker (who produced *ONE MORE TIME...*) grew out of the members dropping their past differences in the wake of Hoppus’ cancer diagnosis. “I feel like there’s a real sense of brotherhood with us,” DeLonge told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe during a full-band interview. “Like any brothers, you have your little spats over the years, and you grow apart. You come back together. You’ve always got a foundation, you’re connected. You’re still inseparable energetically.” That connection is apparent throughout *ONE MORE TIME...*, which Barker calls “very collaborative.” It calls back to blink’s past at its outset, opening with the speedy “ANTHEM PART 3”—the third part of a trilogy that dates back to the band’s *Enema of the State* era, although this time out, things are more optimistic than the angst-filled first two installments: “If I fall, on some nails/If I win or set sail/I won’t fail, I won’t fail,” DeLonge wails as the song comes crashing to an end. *ONE MORE TIME...* has other moments of introspection: The title track is a very blink-182 take on a power ballad, with DeLonge and Hoppus musing about life being too short to not get over past differences. The anthemic “WHEN WE WERE YOUNG” turns the old phrase about youth being wasted on the young into fuel for one last trip to the mosh pit and closing track “CHILDHOOD” pivots on the always pertinent question, “What’s going on with me?” Not that *ONE MORE TIME...* is exclusively built on self-affirmations and serious business. “DANCE WITH ME” opens with a gag about self-pleasure before jumping off into a peppy chronicle of lust, while the bouncy “EDGING” channels love-’em-leave-’em brashness into a giddy power-pop jam. The brief interlude “TURN THIS OFF!” manages to channel gags about bad sex and old scolds into 23 seconds of blissful riffing. *ONE MORE TIME...* represents a new era of blink-182, although the most important aspect of the music Barker, DeLonge, and Hoppus make remains the same: “Every single time that we’ve just put our heads down and done our own thing,” said Hoppus, “and write music that the three of us love, that’s important to us—it has served us well.”

As the undisputed kings of death metal, Cannibal Corpse rarely messes with their tried-and-true horror show of gargantuan riffs, dizzying drums, and gruesome lyrics. But their 16th studio album, *Chaos Horrific*, was made under unprecedented circumstances. “It was written almost directly after we’d finished working on our previous album, *Violence Unimagined*,” bassist and co-lyricist Alex Webster tells Apple Music. “We normally would make a new album only after a full tour cycle for the previous one, but due to the pandemic downtime from touring we decided to get started right away.” Webster says that the back-to-back processes may have contributed to the variety heard on *Chaos Horrific*. “Since we had just finished *Violence Unimagined*, it was easy to remember not to repeat musical ideas we’d used in those songs,” he explains. “I think these two albums feel somewhat related, but they also consist of songs that all sound very different from each other. On *Chaos Horrific*, each song really stands out from the next, but they’re all full-on Cannibal Corpse-style death metal. Consistency absolutely can coexist with innovation and variety.” Below, he and his fellow Cannibal Corpse songwriters—drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, guitarist Rob Barrett, and guitarist/producer Erik Rutan—comment on the songs they penned lyrics for. **“Overlords of Violence”** Alex Webster: “We always like to start our albums off with a really aggressive song, so ‘Overlords’ seemed like the perfect choice. The lyrics describe a group of barbarians creating chaos and mayhem, and the relentless speed of the music fits that theme well. It’s straightforward musically and lyrically, aggressive from start to finish.” **“Frenzied Feeding”** Erik Rutan: “Lyrically, the song was inspired by the viciousness and heaviness of the music. It’s about a fictitious ruler from the Dark Ages who, through extreme methods and gruesome tactics, tortured and slaughtered his own people. To command and invoke fear in his people, he would then force the masses to eat the remains—or starve and die. Survival only achieved by desperate, heinous measures—feast or famine.” **“Summoned for Sacrifice”** Paul Mazurkiewicz: “This song is about 13 people chosen to dismember and kill one randomly chosen person. One by one, they will remove pieces of his body until he breathes no more.” **“Blood Blind”** PM: “This song is about mass mutilations to reset the human race. Genocide is embraced by society. Blood covers the Earth.” **“Vengeful Invasion”** Rob Barrett: “This is about victims of human trafficking eventually escaping after years of abuse. As they\'re fleeing the house that held them captive for so long, they decide to turn around and execute the ultimate reprisal—a home-invasion slaughter of their captors.” **“Chaos Horrific”** PM: “This song is about fighting for your life from a zombie attack, using an axe, a knife, a machete—whatever it takes to kill these things.” **“Fracture and Refracture”** AW: “This song’s lyrics are about a psychotic surgeon who is holding a person captive and slowly changing their physical form against their will. As is usually the case, the music was written before the lyrics on this one. Some of the riffs have a really dark, twisted sound, so the terrifying concept described in the lyrics complements that aptly.” **“Pitchfork Impalement”** PM: “This song is about a lunatic going on a killing spree with a pitchfork. Wrought-iron tines will penetrate skulls.” **“Pestilential Rictus”** AW: “This is a song with a cannibalistic, post-apocalyptic theme. We’ve had other songs that cover that type of scenario; this one specifically deals with a disease that causes flesh to rot and fall away, often leaving the victim’s teeth permanently exposed in a perpetual ‘grin’ of horror.” **“Drain You Empty”** ER: “This was the final song that I wrote for the album. Musically, it flows and weaves through depths of darkness and insanity. The dreary and dismal vibe inspired me lyrically to create an engulfing vision of a force, a power, an entity draining the life and soul out of one’s being, through the conscious and the subconscious, overpowering every sense of being, invoking insanity and fear until inevitable death.”

No band could ever prepare for what the Foo Fighters went through after the death of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins in March 2022, but in a way, it’s hard to imagine a band that could handle it better. From the beginning, their music captured a sense of perseverance that felt superheroic without losing the workaday quality that made them so approachable and appealing. These were guys you could imagine clocking into the studio with lunchpails and thermoses in hand—a post-grunge AC/DC who grew into rock-pantheon standard-bearers, treating their art not as rarified personal expression but the potential for a universal good time. The mere existence of *But Here We Are*, arriving with relatively little fanfare a mere 15 months after Hawkins’ death, tells you what you need to know: Foo Fighters are a rock band, rock bands make records. That’s just what rock bands do. And while this steadiness has been key to Dave Grohl’s identity and longevity, there is a fire beneath it here that he surely would have preferred to find some other way. Grief presents here in every form—the shock of opening track “Rescued” (“Is this happening now?!”), the melancholy of “Show Me How” (on which Grohl duets with his daughter Violet), the anger of 10-minute centerpiece “The Teacher,” and the fragile acceptance of the almost slowcore finale “Rest.” “Under You” processes all the stages in defiantly jubilant style. And after more than 20 years as one of the most polished arena-rock bands in the world, they play with a rawness that borders on ugly. Just listen to the discord of “The Teacher” or the frayed vocals of the title track or the sweet-and-sour chorus of “Nothing at All,” which sound more like Hüsker Dü or Fugazi than “Learn to Fly.” The temptation is to suggest that trauma forced them back to basics. The reality is that they sound like a band with a lot of life behind them trying to pave the road ahead.

