After five albums in 15 years, Alter Bridge quickly exited nervy adolescence (remember “Metalingus”?) and has comfortably matured. Their sixth album *Walk the Sky* shows their updated priorities, from banging heads to moving hearts. Yes, the curling, snarling guitars that permeate “Native Son,” “Pay No Mind,” and “Wouldn’t You Rather” speak to their sharpened metal pedigree. But it’s singer Myles Kennedy and lead guitarist Mark Tremonti’s melodious thunderstorm that is both crushing and refreshing; songs like “Godspeed,” “Forever Falling,” and the album closer “Dying Light” firmly secure their place in the melodic hard rock universe.
Alter Bridge expand their musical creativity on their latest release Walk The Sky! For over 15 years, Alter Bridge has been a band known for blurring the line between hard rock and heavy metal. Building upon the sound that has won the band worldwide critical acclaim and a devoted global fan base, the band returns with their sixth studio album, Walk The Sky. The fourteen-track opus marks a creative highpoint for the quartet comprised of Myles Kennedy on vocals/guitars, Mark Tremonti on guitars/vocals, Brian Marshall on bass and Scott Phillips on drums. Walk The Sky is a complete career retrospective drawing upon elements from each of the band’s previous releases to create something new from the band. Recorded in a way never done before, the album was born from complete song ideas created by Kennedy and Tremonti. These songs would then be worked on by the entire band to create the fourteen songs that would make Walk The Sky the listening experience it is. This varies from the band’s previous method going back to their sophomore release Blackbird where Kennedy and Tremonti would combine individual ideas and riffs alongside producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette to form some of the band’s most revered songs. From the opening vocal melody on “One Life” to the moving finale of “Dying Light,” Alter Bridge have created a formidable addition to their music catalog. Songs like “God Speed,” “Native Son” and “Walking On The Sky” are sure to be early additions to the live set. The first single “Wouldn’t You Rather” is quintessential Alter Bridge and “Forever Falling” also marks a lead vocal return from Tremonti with Kennedy taking the chorus as done previously on the Fortress favorite “Waters Rising.” Alter Bridge will be heading out on a worldwide tour beginning in September in the United States before heading over to Europe to close out 2019. © NAPALM RECORDS
Astronoid is: Brett Boland Daniel Schwartz Casey Aylward Matt St. Jean All songs and lyrics written by Brett Boland. Mixed by Brett Boland & Daniel Schwartz. Mastered by Magnus Lindberg. Brett Boland - Vocals, Guitars, Drums Daniel Schwartz - Bass, Synthesizers/Arrangements Casey Aylward - Guitars Michael DeMellia - Guitars ***PLEASE NOTE*** This album is downloadable for free - as we do not want pirates to profit from this music. Please donate as you see fit if you enjoy the music. Our suggested pricing scheme: Low budget = 3-4 EUR Average budget = 7-8 EUR High budget = 10-15 EUR Please tell everyone to download from the official sources only.
In this era of seemingly arbitrary punctuation in pop, the all-caps title for California hard rock band Badflower\'s full-length debut feels earned. *OK, I\'M SICK* is largely about, as well as a product of, frontman Josh Katz\'s anxiety. The raw nerves and self-awareness are palpable throughout, most notably in the harrowing suicide tale “Ghost” and the appropriately frenetic opener “x ANA x,” which contains the line that could double as the album\'s elevator pitch: “Wanna see what happens when I mix Xanax, blow, and a MacBook Pro?” (*Editor\'s note: Apple does not condone this use of its hardware.*) Here Katz tells Apple Music about some of the things he and his bandmates needed around them to exorcize—and exercise—their demons and turn them into some very loud songs. **Leonardo DiCaprio** “We have a house out in the desert in California City, our tour manager\'s house, about two and a half hours north of LA. We wrote everything here—we must have made like 50 demos. When we actually got to the real studio, a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio was on the mixing console, staring at us with every take that we recorded. I don\'t know why it was there, but I\'ll never forget that. At some point, we were jamming, just saying \'Leonardo DiCaprio\' over and over and over again. I have no idea why that happened.” **Xanax** “The reason the album came out the way that it did, with all this really heavy content, is because that\'s just the place I happened to be in—a lot of panic disorder and depression and things like that. And even the songs that aren\'t necessarily about that are still very much from that perspective. \'x ANA x\' is sort of making fun of these feelings—making fun of panic disorder and the mode of defense I feel when I\'m onstage. I don\'t have the slightest clue how to fix the problems that I have, I just know how to observe them and turn them into art. Xanax is comforting. I have a therapist that I\'m able to FaceTime with; I talk to her every week. That\'s comforting. I get really bad anxiety when I\'m on tour, especially. Like when I look at the schedule and how full it is, and knowing that we\'re going overseas and doing all this crazy stuff, and the shows get bigger, and there\'s more and more people who are relying on their incomes from this band. I don\'t wanna disappoint anyone, and there\'s just a lot of pressure surrounding what we do that a lot of people don\'t realize.” ***The Defiant Ones*** “I probably put that documentary on every night. The Eminem segment was hugely inspiring—he\'s a freak of nature. Watching that come-up story and seeing how the first album became his first album, we thought about that a lot when we were making this record. Eminem incorporated a degree of humor into everything that he did that, at the time, I don\'t think was really a thing, especially in rap. That was a huge inspiration on \'x ANA x\'—that\'s such an interesting way to approach songwriting. I wanna be able to make people laugh and cry in the same song if I can. And Eminem had a way of doing that.” **Shaving** “The song \'Promise Me\' is all about wanting to preserve youth, and wanting to preserve the way love feels when you\'re young. There\'s no love as powerful as the first love that you have when you\'re in middle school, you know? That breakup, in my mind, with the first person who I only ever kissed on the cheek, was the hardest one I\'d ever been through. It is something that I\'m really cognizant about, preserving my youth. I always shave my face, I don\'t like to have a beard. I think it still looks like I\'m getting older. I guess my job is preserving my youth—I\'m fulfilling my childhood fantasy, I\'m signed to a label, I go on tour for a living, I have fans. As long as I stop taking it so seriously and stop feeling so much pressure to be perfect all the time.”