“One of the things we wanted to capture on *Starcatcher* is us creating the music in real time, so a lot of what you hear is take two, take three,” Greta Van Fleet bassist Sam Kiszka tells Apple Music. The Michigan-born band credits superproducer Dave Cobb (Slash, Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton) for the more organic feel on their third album. “He knows how to capture us at our most relaxed, almost catching us off guard, kind of tricking us into thinking that we\'re not recording an album. We\'ll go out to dinner after working all day and then drink some wine and come back and then we\'re all really relaxed, and throwing around new ideas, and we just roll with those things.” Greta Van Fleet has been around for more than a decade, and they haven\'t forgotten their roots—or how to remain humble. “We\'ve been a band for such a long time,” says drummer Danny Wagner. “The first track that was released, the first time we heard it was on radio, because I don\'t even think streaming was really that prevalent yet. We were all on a landline with each other, talking to each other, and it started playing on the radio and it was just a lot of silence. You\'re just listening to it and \[then you say\], \'All right, that\'s cool. See you tomorrow.’”

When the pandemic forced In Flames to truncate the tour in support of their 2019 album, *I, the Mask*, the band went home to Sweden in a state of insecurity. Vocalist Anders Fridén began ruminating upon the nature of lost time—and how we deal with time in general. “What do we do with time?” he asks Apple Music. “If you know your time is up, how do you act? What do you say? What do you think? Do you regret a lot of things? If we know everything is going wrong, would we change? Would we act different?” Fridén and his bandmates—guitarist Björn Gelotte, bassist Bryce Paul Newman, drummer Tanner Wayne, and new guitarist Chris Broderick (ex-Megadeth)—ponder these questions and more on In Flames’ 14th album, *Foregone*. In combining the melodic death metal of their classic ’90s albums with the more modern metalcore approach of their recent output, In Flames have struck a delicate balance between two disparate musical eras. But it’s ultimately the lyrical content that proves most different from that of the band’s vast back catalog. “Most of our previous albums have been me looking inside and dealing with my own demons,” Fridén explains. “This one is more observational about the world around us.” Below, he comments on each song. **“The Beginning of All Things”** “The track ‘Foregone’ was going to be a three-parter at first. Our intention was to have a slow track first, then something really calm, then hit with an aggressive track at the end. But when Björn played this for me the first time, I knew it was an intro rather than a part of ‘Foregone.’ It sets the mood perfectly for the album. We used it for the intro on our previous tour, and it works really well. It has that Swedish melancholy and invites you into the album. Then, with the next track, all hell breaks loose.” **“State of Slow Decay”** “It’s like the DNA of In Flames, in a sense. It has the melody, the aggression, and then everything that we are known for. As soon as we wrote it, and I heard all the pieces together, I knew it was not something we would hide in the back of the album. This is where we set the pace. I think people will feel familiar with it because it has that In Flames sound. Whether you like it or not, we have a certain sound that is ours, and this is really ground zero for that.” **“Meet Your Maker”** “That was one of the first songs that we wrote, so it really set the vibe of the album with the double bass and the guitar upfront and the huge chorus that we have become known for in our later career. Going into this album, we talked about how we wanted to bring the guitars a little bit more in the front and have the drums a bit more punchy than in the past. I think this song is definitely telling that story. When we finished it, we felt we were on the right track.” **“Bleeding Out”** “We have so many faces and styles, but this one is a bit more open. I wanted something that was a little more calming after the assault of ‘State of Slow Decay’ and ‘Meet Your Maker.’ This is heavy, but it’s rooted in a Swedish folk-music tradition—but obviously reworked and done our way. It has a sad tone overall, but it’s big and groovy, and Chris’ solos are amazing.” **“Foregone Pt. 1”** “At first, part one was supposed to be part two and vice versa. But then I felt the heavier track had to be part one, especially coming out of ‘Bleeding Out.’ This is one of the heavier songs we’ve done, I think. There are similarities lyrically—and especially instrumentally—between the two parts of this song. Some of the riffs and melodies are in both songs, but they are reworked. I think people will feel the connection between the two.” **“Foregone Pt. 2”** “Part two is such a contrast to part one, which was super necessary, dynamically, for the album. This one is less heavy, but to me, it’s like listening back to albums like *The Jester Race* and *Whoracle* that we did in the ’90s. With \[the songs\] ‘Moonshield’ and ‘Gyroscope,’ we had that very—again—Swedish folk melody, which was an inspiration for us in the early days. This definitely has that and reminds me a lot of that time.” **“Pure Light of Mind”** “We’ve done a few ballads or slow songs in the past, and we really wanted something like that for this album. But it had to have a meaning—it had to have a place and still be heavy. To me, this is a celebration, but it has a sad undertone to it. I can really see this being a sing-along-type song live. Vocally, I approached it a different way because I’ve never really done that type of falsetto verse before. For me, it’s fun to do something that’s a little bit challenging because it’s so easy to go back to what you know. So, I did it, and it worked really well.” **“The Great Deceiver”** “This is the song that changed faces the most. It’s almost like punk-ish In Flames, but it started out kind of plain, to be honest. I’ve heard these riffs before again and again, so I told Björn that we have to attack this song in a different way. So, we changed a few things around—definitely the drums—and now I think it could be my favorite of the album. Tanner, our drummer, should get big props for being patient and listening to us. The way he executed this is amazing, and so are his drums all over the album.” **“In the Dark”** “This is another heavy song with a sad undertone. It’s got a big, open chorus that I’m looking forward to doing live. All these songs are meant to be played live, by the way. That’s how we approach music these days. Back in the day, it was more like, ‘Let’s see how many guitars we can add on top of each other!’ But now we write for two guitar players because that’s what we have onstage. A lot of people have told me this song is their favorite, so we might be onto something here.” **“A Dialogue in B Flat Minor”** “Lyrically, this is about mental health. It’s the talk we have with ourselves, and how easy it is to be locked up in that. So, there’s an inner dialogue going on between me, in this case, and whatever it might be. The song is written in B-flat minor, so that’s where the title comes from. We wrote it as an opening track for a live set, where you start off with the drummer and bass player, then one guitar player walks on, then the next guitar player walks on, and then I come in at the end.” **“Cynosure”** “This one is bass-heavy, like a tank rolling forward or something. The beginning really showcases Bryce and what he does on bass. And obviously, Tanner is showing off his skills on this one, too. It’s almost like a drum solo after the second chorus. Vocally, I just took a step back and followed the rhythm more than anything else. It has a different vibe, but I really like how this song turned out.” **“End the Transmission”** “The very last transmission after it’s over. That’s the lyrical concept: We’re done here. I say, ‘Hell is overcrowded, and heaven is full of sinners.’ Wherever we go in our afterlife, I don’t think it’s judged upon what we do. Whatever place is bad enough. I haven’t done a repetitive chorus for a while, but I wanted to repeat something almost like a mantra. So, I say, ‘End the transmission.’”