By now, Savannah, Georgia, metal band Baroness is down to one original member—singer/guitarist and album cover artist extraordinaire John Baizley—and based in Philadelphia. But the steady turnover during the past decade and a half hasn\'t made Baroness feel any less cohesive or consistent. Their fifth full-length album throws in a few stylistic changes (the post-rock interludes “Assault on East Falls” and “Sevens,” the hushed acoustic guitars comprising the first minute of “Tourniquet,” and “Blankets of Ash,” which is a little bit of each) but is as much of an endpoint for the band as it is a springboard. Baizley has said this will be the last Baroness album to be named after colors, an overarching concept that stretches back to 2007\'s *Red Album*. Whatever that portends, it won\'t be due to a lack of ideas. Frantic pulse-quickeners like “Throw Me an Anchor,” “Seasons,” and “Broken Halo” sit alongside the beat-heavy, atmospheric “I\'m Already Gone,” which Baizley himself has described as “Massive Attack meets TLC\'s \'Waterfalls.\'”
“I think on *California*, we really had an idea of what we wanted that record to sound like and it was going back to the foundation of what blink-182 is all about,” bassist Mark Hoppus tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “\[*NINE*\] is everything that blink-182 should be in 2019.” How one reads “2019” in this particular context is a question of sonics and songwriting just as much as social mores. The world has changed a lot in the three years since the kings of pop-punk reunited—with Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba in place of founding guitarist Tom DeLonge—for *California*, a wild, wheelie-popping return to form that, by definition, returned to everything that made them unlikely pop stars at the turn of the century: adolescent nursery rhymes taken to almost diabolical lengths, with lines like “There’s something about you that I can’t quite put my finger in,” as heard on the vintage 30-second outburst “Brohemian Rhapsody.” By design, *NINE* finds the trio not only dispatching with dick jokes entirely, but fully embracing modern electronics and textures—as well as beats that drummer Travis Barker had originally intended for other artists. The result resembles the pop and alt-rock of the current moment more than anything they’ve recorded until now, be it in the titanic guitar swells of “Happy Days,” the skittering rhythm of “Black Rain,” or the saturated tones of “Blame It on My Youth.” On the towering “I Really Wish I Hated You,” Hoppus even makes a subtle attempt at rapping, without any wink or trace of irony. To get to this point creatively, he says it was about letting go, “just trying to write great songs and not worrying about ‘Is this the quintessential blink guitar-heavy distorted sound?’ If you plug your guitar into a computer and it sounds great, then run with it.”
It’s no longer possible to call Bring Me the Horizon a rock band. On their sixth album, the Sheffield four-piece draw on so many genres and ideas, they evade any attempt at categorization. “I’ve always thought there’s too many borders, too many bridges, that people don\'t cross in music,” frontman Oli Sykes tells Apple Music. “The real world has too much of that as it is. I guess that’s our crusade.” *amo*—Portuguese for “love”—stretches from bittersweet pop to electronic experimentalism, calling on an art-pop visionary, a legendary beatboxer, and an extreme-metal icon along the way. Here, Sykes breaks down their crusade, track by track. **i apologise if you feel something** “We knew it was almost impossible to give anyone a heads- up of what this album was going to sound like. It was important for that first track just to be like, ‘Forget whatever you think it’s going to sound like, because you\'re not going to be able to guess from anything we’ve shown you before.” **MANTRA** “At the end of the writing process, I had a bit of a meltdown. Even though we did have a lot of stuff, we didn\'t have that song where we were like, ‘This is what we\'re going to show the world first.’ ‘MANTRA’ was born out of that: \[It\'s\] not so different that people are alienated, but \[it\'s\] giving you a taste that it\'s not the same as the last record. It’s about the similarities between starting a relationship and starting a cult—how you can throw away your whole life for something and you have to put all belief and faith into this thing that might or might not be right for you.” **nihilist blues (feat. Grimes)** “We had no idea if Grimes would even be interested in doing a song with us. But she was really just gushing, like, ‘This is one of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard.’ I’ve always loved dance songs that had a dark edge—something almost primitive that triggers me. Getting it into our sound was really exciting.” **in the dark** “When we first started writing this, it sounded more like something we would have written on the last album. But it turned into this dark, poppy ballad that we all really loved. I love bittersweet, dark pop songs.” **wonderful life (feat. Dani Filth)** “I did all the lyrics and vocals in a day in the studio. I think it was the day The 1975 released ‘Give Yourself a Try\'—that inspired me to get up on the mic and just say stuff that came out. I dropped \[Cradle of Filth frontman\] Dani Filth a line on Instagram to see if he’d be interested in working on the song. He didn\'t believe it was me at first. I think he said something very quintessentially English, like ‘If this is indeed you, young man, then, yes, I would love to.’” **ouch** “It was one of those bittersweet realizations that you’re happy something\'s happened, but a lot of heartache or pain came with getting to that realization. I just wanted to present the lyrics in a way that wasn’t too dark, a way that feels low-key—and the jammy sound came from that.” **medicine** “‘ouch’ is a kind of prelude to this, quite linked to its vibe. It\'s that idea that you often don’t realize you’re in a toxic relationship until you\'re out the other side. It\'s not like a ‘f\*\*\* you’ song, it\'s just, ‘This is finally me having my say, and I\'m actually going to think about how it affected me and not how it affected you for once.’” **sugar honey ice & tea** “It sounds ridiculous, but just with the drums and everything, we approached it differently and ended up making something that felt quite fresh. It started off a lot more, dare I say, hip-hop- sounding, electro, and there’s elements in there that still remain. We kept a little bit of each version it went through.” **why you gotta kick me when I’m down?** “I was quite scolded by the way I was treated when I was going through hard times with my divorce and stuff that no one knew about. I was quite hurt by the way I was treated by people that I thought were there for me. The song’s saying, ‘I totally get it, it\'s fine, but stop pretending it’s coming from a place of love or care, because it’s not—it’s coming from a place of your own problems where you don\'t want someone to change or grow.’” **fresh bruises** “This was a very organic song, it came very naturally. It was one we just wanted to make—a song that wasn’t verse, chorus, verse, chorus, but more of an electronic vibe. The kind of music I listen to is like that, centered around a hook, and it has a drop and it has a buildup. Not in an EDM sense, but more like lo-fi electronic, avant-garde. It just felt cool to make something more jammy and free like that.” **mother tongue** “\[Love\] is really all this addresses—saying to someone, ‘There’s no need to play games, just be open about the way you feel and everything will be fine.’” **heavy metal (feat. Rahzel)** “Getting \[beatboxing legend\] Rahzel was \[keyboardist\] Jordan \[Fish\]’s idea, because we had this beat that almost sounded like there was beatboxing on it. We used to be this death-metal-sounding, crazy band, and now we play pop music—it’s something that pisses some people off. We’re so confident and proud of what we\'re doing, and at the same time, we’re human and we have our insecurities. This track is just a little in-joke that it can still ruin our day if some kid goes, ‘This is the biggest load of s\*\*\* I’ve ever heard. What happened to this band?’” **i don’t know what to say** “It’s about a friend that passed away from cancer. It’s me trying to figure out what to say in that situation and my regret that I didn\'t see him in his final few days—but also an explanation why. To do my best to talk about how speechless I am at his strength and his courage, and the way he took it all in stride. You’ll hear that story echoed from so many people who have lost people to cancer—they just become unrealistically strong and courageous.”
You cannot stop The Things We Can`t Stop – COLD are back with the alternative rock album of the year! "With two gold albums and over one million records sold in the US alone, Jacksonville, Florida's COLD are amongst the most relevant and creatively soaring alternative rock artists of our time. 13 Ways To Bleed On Stage (2000), Year Of The Spider (2003), A Different Kind Of Pain (2005) and Superfiction (2011) are true milestones of an unique career. And The Things We Can`t Stop pursues: With the anti-bullying anthem ‘Shine‘, for example. Or the driving, hard grooving force that is ‘Without You‘. Or the unforgettable beautiful ‘Quiet Now‘. The Things We Can`t Stop is a wonderfully varied and gripping entry in the bands discography – and one that shimmers in timeless colors." © NAPALM RECORDS
Everyone's favorite prog supergroup returns! Steve Morse, Mike Portnoy, Neal Morse, Dave LaRue and Casey McPherson, collectively known as Flying Colors soar to even loftier heights with Third Degree, their third studio album in a decade that's set for release on October 4, 2019 via Music Theories Recordings / Mascot Label Group. Third Degree builds upon the genre-bending momentum of 2012's self-titled Flying Colors and the aural-template ascension of 2014's Second Nature. From the skittery psychedelic/classical turnaround of the lead single "More" to the Beach Boys-meet-Asia vibe of "Love Letter" to the deep emotionality of the album-ending, prog-leaning epic "Crawl," the nine tracks that comprise Third Degree signify just how much Flying Colors are willing to explore new frontiers.
The sixth LP from metal supergroup HELLYEAH is their final album with drummer Vinnie Paul, whose hard-hitting career with Pantera, Damageplan, and beyond made him one of metal\'s most influential sticksmen and most memorable personalities. After laying down the drum tracks for *Welcome Home*, the metal legend passed away in June 2018 at 54. \"Everybody else went home after the services,\" HELLYEAH vocalist Chad Gray tells Apple Music, \"and I went right back to the studio, four days later.\" The completed album—Paul\'s final work—stands as a testament to his music and legacy. It\'s eclectic modern metal, burning through ruthless thrash screamers (\"333\"), anthemic midtempo alt-rock (\"Welcome Home\"), vintage nu metal (\"Boy\"), and a tender ballad that serves as an homage to their fallen brother (\"Skyy and Water\"). The morbid bent of a song like \"Bury You\"–a song unrelated to Paul\'s death–initially caused some internal conflict for Gray, but ultimately he turned to producer Kevin Churko and decided the best thing to do would be what Paul would have wanted. \"I looked at Kevin and I said, \'You know what, dude? I am not going to deviate from the way that I write, at all,\'\" he says. \"This is what this song is telling me, this is what I\'m hearing. I know if Vinnie Paul was still with us in body, he would be fucking driving around town blasting that shit on 20 in his Escalade.\" Gray took Apple Music through *Welcome Home*\'s 11 tracks. **333** “The working title of the song was ‘333’ since Vinnie brought it in. I\'m like, \'You know what? This is Vinnie\'s baby. That is going to stay the title.\' \[Dimebag Darrell\]\'s thing was, 333 is half evil. And I love that. It kind of became a part of my life. And then I get in a band with Vinnie, and that was kind of our mantra. You\'re still half good. That\'s better than a lot of people.” **Oh My God** “I worked on that chorus probably two, three, four times. I just remember at some point, I just put my head in my hands, and I\'m like, \'Jesus Christ, Kevin. It feels like I made a deal with the devil, and he\'s in my fucking blood.