Jelly Roll, the stage name of singer-rapper-songwriter Jason DeFord, has long been one of Nashville’s best-kept secrets. A native of the city’s Antioch neighborhood, DeFord originally pursued music as a hip-hop artist, collaborating with regional talents like Memphis’ Lil Wyte and Juicy J and Nashville’s Yelawolf and Struggle Jennings. While DeFord is a formidable rapper—his flow ranges from a twangy, charismatic drawl to a rapid-fire clip—he also has a singing voice tailor-made for the kind of angsty country rock popularized by artists like Brantley Gilbert and Cody Jinks. On his proper country debut, *Whitsitt Chapel*, DeFord leans primarily into the latter, serving up a mix of brooding rockers and sincere ballads, with a particular thematic emphasis on redemption and recovery—fitting, as DeFord spent his teen years in prison and now works to help others with felony charges rebuild their lives. It’s that willingness to engage with darker realities that draws many to DeFord’s music, something he does not take for granted. “Some of the most honest people I ever met in my life, surprisingly, were in jail,” DeFord tells Apple Music. “Some of the smartest people I ever met were in rehab. I think I just gained such humility from that. When you grow up with literally the opposite of something, anything is awesome.” *Whitsitt Chapel* opens with “Halfway to Hell,” a look at the dueling forces of good and evil causing DeFord to wage war with himself. “Behind Bars” brings both Gilbert and Jennings on board, with a sing-along chorus anchored by the line “Most my friends are behind bars.” Yelawolf shows up with his brand of Southern hip-hop on “Unlive,” a woozy and unflinching look at how poverty and addiction are often so deeply intertwined. Lainey Wilson duets with DeFord on “Save Me,” one of the album’s most tender moments thanks to both vocalists’ vulnerable performances. The album closes with “Hungover in a Church Pew,” a hopeful tune about finding the strength to start over. “This is my coming-of-age record,” DeFord adds. “And it\'s kind of a journey through my growth, the duality that I\'m still a wild card but I\'m an immensely changed man from who I was. The biggest problem we got right now is I might drink a little too much and get a little rowdy. But God’s looking at me with two thumbs up.” Here, DeFord shares insight into several key tracks. **“The Lost”** “We had finished the album, and I called Jesse Frasure to call Miranda Lambert and say, ‘Hey, if y\'all don\'t want to do this \[co-write\] tomorrow, that\'s cool. This album\'s done. We can go in there and dick around. But the singles are picked. This is only ice cream, right? If y\'all want to go out for dessert, okay, but the steak and potatoes are here.’ And I thought Miranda will be like, ‘Oh, no problem. We\'ll write on the next one.’ But Miranda\'s like, ‘What are you talking about? We\'re coming. I got ideas.’ She gives me a synopsis of what my album\'s about and then goes, ‘This is what I\'m thinking. What about this?’ And immediately I\'m like, ‘You are just as badass as everybody said you are.’” **“Behind Bars” (feat. Brantley Gilbert and Struggle Jennings)** “‘Behind Bars,’ for me, was fun because it goes back to songs needing purpose. That song made the album solely because I\'ve always wanted and felt the need to have an old-school sing-along. And I felt like ‘Behind Bars’ is perfect. \[Thinking of\] Garth \[Brooks\], it\'s like ‘Two Piña Coladas,’ right? Like I\'d never cut that song. But what would my ‘Two Piña Coladas’ sound like? And I think that\'s ‘Behind Bars.’” **“Nail Me”** “The country music community came to me wide open. Ninety percent of country radio came to me wide open. I mean, unbelievable, the support. That 10 percent, though, from both sides. That 10 percent deserved 7 percent of my album. So I gave them ‘Nail Me.’ That\'s how I felt. They didn\'t even deserve a full 10 percent of my album, but they deserved a little 7 percent. So I gave them a song. It was just that I felt judged kind of all over again.” **“Unlive” (feat. Yelawolf)** “It\'s the most tied to the old stuff. It was just so cool to write it with somebody like the Grammy Award-winning Ashley McBryde, that she comes straight in. And that song started by us just telling old white-trash stories. I won\'t tell her stories, but we\'re telling each other these funny stories about where we\'re from. And she was like, ‘But you just can\'t unlive where you\'re from.’ I\'m like, ‘Well, that\'s the song today. Let\'s write that one, Ashley.’” **“Save Me” (feat. Lainey Wilson)** “It was the middle of the pandemic. And when I say middle of it, I mean we were spraying boxes with Lysol. And I just couldn\'t sit through that. I was like, ‘We got to work.’ And I was in such a dark space because of that; I knew I needed to write. My father had just died a year before. So I\'m still learning how to grieve through that. And then I\'m like, ‘We got to write. I got to get this out of me.’ So ‘Save Me’ came from a really dark space. It\'s still really hard to sing.”

“The one thing I wanted to do is avoid a sophomore slump,” Wolfgang Van Halen tells Apple Music. “That was literally all that was on my mind. Other than that, I think I came into the process with a bit more confidence in comparison to the first album. We’ve got two years of playing live shows now, so we know how the crowd reacts to stuff.” That confidence has clearly extended to his vocal performances on his second album under the name Mammoth WVH, prime examples of which can be heard on the singles “Like a Pastime,” “Another Celebration at the End of the World,” and “Take a Bow.” “On the first album, I was trying to figure out if I could be a singer,” he says. “But for the past two years, I *have* been a singer. I think you can hear that confidence in my guitar playing as well.” In fact, *II* is much more solo-forward than its predecessor. Standouts include Wolfgang’s melodic turn on “Miles Above Me,” the finger-tapping on “Erase Me,” and the 90-second twister on “Take a Bow,” which he played on his late father’s famous “Frankenstein” guitar through the rig used on the early Van Halen albums. “Everyone thinks the first album was me working through everything that had been happening, like losing my father,” Van Halen says. “But that’s not true. I finished recording that album in 2018. This is the album where I’m working though everything that happened in my life since 2019, and that’s a lot. I think that’s why it ended up being a darker, heavier album.” Below, he discusses each track. **“Right?”** “I think this is a really great example of my mission statement as a songwriter in that it\'s incredibly heavy, at least from the perspective of Mammoth in comparison to the first album. There\'s practically a djent part after the solo, which is very different from anything we\'ve done, but that doesn\'t get in the way of the melody. And I think that blend of heaviness and melody can coexist and not override each other. The title came from when I was joking around with the engineer, and I ended up saying ‘right?’ so loudly that the drum mics picked it up. We decided to keep it because it was right on beat.” **“Like a Pastime”** “I thought this was an important one to \[release as a single\] because I think it shows a sense of maturity and a different sound in comparison to the first album. The whole birth of the song came from me trying to explain to my girlfriend, now fiancée, what a polyrhythm was, because I really like Meshuggah. There’s that looping rhythm that\'s locked with the tempo at the start with the guitar and the bass, and then the drums come in doing this sort of triplet-esque thing on top of it. That was my way of attempting to teach her, and she got it, but before I knew it, I had written a song.” **“Another Celebration at the End of the World”** “This was the very first song that we released. With the first album, there was always a question of what should be the first song everybody should hear. With this album, unanimously, everybody was like, ‘Oh, it\'s this song. This is the perfect song to come back with.’ This one really kind of set the pace for the record, because I feel like there weren’t too many super uptempo, upbeat songs on the first album. They were more kind of groovy. With this one, I just wanted to write a punky, fast song, and that started the path of this album being heavier and more aggressive.” **“Miles Above Me”** “This is sort of the pop-punk comfort song of the album. I haven\'t really talked about the solos yet, but I really enjoy this one because it\'s more of a song within a song, and it kind of just takes you on a little melodic journey. I think that\'s really an important part about solos—it\'s not always about shredding balls and showing off. My dad said the solo for ‘Think It Over’ on the first album was my George Harrison solo, which was such a huge compliment, because that’s just playing the perfect melody for what the music is providing. I kind of took this solo in that same vein.” **“Take a Bow”** “I think this is the longest song we\'ve ever released, but I think the most important part is the solo. It\'s way different from anything I\'ve done before, and it really represents an elevation in my skills. I was never too confident with guitar solos, but on this one I just went for it. The thing I was stoked about is that I played my father\'s original Frankenstein guitar through his original Marshall cab and head, so it’s basically what he used for the early Van Halen albums. He’s not around anymore, so I think it was really cool to be able to involve him in a way when he’s not here.” **“Optimist”** “I\'m a big TOOL fan, and I think that sort of came out without me realizing it on this song. It’s our first song in a really weird time signature—it’s in 7/4—and it\'s just very dark and angry and heavy. My favorite part is the bridge. I love how the drum fills lead into this droning sort of march, just this wall of sound. I wrote it going, ‘Oh, man—I can’t wait to play this live.’” **“I\'m Alright”** “This song is really funny because it almost has a throwback vibe in a way, at least through the lens of Mammoth, but the lyrics are very from the heart. It’s definitely a little bit angry. If I ever personally had an anthem for telling people to fuck off, this is it—because I literally say that in the song. It’s about rejecting everyone\'s expectations of me and about how I’m doing what I want to do. And I think there\'s something really funny about layering that message in a song that echoes the vibe of a more classic rock song.” **“Erase Me”** “This was an idea that fell off from the first album because it just wasn\'t ready. But I revisited it, and man, I really loved the solo more than anything. It’s kind of an aggressive pop-rock song, and certainly a breakup song if ever there was one. This was another one that made me realize this album was going to be more solo-heavy than the first. For this song, the entire solo is tapped, but it’s melodic. I think that’s a funny duality because when you think of tapping, you think of shredding. But in this context, it’s almost pretty and kind of fun.” **“Waiting”** “Lyrically, this is almost a thematic sequel to ‘Distance,’ which was the very first song we ever released. That song was dedicated to my father, and it’s sort of that conversation between you and that person or thing that you miss. But it almost shifts perspective through the song. It\'s a method of storytelling I haven\'t really attempted yet until this song, and it was kind of exploring more of the vibes of ‘Distance,’ and I\'m really happy with how it turned out. It\'s a very emotional song for sure.” **“Better Than You”** “I think this is the perfect album closer. In the studio we were calling it ‘Meshuggah Beatles’ because there\'s sort of that mix at the ending, and also in the bridge there\'s this descending riff, but at the same time it gets really, really heavy. It’s similar to ‘Right?’ in that it has that representation of heaviness and melody living together in harmony in a really fun way. Lyrically, I’m talking about how everyone on the internet thinks they’re better than everyone else, but really they’re just as miserable as everybody else, and we’re all just kind of talking to ourselves.”

Few rock bands this side of Y2K have committed themselves to forward motion quite like Paramore. But in order to summon the aggression of their sixth full-length, the Tennessee outfit needed to look back—to draw on some of the same urgency that defined them early on, when they were teenaged upstarts slinging pop punk on the Warped Tour. “I think that\'s why this was a hard record to make,” Hayley Williams tells Apple Music of *This Is Why*. “Because how do you do that without putting the car in reverse completely?” In the neon wake of 2017’s *After Laughter*—an unabashed pop record—guitarist Taylor York says he found himself “really craving rock.” Add to that a combination of global pandemic, social unrest, apocalyptic weather, and war, and you have what feels like a suitable backdrop (if not cause) for music with edges. “I think figuring out a smarter way to make something aggressive isn\'t just turning up the distortion,” York says. “That’s where there was a lot of tension, us trying to collectively figure out what that looks like and can all three of us really get behind it and feel represented. It was really difficult sometimes, but when we listened back at the end, we were like, ‘Sick.’” What that looks like is a set of spiky but highly listenable (and often danceable) post-punk that draws influence from early-2000s revivalists like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party, The Rapture, Franz Ferdinand, and Hot Hot Heat. Throughout, Williams offers relatable glimpses of what it’s been like to live through the last few years, whether it’s feelings of anxiety (the title cut), outrage (“The News”), or atrophy (“C’est Comme Ça”). “I got to yell a lot on this record, and I was afraid of that, because I’ve been treating my voice so kindly and now I’m fucking smashing it to bits,” she says. “We finished the first day in the studio and listened back to the music and we were like, ‘Who is this?’ It simultaneously sounds like everything we\'ve ever loved and nothing that we\'ve ever done before ourselves. To me, that\'s always a great sign, because there\'s not many posts along the way that tell you where to go. You\'re just raw-dogging it. Into the abyss.”