\' I just ran out of the room. Didn\'t say another fucking word to him. I needed that one line that really brought everything together.” **Welcome Home** “That song took me 12 days to write, which is fucking ridiculous. It\'s probably the longest it\'s ever taken me to write a song, ever. That song was actually written in December 2017. So, Vinnie heard that song 10 fucking million times. And if anybody ever *hears* that song, you would think that was written post-Vinnie. Just the emotion: \'Why are my feelings of loss like a welcome home?\' Vinnie heard that song many, many times, and *looooved* it. Fucking loved it.” **I\'m the One** “The song is written about a person that just gets shit on their whole life. Always just at the end of the trough, just always gets the last fucking half scoop of mashed potatoes when everybody else\'s plates are full. You want somebody to beat up? I\'m the one. You want a punching bag? I\'m the one. You want to shit on somebody? I\'m the one. If you want to step on my head so you can climb a rung up, and I go a rung down? I\'m the one. The song really is very personal to me, because I\'ve had a lot of that in my life. I came from an abusive childhood. I came from a lot of neglect. I came from a lot of bad times. I was in the music business and I\'ve been fucked six ways to Sunday. But I\'m so capable of love. I\'ve got a lot of love in my heart, and I love my friends, more than anything. I love my heavy metal family. My favorite lyric in the whole song is \'But if you need my heart, I\'m the one, I\'m the one.\'\" **Black Flag Army** \"This is an after-Vinnie-passed song. The outpouring of emotions and condolences and stuff were just fucking overwhelming to us. It\'s about heavy metal family; it\'s about leaning on each other, because I\'ve had to lean on my music, I\'ve had to lean on my fans–not my fans, my family. We don\'t care what you think about how we dress. We don\'t care that we choose to go *waaaaaaaaugh* rather than sit down and have a cup of tea. We don\'t give a shit, because we are together, and we are one. In the Civil War, when you were outnumbered, if it was five on 100 and you\'re holed up, they would literally put a black flag on and they would hoist that motherfucker. And that was symbolic. I\'ll fight for you, you fight for me. You lean on me, I\'ll lean on you. But we are going to fuckin\' fight to death, and we\'re going to fuckin\' fight to death together.\" **At Wick\'s End** “That song is kind of more of a poetic experiment than anything else: I\'m nothing, you\'re nothing. I\'m the candle burning you at both ends, but I\'m also snuffing you at both ends. So it\'s kind of that duality juxtaposition kind of thing that I think we have as humans. Overall, I think the musicianship and musicality and the diversity of that particular track is really one of the most off-the-path songs that we\'ve maybe ever written, honestly.” **Perfect** “I remember waking up at 3:00 in the morning or something. I don\'t know if it was just subconsciously, unconsciously, thinking about it: \'You\'re as perfect as an apple with a worm and a bruise.\' It\'s kind of the way that I look at narcissistic people. I believe that when I\'m standing onstage I\'m only three feet higher than them so they can see me. But in my head and my heart and my soul, I\'m the same person. I think \'Perfect\' represents those people that are so up their own ass and in their own head that they think that they are truly perfect. But honestly, we\'re all flawed.” **Bury You** “I didn\'t want to be fucking judged for writing a song like that after what happened. It doesn\'t have anything to do with burying my fuckin\' brother. It\'s empowering in the sense of \'live it like you own it, drive it like you stole it.\' Go for your goals no matter what they are, no matter how high they are. I think that song, as harsh as the name is, represents empowerment, represents recognition, and recognizing, keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.” **Boy** “I grew up in a household with a stepfather and a mother that had a biological son together that was 10 years younger than me. I was kind of the enemy. And I didn\'t do anything wrong, I was only fuckin\' 11, 12, 13, 14 years old. I isolated myself from the world because it sucked. The \'boy in the box\' is representing me being isolated to a single room. To my bedroom. And the abuse. \'Just keep him in the junk drawer\'—that\'s how I felt like I lived my life, like something you would just open the drawer and throw a piece of junk in it. I was the bottle-opener child that was just thrown in a fucking drawer and not loved and not cared about. It was a tough song to write.” **Skyy and Water** “Vinnie\'s favorite drink was Skyy vodka, water, two limes. Obviously I\'m not going to write the song about a drink, so I had to dig a little deeper than that. The words together are so beautiful: sky and water. And what I did was I just envisioned myself standing on the shores of the beach and remembering what that feels like. I used to four-wheel down to this landing and sit there on my tailgate, alone, and just watch the Colorado River go by, with a notebook, and just sit there and write. There\'s a certain time of day when the sun is just right and the water is just right and the hues are almost perfectly aligned, where you can\'t tell where one ends and one begins. And in theology, that invisible line is what separates Heaven from Earth. And I felt like that\'s where I wanted to go with the song, like, \'Where the sky meets the water, I\'ll see you.\' Talking about how truly close we are to heaven. He\'s close enough where I can touch him, but unfortunately there\'s an invisible line, there\'s a firmament, between him and I. But I believe he is there.” **Irreplaceable** “It\'s \[audio\] of him shooting a fuckin\' selfie video at a bar. He was fuckin\' irreplaceable as it gets, as far as human beings and as far as drummers. We put that on there because that is how he was. That was his personality. It\'s like Vin-bonics. He would just start down a road. He had no idea where he was going to end up, but his mind just worked that way. The words were just floating through his head; he was just a fuckin\' conduit for the words.”
Never let it be said that successful bands have less at stake once they get two decades deep into their career—or at least never say it to Arizona emo pioneers Jimmy Eat World. “The standard that we\'ve set for ourselves now gets higher and higher every album we do,” frontman Jim Adkins tells Apple Music. “You\'re not only making an album, you\'re basically adding to your catalog. So anything we do has to be as good as the best thing we\'ve done so far. Otherwise, why are we doing it?” The simple answer, as evidenced by their 10th album, *Surviving*, is that they are extremely good at it—guitar-driven anthems that feel keenly suited to this moment in Adkins\' life. “It\'s like the time capsule of everything I\'ve been thinking about for the last couple of years,” he says, “which is basically the blocks that we put in our own way that keep us from really experiencing life in as meaningful a way as it can be.” Here he talks through a handful of key tracks that best show how Jimmy Eat World have managed to challenge themselves while still feeling true to everything they\'ve done and meant for over 25 years. **Surviving** “It\'s this tune that doesn\'t have a real discernible chorus to it. It\'s a good example of us being us, but also trying to push ourselves in a way, but also trying to work within some framework of restraint. There\'s usually a basic template or a basic parameter we give ourselves. The lines that we color within are something that feels like a traditional pop song, where sections of the tune are recognizable and it has an arc to it. And then we like to see how much we can get away with while it still resembles that. \'Surviving\' steps a little bit out—it has the arc that I think is interesting to write, but it doesn\'t have any of the interior or outline parts, like a normal pop song would. It\'s more of a crescendo, and it\'s more or less one riff the whole song. How little do you need to really fully communicate what you want to do, what you want to say?” **All the Way (Stay)** “One thing that we were thinking about for that—and for everything, really—the album should have less things doing more. If you listen to a Van Halen album, there\'s not a lot of overdubs—if any. It\'s just four dudes, each of them playing their own role, with the exception of maybe backup vocals. If you put a ton of loud things happening and it\'s just loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, it loses the effectiveness of the loudness. It doesn\'t sound louder anymore. It sounds like synth. When you start taking things away, then things feel heavier. So with \'All the Way (Stay),\' there\'s sections of the song where you\'re just listening to the snare drum decaying in the room. There\'s literally nothing happening for a section of that song—you\'re listening to air. But it makes what\'s happening around it, when that comes back in, a lot more heavy. There\'s a lot of musical devices that are counterintuitive, but when you employ them, it really makes a big effect. And in general, we wanted to take things away as a default position.” **555** “One of the reasons we wanted to work with \[producer\] Justin Meldal-Johnsen is because he just brings such a wide palette of musical influences and information. Way more than what we have. I have a very surface knowledge of MIDI and synth things, so I can explain to him what I want to try to get or I can lay down something that\'s a really rough amateur version of what I want and he just knows exactly what to do. It\'s hard to pin down one exact thing, other than maybe the synth sound in \'555\' would not be nearly as cool without Justin\'s knowledge.” **Criminal Energy** “It\'s just such a heavy guitar song. I mean, that\'s a part of what we do, for sure, but it\'s so borderline metal in a stoner way. I wouldn\'t say it\'s a risk and I wouldn\'t say it\'s totally out of character, but I feel like it\'s pushing our self-perception just enough into that arena of active rock that is not where we live all the time. So I know I\'m on the right track when I feel like, \'I don\'t know if I should do this.\' There\'s definitely a parameter that you need to work within and you need to set for yourself. You can\'t push your self-perception so far that it doesn\'t resemble you anymore.”
There are musicians who suffer for their art, and then there’s Stefan Babcock. The guitarist and lead screamer for Toronto pop-punk ragers PUP has often used his music as a bullhorn to address the physical and mental toll of being in a touring rock band. The band’s 2016 album *The Dream Is Over* was inspired by Babcock seeking treatment for his ravaged vocal cords and being told by a doctor he’d never be able to sing again. Now, with that scare behind him, he’s using the aptly titled *Morbid Stuff* to address a more insidious ailment: depression. “*The Dream Is Over* was riddled with anxiety and uncertainties, but I think I was expressing myself in a more immature way,” Babcock tells Apple Music. “I feel I’ve found the language to better express those things.” Certainly, *Morbid Stuff* pulls no punches: This is an album whose idea of an opening line is “I was bored as fuck/Sitting around and thinking all this morbid stuff/Like if anyone I slept with is dead.” But of course, this being PUP—a band that built their fervent fan base through their wonderfully absurd high-concept videos—they can’t help but make a little light of the darkest subject matter. “I’m pretty aware of the fact I’m making money off my own misery—what Phoebe Bridgers called ‘the commodification of depression,’” Babcock says. “It’s a weird thing to talk about mood disorders for a living. But my intention with this record was to explore the darker things with a bit of humor, and try to make people feel less alone while they listen to it.” To that end, Babcock often directs his most scathing one-liners at himself. On the instant shout-along anthem “Free at Last,” he issues a self-diagnosis that hits like a glass of cold water in the face: “Just because you’re sad again/It doesn’t make you special at all.” “The conversation around mental health that’s happening now is such a positive thing,” Babcock says, “but one of the small drawbacks is that people are now so sympathetic to it that some people who suffer from mood disorders—and I speak from experience here—tend to use it as a crutch. I can sometimes say something to my bandmates or my girlfriend that’s pretty shitty, and they’ll be like, ‘It’s okay, Stefan’s in a different headspace right now’—and that’s *not* okay. It’s important to remind myself and other people that being depressed and being an asshole are not mutually exclusive.” Complementing Babcock’s fearless lyricism is the band’s growing confidence to step outside of the circle pit: “Scorpion Hill” begins as a lonesome barstool serenade before kicking into a dusty cowpunk gallop, while the power-pop rave-up “Closure” simmers into a sweet psychedelic breakdown that nods to one of Babcock’s all-time favorite bands, Built to Spill. And the closing “City” is PUP’s most vulnerable statement to date, a pulverizing power ballad where Babcock takes stock of his conflicted relationship with Toronto, his lifelong home. “The beginning of ‘Scorpion Hill’ and ‘City’ are by far the most mellow, softest moments we’ve ever created as a band,” Babcock says. “And I think on the last two records, we never would’ve gone there—not because we didn’t want to, but just because we didn’t think people would accept PUP if PUP wasn’t always cranked up to 10. And this time, we felt a bit more confident to dial it back in certain parts when it felt right. I feel like we’ve grown a lot as a band and shed some of our inhibitions.”