Periphery guitarist Mark Holcomb will be the first one to tell you that the band’s seventh album was difficult to make. “For a number of reasons,” he tells Apple Music. “The most obvious one is that we started it when things were at their boiling point with the pandemic. There was a lot we didn’t know, and everybody was erring on the side of caution—which no one regrets. I would also say we’ve become so much pickier as far as what makes the cut for a Periphery album or a Periphery song, or even just a riff. Everything just takes longer now because we hold ourselves to a higher standard.” What about that title, though? As often as Periphery are called “progressive metal” or “progressive metalcore,” they’re labeled as “djent,” the rhythmically complex, palm-muted-guitar-driven subgenre that Meshuggah are credited with spawning. “That’s just us having some fun with our fans,” Holcomb explains with a laugh. “When our first record came out, we started hearing people throwing around the term ‘djent,’ which we use to describe the sound of a palm-muted guitar, but they used to describe our style of music. We have no control over that, and if people want to classify us a djent band, well, the internet is undefeated. We can’t argue with it. We’ve tried. So, it really is 100 percent a genre.” Below, he discusses each track on the record. **“Wildfire”** “This was the first idea completed for the album. Our final night working on it, \[guitarist\] Misha \[Mansoor\] started writing the jazzy section, and we realized we had our first real song for the record. It felt like a defining sound for the album, and that held true in retrospect. I think this song was a great catalyst to point us in the right direction. It’s really adventurous and breaks all these rules of arrangement, but it was really important for us. And it’s got a great sax solo by Jørgen \[Munkeby\] from Shining.” **“Atropos”** “The title is a nod to one of our favorite video games from the last couple years called Returnal. It was a PlayStation 5 game that we were playing all the time. Pretty early on, we had a feeling this would be a single because it showcases a lot more straight-ahead melody, especially in the first half of the song. I think that’s what people expect when they think of Periphery—big seven-string grooves and melody with some adventurous chord changes. And then, the last half devolves into a really dark place, like a slow-sounding Darkthrone blast-beat section, which I adore.” **“Wax Wings”** “When COVID hit and no one was allowed to leave their houses, I decided to treat writing like a day job, starting in the morning and clocking out at 5 or 6 pm. I began writing the main riffs for this very early on, and then \[guitarist\] Jake \[Bowen\] and Misha helped me take it to a level that I could have never imagined. It has a very weird tuning that I stole from a Japanese band called Toe. Once our singer, Spencer \[Sotelo\], started doing his thing over it, it was like, ‘Wow, this song could be a real pillar on the record.’ And it has one of the most cinematic moments on *Periphery V* in that outro.” **“Everything Is Fine!”** “We were in love with this idea of having a song that just had a ton of what we call ‘laser sounds’—those whammy sounds. There’s a band called Car Bomb that we love, and if you see them live, you’ll notice them doing these laser effects. We picked their brains about it years ago on tour. They showed us what’s up, and we began experimenting with it. You can hear some on ‘Wildfire,’ too, but on this one, we went wild with it. It’s got some Dillinger Escape Plan worship in there, too.” **“Silhouette”** “We wanted to have a song that fell into the same category as Jake’s electronic side project. It’s very relaxing and chill and downtempo, and the sound design is incredible. So, we started writing in that style, but when Spencer started doing vocals, it became something very different—it became a full-on electro-pop song. I could easily envision a lot of metal purists hearing it and going, ‘What’s wrong with you guys?’ but I love how it came out.” **“Dying Star”** “That was based off a demo that Misha had like a year before we started writing. To me, it sounded like contemporary Thrice, which I love. Very straight-ahead, very rock, not metal at all, but still had this energy to it. I threw in an idea of my own, which I was working on independently of what Misha was doing, but it happened to be the same tempo, the same key, and it lined up perfectly. It was one of those happy accidents and a cool illustration of how useful it is to have everyone in the band contributing creative ideas.” **“Zagreus”** “The title is a nod to a video game called Hades that we were obsessed with during the writing and recording of the record. I had a rough demo of the song that I had worked on during the pandemic, but it got a mediocre response from the band. We ended up keeping one tiny bit of that idea, and it turned into this very different sounding thing with all this crazy rhythm stuff, off-kilter riffs, and an Opeth-sounding bridge section. It’s one of those songs that I would play for someone who wanted to know what Periphery sounds like.” **“Dracul Gras”** “We were messing with all these eight-string riffs that were super heavy, super low, and dark in tone. They made us envision a big old vampire, so we started calling it ‘Bat Dracula.’ One of the toughest tasks on the record was getting an arrangement for this one that served the epic direction of the song. So, this became another example of us passing the guitar back and forth—that’s why a lot of the riffs have very different tonalities to them. Spencer’s lyrics tell a story of a portly vampire and his trials and tribulations in his village. It’s a very special song, and I envision it being a live staple once people hear it.” **“Thanks Nobuo”** “The title is a reference to Nobuo Uematsu from Final Fantasy. He’s one of our biggest influences ever. Back when I met Misha and Jake in 2007, we talked about our love for Meshuggah and Deftones, but we also dorked down on our love for video games and the music from Final Fantasy. We’ve spent thousands of hours, collectively, listening to that music while playing those games. The reason it’s called ‘Thanks Nobuo’ is because there’s a vocal line in the chorus that is the theme from Final Fantasy VII, so it’s a tribute to him. We’re so respectful of his legacy and just perpetually in awe of everything he’s done.”