On their second album since reforming in 2012, Swedish punk trailblazers Refused channel the visceral energy of their 1998 milestone *The Shape of Punk to Come* with scathing political commentary couched in metallic hardcore. *War Music* sees vocalist Dennis Lyxzén and his crew taking on capitalism, racism, and toxic masculinity, complete with overt references to Black Flag, Warzone, and the old-school Finnish metal band Oz. As Lyxzén tells Apple Music, Refused’s long-standing call for the overthrow—or at least abandonment—of what they call the “economy of death” hasn’t diminished over time. “A lot of our friends in the ’90s, they were super political and radical, but now they’re into academia,” he says. “They’re not out in the streets fighting. They’re fighting on a different stratosphere that doesn’t really mean that much. So it’s a call to arms. At one point on the album, it’s basically me just screaming ‘Rise up right now!’ for two minutes.” Here Lyxzén walks through all of *War Music*‘s war music. **Rev 001** “Well, first of all, the reference ‘Rev 001,’ it\'s of course to the Warzone *Lower East Side Crew* 7-inch, because it\'s the first Revelation Records release. And it\'s a pretty basic midtempo kind of banger that I think sets the tone for the record. It\'s about when there\'s blood on the streets, somebody\'s getting paid. It’s a call for a revolution or for social change, and I think it\'s a pretty damn nice track.” **Violent Reaction** “‘Violent Reaction’ is one of those songs where there\'s one guitar riff that\'s pretty amazing, and then there\'s like six different variations of it. It’s a very busy song—there\'s a lot of stuff that happens in three minutes. It deals with the rise of populism and the rise of politics without an agenda. When people are cornered and your choices are the poor choices that we have, then people are going to become a violent reaction to that. It’s up to you how you want to define that. But I think it\'s a great song, and there\'s a really unexpected twist at the end.” **I Wanna Watch the World Burn** “It\'s kind of an existential look at what we\'ve become when we live in a world that\'s not designed for us. Because no matter how much you are against capitalism or how much you are against the system, you are part of the system. You have the same dirt on your fingers, and you have the same sort of feeling of ‘this isn\'t right.’ I just want to burn that down and start over so we can have a new world that\'s actually more designed for us. The song is pretty catchy, too—when we wrote it, we thought it was kind of poppy, but in a way that ‘Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine’ on *The Shape of Punk to Come* was.” **Blood Red** “This was the first song that was written for this record. The working title was ‘The Case’ because it has a little bit of a Snapcase vibe to it. Kris and Dave were in Paris hanging with some friends of ours who have a studio, so they recorded an early demo version and sent it to me. And they had this French guy singing the chorus, because it was just a chorus at that point. I was like, ‘That guy sounds like me!’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, he has a hardcore band. They sound kind of like Refused.’ So if they ever need a replacement, they’ll have a French Dennis who can sing.” **Malfire** “I think this is my favorite track on the record. It’s a song about these geopolitical circumstances that force people to leave their homes, because their homes are being fucked and their countries are being fucked, and it\'s all tied into whatever power struggle that we don\'t even see going on. So these people escape and they go to Europe or they go to America, and people treat them like scum. Like everyone else, they just want a decent life, you know? And they can\'t live where they want to live, so they go somewhere else and we treat them like shit. They become victims over and over again, and none of it is their fault.” **Turn the Cross** “The title is a reference to the Finnish metal band Oz \[who have a song called “Turn the Cross Upside Down”\]. The song is about the right-wing populist movement, kind of like the neo-fascist movement. They\'re rising up everywhere. There’s a line that goes, ‘Your opinion is not a fact.’ These disenfranchised, alienated men—it’s usually men—they breed on fear. They\'re afraid to lose their privilege or they feel they\'ve lost privilege, and then they become angry and they attack whoever doesn\'t agree with them. And it’s an absolute thrasher of a song.” **Damaged III** “The title is a Black Flag reference, of course. A lot of our references—in our minds—are quite humorous, but then a lot of people don’t pick up on them because they assume we are dead-serious people. So this one is about toxic masculinity, but it’s also about how a lot of men don’t like the male role that’s being presented to them. David said, ‘I always thought that Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn’s relationship felt a bit toxic, so maybe this one should just be ‘Damaged III.’” **Death in Vännäs** “So this is a reference to the Thomas Mann novel and movie, but also the place where I grew up, which is pronounced ‘Venice.’ When I was a kid, there was a story in the news about a Japanese couple who were traveling across Europe by train. They were in Stockholm, and they went to the ticket counter and said they were going to Venice. But they ended up here, not in Italy. That must’ve sucked. So it’s a funny reference to that, but it’s also about growing up in a small community where the pressure to conform to the ascribed roles is usually a lot bigger than in a city where you can find your own little clique of like-minded people.” **The Infamous Left** “This is a pretty violent, thrashy sort of song. It reminds me a lot of something that could have been on \[1996’s\] *Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent* in the relentless riffing madness that we’ve got going on. It’s a song about looking at ourselves and our roles in the political discourse of the day. One huge issue with the left is that a lot of times they’re talking above people’s heads. They’re trying to be clever and academic and smart, but a lot of the people on the right don’t want that.” **Economy of Death** “This is a song that Mattias, our new guitar player, wrote some riffs for. It’s his first riff contribution. It has this propulsion to it, this almost primitive power—so primitive that at first I thought it was kind of dumb, like a throwaway song. But then we started playing it live, and the reaction of the crowd and the way it felt onstage, I was like, ‘Nope. This is not a throwaway song. This is an absolute beast.’ I think it’s a fantastic closer for the record, because we’re saying if we’re going to keep complying with the economy of death, we’re fucked. And that’s exactly what I’m screaming at the end: ‘You are so fucked.’”
While recording their fifth full-length album and first in four years, *Widow’s Weeds*, Silversun Pickups went through some life changes that guided their songwriting decisions. “It’s a window into a time and place of what happened in our lives,” frontman Brian Aubert shares with Apple Music. “As we grow older, I think there’s a lot of things that are wonderful. But there’s also a lot of seismic shifts that make you pause, because they just land in your lap. I’m getting used to feeling a little bit vulnerable.” Musically, songs like “It Doesn’t Matter Why” and “Straw Man” mark a back-to-basics approach for Silversun Pickups. Using strings and fuzzed-out guitars, the band wanted to distance themselves from the sleek electronic layering of 2015’s *Better Nature* and bring back the album-oriented rock of their first two albums, *Carnavas* and *Swoon*. “The things I was less interested in before I started falling in love with them again, like being able to express myself with guitar playing and guitar solos,” says Aubert. “One of the elements that made sense to us was having organic strings come back, which we hadn’t done for a couple of records. I knew that with our last two albums, especially *Before Nature*, we really didn’t want known sounds or organic sounds.” A vital instructor throughout the process was Butch Vig, the prominent American songwriter and record producer responsible for helming essential ’90s rock albums like Nirvana’s *Nevermind* and the Smashing Pumpkins’ *Siamese Dream*. Aubert and Vig met during the recording of Garbage’s “The Chemicals” (Vig produces and plays drums for the band)—a stand-alone single where he took on co-vocal duties with singer-songwriter Shirley Manson. He explains how Vig has a unique way of recognizing what he calls “happy accidents”: “With the title track, I was self-consciously playing this acoustic guitar in Butch’s house. I didn’t even realize I was playing it. It must’ve been muscle memory. Butch was talking to everyone and he stops the conversation. He looks at me and says, ‘What is that?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. It’s a thing I’ve had for a long time.’ And he goes, ‘Tonight you’re gonna work on that, because that has to go on the album.’ That song is a great example of why Butch is so great, because anything odd or strange or out of the box, he’s on board and helps you push it through.” Aside from Vig’s contributions, what allows Silversun Pickups to fully realize their vision is how they’re able to navigate each other’s personalities. They’ve managed to stay together for 17 years with no lineup changes or contentious disputes. “We knew each other before we were even in a band,” Aubert notes. “Our lives are pretty separate at this point. I mean, we all mingle with each other here and there, but everybody’s got their lives going. When we come home after a long time of touring, it doesn’t take very long for everybody to want to get involved. We want to do this and enjoy the process, and that’s all that matters.”
Sum 41’s 2016 release, *13 Voices*, saw singer/guitarist Deryck Whibley reckoning with the infamous drinking habit that nearly killed him. With that out of his system, he approached the band’s seventh album, *Order in Decline*, from a renewed position of strength. Inspired and energized by the unwavering fan support he experienced on the band’s comeback tour, Whibley went on a writing frenzy while still out on the road. “It got to the point where when I got home from the *13 Voices* tour cycle, I just had all these ideas and started putting them together,” Whibley tells Apple Music. “All of a sudden, I was like, ‘Holy shit—do I have a new album already? I guess I do!” But while looking for lyrical inspiration, Whibley found himself wrestling with a destructive force more formidable than alcoholism: the polarizing political landscape of post-Trump America. (And he’s not just being an armchair Canadian critic—the Ajax, Ontario, native now calls Los Angeles home for part of the year.) Sum 41 isn’t known for being a particularly topical band, and Whibley is quick to note that *Order in Decline* “doesn’t include any lines about immigration policy.” But it’s impossible to ignore the unsettled undercurrent that courses through the album. The band\'s playful pop-punk has always been counterbalanced by a sincere appreciation for \'80s metal, which is all the more pronounced now that they\'ve settled into the triple-guitar formation (featuring Whibley and original foil Dave “Brownsound” Baksh alongside the latter’s onetime replacement, Tom Thacker) introduced on *13 Voices*. Free of the band’s characteristic snark and smirk, *Order in Decline* is Sum 41’s hardest and angriest record to date, marked by thrashing diatribes like “Out for Blood” and the wholly unsubtle “45 (A Matter of Time),” where Whibley tells a certain sitting president that “a number is all you are to me.” But as Whibley explains, he’s not so much expressing his anger at the current administration—he’s more expressing his frustration with a world that has gotten so messed up that even a band like Sum 41 is compelled to write political songs. “The world does seem in disarray, but I’ve always used music as an escape from that,” Whibley says. “I’ve always felt like, ‘I don’t want to talk about all this shit!’ But as I was writing the words to ‘45,’ it was the first moment where I thought: ‘Now this fuckin’ asshole is taking over my music? That’s not supposed to happen!’ So I tried to change the words and go somewhere else, and now the song just feels like I could be talking about anybody. If it wasn’t called ‘45,’ maybe you wouldn’t even know who it’s about.” More than providing a window into Whibley’s current state of mind, *Order in Decline* is also a testament to Sum 41’s ongoing evolution and maturation. Twenty years after they signed their first record deal, the band barely resembles the fun-lovin’ brats responsible for Warped Tour generation classics like “Fat Lip” and “In Too Deep.” They continue to stretch their musical parameters in unexpected directions: “Catching Fire”—a song Whibley claims has been bouncing around his head for 10 years—is a stirring breakup ballad from the U2/Coldplay school of arm-swaying arena anthems. And with the acoustic-to-symphonic serenade “Never There,” Sum 41 effectively comes up with its own “Wonderwall.” But while such changes of pace may take some old-school fans by surprise, no one is more surprised by their appearance here than Whibley himself. “I didn’t write ‘Never There’ for this album,” he reveals. “I didn’t think that would ever see the light of day. I played it for our manager and said, ‘I’ve got this song, I don’t know what to do with it—do you know anyone we could give this to?’ And he was like, ‘Why would we give this away?’ I said, ‘Well, it doesn’t sound like a Sum 41 song to me, especially for this record, which is much heavier—this song is not a heavy song.’ And he said, ‘This *is* a heavy song, just in a completely different way.’”