The deskbound among us might first interpret the title of Queens of the Stone Age’s eighth album as a reference to the font, but a few minutes with the music and you’ll realize that what Josh Homme refers to is a sense of decadence so total it ends with the city on fire. They remain, as ever, the hardest hard-rock band for listeners who don’t necessarily subscribe to the culture or traditions of hard rock, channeling Bowie (“Emotion Sickness”), cabaret (“Made to Parade”), and the collars-up slickness of British synth-pop (“Time & Place”) alongside the motorcycle-ready stuff you might you might expect—which they still do with more style than most (“Obscenery”). And like ZZ Top, they can rip and wink at the same time. But *In Times New Roman...* plumbs deeper personal territory than prior records. Homme has weathered the deaths of friends, the dissolution of his marriage, and other painful developments since the release of 2017’s Villains, and the album touches on all that—but he also wants to be clear about assumptions listeners could make from his lyrics. “I would never say anything about the mother of my kids or anything like that,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “But also, by the same token, you must write about your life, and I think I\'m soundtracking my life. These songs and the words that go with them are an emotional snapshot where you stop the film, you pull out one frame. One song it\'s like, \'I\'m lost.\' And another one, \'I\'m angry.\' They need to be these distilled versions of that, because one drop of true reality is enough flavor. I think the hatred and adoration of strangers is like the flip side of a coin. But when you\'re not doing it for the money, that currency is worthless. I can\'t get involved in what the people say. In a way, it\'s none of my fucking business.” For Homme, the breakthrough of *In Times New Roman...* came *because* he was unflinchingly honest with himself while he was writing through some of his darkest moments. “At the end of the day, the record is completely about acceptance,” Homme says. “That\'s the key. My friends have passed. Relationships have ended. Difficult situations have arisen. I\'ve had my own physical and health things go on and things like that, but I\'m okay now. I\'m 100 percent responsible for 50 percent of what\'s going on, you know what I mean? But in the last seven years, I\'ve been through a lot of situations where it doesn\'t matter if you like it or not, it\'s happening to you. And so I\'ve been forced to say, yeah, I don\'t like this, I need to figure out where I\'m at fault here or I\'m responsible here or accountable here. And also, I need to also accept it for what it is. This is the reality. Even if I don\'t like it, it would be a shame to hold on too tight to something that\'s slipping through your hands and not just accept it for what it is.”

Twenty-six years after the release of the band’s self-titled debut, Sevendust guitarist Clint Lowery can’t believe they’ve made it to album 14. “We thought the shelf life of the band would be two or three records at most,” he tells Apple Music. “Back when we were growing up, bands would exist for about five to six records and then go away, for the most part. So, we’re as dumbfounded as anyone else. But we do realize longevity is our superpower now. To have all the original guys from 1995-96 still together, still making music, and to have our fanbase, we’re very grateful. And completely shocked by it.” *Truth Killer* sees the Atlanta-based alt-metal squad wrestling with the intertwined evils of social media and disinformation. “People like to put their own narrative to their reality, and sometimes it’s not very truthful,” Lowery says. “We gravitate to negative news. We gravitate to tragedy as entertainment. We don’t want the truth; we just want the entertainment value. That can be frustrating, and we’re not immune to it.” Below, he comments on each song. **“I Might Let the Devil Win”** “That originally was a song that was going to be used for my solo stuff. It was really a quirky, all-electronic idea that I had. I didn’t think it would be an actual Sevendust song, but once they listened to it, we decided to put it on the record and let it be the first song. Which is a change of pace for us because we usually lead off with a strong, heavy song to announce ourselves. But we thought this would be a cool way to open the record and get some attention for a song that probably wouldn’t have got a lot of attention.” **“Truth Killer”** “This was the genesis of the record. In the social media world, you can be looked at as godlike. You can be put on a pedestal in these different ways, and the song is us calling that part of our society out. And, again, no one really wants to know the truth—they just want information to cater to their own beliefs, their own systems, their own likes. So, that song’s just a general frustrating complaint about everything we see. But I’m guilty of it, too. I’m calling myself out on some level.” **“Won’t Stop the Bleeding”** “This is a co-write with Justin DeBlieck. He does Black Veil Brides, and he’s done a few other very cool projects, and we collaborated a little bit on the music. The lyrics are about basically allowing someone, if they want to destroy their life, and they want to go down a destructive path, you just allow them to do it because you’re done with trying to help them and trying to be a friend. You just let them be what they want to be, even if that means their own self-destruction.” **“Everything”** “We wanted kind of an anthem on the record. \[Sevendust drummer\] Morgan \[Rose\] and I put that song together via Zoom as one of the co-writes we did together. The music is pretty much a tribute to Nine Inch Nails in terms of the sounds and the sonics. ‘Everything’ is someone’s plea to say, ‘I will do whatever. I’ll change. I’ll be anything you need me to be. I just want to be with you. I want to support you. I want to be in your life.’ You’re basically being rejected, but you’re saying, ‘I’ll change,’ even if it means sacrificing who you really are. You’ll do whatever it takes to be the person they need you to be.” **“No Revolution”** “This is a pretty standard Sevendust song, musically. We always want to put a song in there that people know right away is a traditional Sevendust song, so the diehards can rest easy. And the lyrics go back to social media because it’s such a huge platform in the way people express themselves. When tragedies happen in the world, everyone does the ‘thoughts and prayers,’ and everyone talks about these different movements that they believe in, but most people don’t do the actual action to promote a change. So, ‘No Revolution’ is saying a lot of us can be a lot of talk and no action.” **“Sick Mouth”** “When I was around eight or nine years old, I experienced an attempted molestation from one of my parents’ friends. They were making advances to me over a few weeks’ time. When it started progressing, I told my mom. So, the song is about my experience and the emotions that come with that. It’s about taking the power away from the predator and giving it back to the victim—myself, or anyone that’s gone through that. It’s the empowerment of not letting that control my life or my behaviors anymore.” **“Holy Water”** “People might think this is a religious song, but it’s about anyone whose actions don’t support what they’re saying they believe in. That can be within a relationship, where people portray themselves one way and act another way, or the way they treat people conflicts with the ideals that they have for themselves. Even religious organizations talk about their faith, but then they do something that doesn’t align with those beliefs and principles that they’re trying to push on you.” **“Leave Hell Behind”** “The title is very literal—it’s a song about leaving. You can’t live on your glory days, and you can’t demonize yourself for your darker days. You have to just move on, become the person that you are today, and be the best person you can. You have to take those experiences and push them back, and just evolve.” **“Superficial Drug”** “It’s about people getting addicted to the hype and the interest that they get through social media. People get addicted to the status or the praise or the validation they get from others, and it becomes a drug. It’s very addictive to be sought after or to get attention in any way, especially on a high level. All of us have the potential to become so self-involved that it is a drug. If you aren’t getting attention, and you’re not in the spotlight, you feel like you’re withdrawing because that’s what you use to validate yourself.” **“Messenger”** “I wrote this song with \[Sevendust guitarist\] John \[Connolly\] and Morgan, but they were the predominant songwriters. We were just talking about how arrogant we all can get in our own lives, and that we don’t want to listen to anybody, and we don’t want to collaborate with people. Instead, it’s ‘I want to do the things I want to do, and I don’t really even care about what you do.’ It’s a self-centered kind of existence that some of us have, and the song touches on some of that.” **“Love and Hate”** “This is a plea to someone that you have a love-hate relationship with. Sometimes the things you love and hate about a person are equally attractive. Sometimes people almost gravitate toward people that are crazy, or people that are really needy or dysfunctional. It’s about accepting those things as the whole package of a person when you really, really want them and you’re devoted to them. The song explores some of the darker things you like about other people, or your other person, whoever that is.” **“Fence”** “This is the mandatory headhunter, fast-tempo song. We’re big Queens of the Stone Age fans, and this song had that kind of vibe to it, so we did our own version of that. As long as we’ve been together as a band, we always have one or two songs that touch on the struggles of longevity. It’s an anthem-y kind of song in terms of the message, where we’ve hit bottom, but now we want to move up. We want to acknowledge the low point, but now we’re just going to push ourselves forward.”