SWMRS’ CV includes a 20-minute soundtrack to a Saint Laurent runway show in Paris *and* a goal celebration theme for two-time MLS title winners the San Jose Earthquakes; it’s clear the Oakland punk-pop band (featuring drummer Joey Armstrong, son of Billie Joe) appeals to a wide constituency—fashionistas and soccer supporters included. For their second album, *Berkeley’s On Fire*, the quartet opens the floodgates of sound. Tracks like “Trashbag Baby,” “Too Much Coffee,” and “Lose Lose Lose” ring with cool ’80s post-punk and new wave. “April in Houston” and “Hellboy” show glimmers of their raucous punk-pop past. And while the band members are still in their early twenties, they address tough topics like gentrification and media distortion. The title track references the 2017 Berkeley protests following a gathering of white nationalists: “Too many motherfuckers confusing this freedom of speech with swastikas, like Milo Yiannopoulos.”
Sometimes an album just names itself. “We were in the studio and reading the local news in Nashville,” The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “They executed the first prisoner in 16 years in Nashville the week we were recording. They asked for his final words and he said, ‘Let’s rock.’” There isn’t a lot of overthinking on The Black Keys’ first new record in five years. It’s the sound of the duo kicking out the jams in Nashville. Topics of escape and confusion are seeded in Auerbach’s dueling guitar overlays and propped up by Patrick Carney’s steady hands. Songs recall the joy of traveling up and down a transistor radio dial in the ’70s; there are nods to Stealers Wheel (“Sit Around and Miss You”) and The Amboy Dukes (“Every Little Thing”), as well as dips into glam and Texas boogie-woogie. Carney digs for “When the Levee Breaks” bedrock on “Go.” Then “Lo/Hi,” “Fire Walk With Me,” and “Get Yourself Together” are classic Black Keys, complete with strutting backbeat and Leisa Hans and Ashley Wilcoxson’s backup vocals, which are so key to their chemistry and continuity.
“It was baby steps—we didn’t say, hey, we’re going to make an album or go on tour,” The Raconteurs co-frontman Jack White explains to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “We just thought, let’s get together and record a couple of songs and see how that goes.” The time felt right for White and Brendan Benson to reconnect following a series of jam sessions with drummer Patrick Keeler, something they hadn’t done in over a decade due to their commitments to other projects. During that time, White pursued his solo career and formed The Dead Weather with Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence, all while running Third Man Records; Benson launched his own record label and released 2012’s *What Kind of World* and 2013’s *You Were Right*. Though their third album touches on the power-pop stomp of *Broken Boy Soldiers* and the country-folk of *Consolers of the Lonely*, the band now seems to have one mission in mind: Play some good ol’ fashioned classic rock that pays homage to their musical roots. White and Benson are both based in Nashville now, but their native Michigan is never far from their hearts. “Well, I’m Detroit born and raised/But these days, I’m living with another,” White and Benson harmonize on the single “Bored and Razed.” The guitars nod to pioneering Michigan bands like Grand Funk Railroad and The Amboy Dukes, while the scuzzy, frantic Stooges-like garage rock of “Don’t Bother Me” features White, unsurprisingly, imploring you to put down your damn phone. But *Help Us Stranger* is not just strut and swagger: From reflective folk rock (“Only Child”) and piano balladry (“Shine the Light on Me”) to heartbreaking blues (“Now That You’re Gone”), White and Benson keep it fresh with their engaging, mood-shifting songwriting. They sound like they’re genuinely having fun, happy that they’re still together after all these years. “We played a show in London with The Strokes, and what struck me was, \'Ah, it’s so great to see any band have the original members they started with even three years later, let alone 15, 20 years later,\'” says White. “Everyone’s for the same goal of trying to make some sort of music happen that didn’t exist before. But the proof is, those same people are in the room together.”
On album seven, Volbeat solidifies their long-term infatuation with rockabilly and hard rock. The Copenhagen quartet elevates their ambitions—and volume levels–with guests ranging from vocalist Mia Maja and Clutch’s Neil Fallon to saxophonist Doug Corcoran, pianist Raynier Jacob Jacildo, and the Harlem Gospel Choir. “Pelvis on Fire” is what Volbeat does so well, all greaser swagger with Marshall stacks. “Die to Live” has a sustained over-the-top energy that equally recalls Jerry Lee Lewis and The Misfits. “The Everlasting” skews toward the metal edge, and “Cheapside Sloggers” features a killer solo from Exodus/Slayer guitarist Gary Holt. But for all the good times on *Rewind, Replay, Rebound*, the quartet can also examine deeper subjects like innocence (“When We Were Kids”) and mortality (“Last Day Under the Sun”), offering perspective as well as perspiration. The deluxe version includes five demos and three bonus tracks.