The third album from the masked, anonymous Brits of Sleep Token is also the third in a conceptual trilogy that began with their 2019 debut, *Sundowning*. Introduced with the stirring and dramatic leadoff single “Chokehold,” *Take Me Back to Eden* is another genre-defying exploration of music’s outer limits, incorporating elements of techno and tech-metal alongside R&B, post-rock, and pop—often in the same song. “Vore” spins out in Meshuggah djent-isms before swelling with the kind of strings that recall a battle scene from *Game of Thrones*. “Ascensionism” is an inventive and often bizarre mix of piano ballad, gospel, and ultra-modern metal. Closer “Euclid” sounds like a Lana Del Rey tune performed by an R&B singer and a chorus of aliens. Along the way, there are love songs (“The Apparition”), suicide ballads (“Are You Really Okay?”), and songs about loss (the title track). As always, mastermind Vessel’s vocals soar over the proceedings, offering lyrical mysteries in service to the nocturnal muse he calls Sleep. It’s as bewildering as it is impressive.

Near the end of The Rolling Stones’ first album of original material in 18 years, Keith Richards takes the microphone to ask a series of emotional questions, pleading for honesty about what might lie ahead for him: “Is the future all in the past? Just tell me straight,” he asks. The answer is, remarkably, no: *Hackney Diamonds* is the band’s most energetic, effortless, and tightest record since 1981’s *Tattoo You*. Just play “Bite My Head Off,” a rowdy kiss-off where Mick Jagger tells off a bitter lover, complete with a fuzz-bass breakdown by...Paul McCartney. “At the end of it, I just said, ‘Well, that\'s just like the old days,’” Richards tells Apple Music of that recording session. *Hackney Diamonds* was indeed made like the old days—live, with no click tracks or glossy production tricks—yet still manages to sound fresh. After years of stalled sessions, and the death of their legendary drummer Charlie Watts in 2021, Jagger and Richards decided on a fresh start, traveling to Jamaica (the same place they wrote “Angie” in 1973) for a series of writing sessions. Based on a recommendation from McCartney, Jagger hired producer Andrew Watt, who’d also worked with Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Ozzy Osbourne, Post Malone, and more, to help them finish the tracks. “He kicked us up the ass,” Jagger tells Apple Music. With Steve Jordan on drums, Watt kept it simple, bringing in vintage microphones and highlighting the interwoven guitars of Richards and Ronnie Wood. “The whole point is the band being very close, eyeball to eyeball, and looking at each other and feeding off of each other,” says Richards. In the spirit of 1978’s genre-spanning *Some Girls*, the album comprises sweeping riff-heavy anthems (“Angry,” “Driving Me Too Hard”), tortured relationship ballads (“Depending on You”), country-tinged stompers (“Dreamy Skies”), and even dance-floor grooves (“Mess it Up,” featuring a classic Jagger falsetto). The capstone of the album is “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” a stirring seven-minute gospel epic featuring Lady Gaga. Halfway through, the song goes quiet, Gaga laughs, and Stevie Wonder starts playing the Rhodes keyboard, and then Gaga and Jagger start improvising vocals together; it’s a spontaneous moment that’s perfectly imperfect, reminiscent of the loose *Exile on Main St.* sessions. “Playing with Stevie is always mind-blowing, and I thought that Lady Gaga did an incredible job, man,” says Richards. “She snaked her way in there and took it over and gave as good as she got with Mick, and it was great fun.” Richards didn’t expect to make an album this good as he approaches his 80th birthday. But he’s using it as a moment to take stock of his career with the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world. “The fact that our music has managed to become part of the fabric of life everywhere, I feel pretty proud about that, more than any one particular thing or one particular song,” he says. “It is nice to be accepted into this legendary piece of bullshit.”

With his first proper solo album since the dissolution of his former band, ex-HIM leader Ville Valo is testing his personal vision under the moniker VV. On *Neon Noir*, the Finnish vocalist and songwriter explores new facets of gothic rock by turning up his ’80s influences in tandem with moody David Lynch-isms and ’60s folk rock in an effort to, as he puts it, find the sweet spot between Depeche Mode and Black Sabbath. “After playing with HIM for a quarter century, it felt very daunting to call it a day,” he tells Apple Music. “It was such a huge part of my life. I really didn’t have any expectations about what would happen afterwards because I didn’t know if the inspiration would be there, or if I would just feel like I’d lost a limb. So, it took me a while to get inspired again.” After HIM split up in 2017 as one of the most commercially successful Finnish bands of all time, it took Valo over two years to pick up a guitar again. “I ended up producing and engineering and writing and doing everything by myself,” he explains. “I was stupid enough to think that that’s what a solo album’s supposed to be like. Some of it has to do with COVID because there was no chance to put a band together. But I’ve also always had a strange fascination with artists like Prince, who do everything by themselves. Because if you work completely in a solitary fashion, the vision is very undiluted. It doesn’t necessarily mean the result is better, but I think it’s more unique and special because you can hear who the artist really is.” Below, he details each track on *Neon Noir*. **“Echolocate Your Love”** “It was written during the darkest times of the pandemic. I’ve always been fascinated by bats and how they navigate using echolocation. I started thinking that maybe people should use the same at times—close your eyes and you can actually see and understand things better in the dark. And also, the classic line of ‘love is blind.’ In this case, you could interpret the darkness as being the pandemic. Let it wash you over because you’re going to be stronger afterwards.” **“Run Away From the Sun”** “That’s the first song I wrote for the album and the first song I wrote after HIM disbanded. So, it was a big deal for my self-confidence to be able to show myself that I can still pull it off and actually get a song that makes me tickle in just the right spots at the right time. I think the song is very ’80s—the whole album is pretty ’80s—but it’s quite anthemic. I was in a very bad place mentally and spiritually when I wrote it, and I couldn’t see a way out. So, I asked the one I love to join me in the darkness as opposed to trying to drag me out. It’s a love song.” **“Neon Noir”** “When I wrote this, I was still trying to find the right spot for me, which is somewhere in between Depeche Mode and Black Sabbath. The song has a very classic-rock feel to it with the guitars, but then the midsection has this shoegaze-y Cocteau Twins/Jesus and Mary Chain feel to it. I think I found a way to combine all that stuff within a single song and send as many mixed messages as I could for the listener. For me, the song represents the dance of life—all the good and bad that we go through in order to develop and grow as individuals.” **“Loveletting”** “It’s weird that this was the first single because it’s quite a departure. It does have similarities to my previous band, and you can recognize who’s singing, but it has a lot of folky influence to it. The verses of the song are very ’60s. I love Cat Stevens and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and all of that melancholy folk music of the time, and I was trying to bring some of that into the music, which is very new to me. It has a lot of ’80s dance-goth feel to it, too. That is very un-HIM.” **“The Foreverlost”** “That’s the second single, if I’m not mistaken, and it’s definitely the most gothic-rock song on the album. I was able to bring a lot of the musical perversions into the song that I wasn’t able to fulfill with HIM. The guys in HIM were more hard rockers, God bless them, but this time I didn’t have them holding me back. So, it’s very Sisters of Mercy, and it’s quite tongue in cheek as well because there’s a lyric about the ‘nyctophile’s Shangri-la,’ and that’s obviously Helsinki because it’s dark all the time here.” **“Baby Lacrimarium”** “‘Lacrimarium’ is a weird Latin word that I heard about from a friend. It’s what’s called a tear vessel, where back in the day people would weep and save their tears in a tiny jar. I just thought the idea was quite extraordinary. Lyrically speaking, I love combining good old ’50s or ’60s American, ‘(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear’ pop music with semi-poetic goth themes. Musically speaking, it’s the poppiest track on the album. It’s got a lot of jangly, clean guitars with the super-chorus \[effect\], like The Cure.” **“Salute the Sanguine”** “This is a fast rock track with a bit of The Cult in the guitars. The chorus is, ‘Go salute the sanguine, red in tooth and claw. It has to feel.’ It’s about the animalistic, instinctual aspect that is so important in life. To me, it’s not about ones and zeroes or social media. It’s about letting yourself go and letting the animal out—howling at the moon a bit. It’s probably the most HIM-like track on the album. It’s like a freight train, and it’s probably going to work great live.” **“In Trenodia”** “I was trying to think of a melancholy utopia. ‘Threnody’ means a sad song, usually a solitary song sung by one person, so I turned the idea of that into a world-building exercise. Trenodia is the land of the sad song, a place where I would feel at ease and at home. It’s a beautiful place where the sun is always setting, and the birds sing the most melancholy tunes. It has a bit of *Siamese Dream*-era Smashing Pumpkins guitars coming together with a sort of Type O Negative gothic pop. It’s one of the odder bits ’n’ bobs on the album.” **“Heartful of Ghosts”** “That’s my favorite of the album because it’s something very different. It has this weird lava lamp sort of feeling. It’s very ’60s and—rest in peace—Angelo Badalamenti, talking about *Twin Peaks* and all that stuff. I think the theme from *Twin Peaks* was such a big influence on all the musicians my age. You want to be able to create something that’s beautiful but ominous at the same time. ‘Heartful of Ghosts’ has this brooding sense of something terrible about to happen, and super-weird lyrics about tarot cards and a planchette, the thing you use with a Ouija board.” **“Saturnine Saturnalia”** “That’s the most Black Sabbath thing on the album. I’m a huge Black Sabbath geek. I grew up with that stuff, and they were one of the main idols for HIM. We were such fanatic fans when it came to Sabbath, and I think we still are. So, you have to have a couple of really big, monstrous, fuzzy guitar riffs on a rock album. I also grew up with Type O Negative and that sort of stuff in the early ’90s that incorporated a sense of the romantic and melancholy pop with the very Sabbath-y riffs, so that’s what I was aiming for here.” **“Zener Solitaire”** “Zener cards are the telepathy cards—the ones with the crosses, the circles, the waves. One person holds them to themselves, and the other person is trying to guess them. I thought the saddest thing in the world would be to play solitaire with Zener cards because that’s something you can’t really do by yourself. This is an instrumental track, kind of a Phil Spector production meeting up with Goblin, who did the music for the original *Suspiria*. It’s meant as an intro for the next song, ‘Vertigo Eyes.’” **“Vertigo Eyes”** “I didn’t purposefully set out to do an eight-plus-minute song, but that’s what happened. I was thinking of the dream sequences from David Lynch’s *Lost Highway*, those subliminal messages he keeps giving the viewers with the editing. There’re so many weird things. You know that semi-surreal feeling when you have a really high fever? You’re not sure what’s true and what’s not true. You’re not well, and you’re in this in-between state. That’s what I wanted to create with this song. Musically, it’s like psychedelic U2 coming together with Sisters of Mercy and then *Welcome to Sky Valley*-era Kyuss at the end.”

With his first proper solo album since the dissolution of his former band, ex-HIM leader Ville Valo is testing his personal vision under the moniker VV. On Neon Noir, the Finnish vocalist and songwriter explores new facets of gothic rock by turning up his '80s influences in tandem with moody David Lynch-isms and '60s folk rock in an effort to, as he puts it, find the sweet spot between Depeche Mode and Black Sabbath. "After playing with HIM for a quarter century, it felt very daunting to call it a day," he tells Apple Music. "It was such a huge part of my life. really didn't have any expectations about what would happen afterwards because I didn't know if the inspiration would be there, or if I would just feel like I'd lost a limb. So, it took me a while to get inspired again." After HIM split up in 2017 as one of the most commercially successful Finnish bands of all time, it took Valo over two years to pick up a guitar again. "I ended up producing and engineering and writing and doing everything by myself," he explains. "I was stupid enough to think that that's what a solo album's supposed to be like. Some of it has to do with COVID because there was no chance to put a band together. But I've also always had a strange fascination with artists like Prince, who do everything by themselves. Because if you work completely in a solitary fashion, the vision is very undiluted.