Ultimate Classic Rock's Top 25 Rock Albums of 2024

“We made this record in two and a half weeks,” Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “People always go, ‘Whoa, you must\'ve been really nervous, you haven\'t made a Black Crowes record in a hundred years.’ We\'re in here to get it. We\'ve done everything that we\'ve done because it feels good.” The Black Crowes never slunk from excess, from the kind of glorious hyperbole that fortified the popular arrival of their anachronistic Southern rock strut at the exact moment grunge dominated the mainstream. There was, of course, the famous and relentless feud between Chris and Rich Robinson, respectively flamboyant and pensive brothers who evoked opposite sides of the same acid sheet. All of that jibed with records of extravagant indulgence—hour-long major-label escapades that declared freaks and priests belonged in the same congregation whether it was Saturday night or Sunday morning. The Black Crowes didn’t just want to sound rock ’n’ roll; they wanted to live its dichotomies, vainglories, and sagas, too. But after a 15-year stalemate that included an eight-year break without speaking, the Robinsons reconciled and have returned with an efficient and charged 37-minute album, *Happiness Bastards*, that posits the two have moved beyond mere rapprochement. These 10 songs alternately ferry the pomp, grit, sneer, and swagger that made The Black Crowes interesting nearly 35 years ago, without the theatrics that always suggested they were actually trying twice as hard. Opener “Bedside Manners” finds Chris strutting around Rich’s sharp little riff like some lost ’70s rock god, dismissing a wanton lover one last time. With the help of stylistic descendant Lainey Wilson, they glide across and through the acoustic beauty of “Wilted Rose” like The Doobie Brothers dosed on both gospel and doom. And “Flesh Wound”—one of the sharpest and most surprising songs in their entire catalog, somewhere between Tom Petty sparkle and J. Geils Band verve—is the sort of song you want playing as you hit the road, leaving a love affair that only ever let you down. In the context of The Black Crowes’ contentious past, it’s tempting to hear that and the other kiss-offs on *Happiness Bastards* as potential relics of a more fraught moment in the Family Robinson. Or when Chris sings “Tomorrow owes nothing to the past” early in the swaying closer “Kindred Friend,” a mea culpa for lost time, it’s easy to hear a fraternal apology. The Black Crowes, though, resonated the first time around not just because they supplied unabashed retro chic in spades but because they implied that classic rock done well had something timeless to offer. Arguably the least fussy and most focused record this long-wayward band has ever made, *Happiness Bastards* reinforces that idea and The Black Crowes’ place within it.

The White Stripes were nothing if not a formal exercise in exploring the possibilities of self-imposed limitation—in instrumentation, in color scheme, in verifiable biographical information. Since the duo’s dissolution in 2011, Jack White has continued playing with form (and color schemes), from the just-one-of-the-boys-in-the-band vibes of The Raconteurs to 2022’s sonically experimental *Fear of the Dawn* and its more restrained companion *Entering Heaven Alive*. Despite—or perhaps *to* spite—those who longed for a simpler, noisier, more monochromatic time, White tinkered away. The rollout for *No Name*, White’s sixth solo album, was characteristically mischievous: It first appeared as a white-label LP given away at Third Man Records before being posted online without song titles, sparking an excitement that felt fresh, largely because the sound did not. Meg White is not walking through that door anytime soon, but the 13 tracks here channel the unadorned, wild-eyed ferocity of the band that made him famous more efficiently and consistently than anything he’s done since. There’s plenty of swagger from top to bottom, but most of all there’s *hooks*: big, fat, noisy guitars played in the catchiest combinations possible. “That’s How I’m Feeling” may not relieve “Seven Nation Army” of its ubiquity anytime soon, but it is a ready-made capital-A anthem with a euphoric jump-scare chorus that sticks on first listen and doesn’t get unstuck. “Bless Yourself,” “Tonight (Was a Long Time Ago),” and “Number One With a Bullet” are just as infectious, while “Bombing Out” may be the fastest, heaviest thing White has ever put out in any of his many guises. The casualness of it all is a flex—as meticulous and exacting as White can be, *No Name*’s modest arrival is a reminder of how easily he could have kept churning out earworm White Stripes songs. Good for him that he didn’t want to; good for us that he does now.

The Smile, a trio featuring Radiohead prime movers Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood along with ex-Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, sounds more like a proper band than a side project on their second album. Sure, they’re a proper band that unavoidably sounds a *lot* like Radiohead, but with some notable distinctions—much leaner arrangements, bass parts by Greenwood and Yorke with a very different character from what Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood might have laid down, and a formal fixation on conveying tension in their melodies and rhythms. Their debut, *A Light for Attracting Attention*, was full of tight, wrenching grooves and guitar parts that sounded as though the strings were coiling into knots. This time around they head in the opposite direction, loosening up to the point that the music often feels extremely light and airy. The guitar in the first half of “Bending Hectic” is so delicate and minimal that it sounds like it could get blown away with a slight breeze, while the warm and lightly jazzy “Friend of a Friend” feels like it’s helplessly pushed and pulled along by strong, unpredictable winds. The loping rhythm and twitchy riffs in “Read the Room” are surrounded by so much negative space that it sounds eerily hollow, like Yorke is singing through the skeletal remains of a ’70s metal song. There are some surprises along the way, too. A few songs veer into floaty lullaby sections, and more than half include orchestral tangents that recall Greenwood’s film score work for Paul Thomas Anderson and Jane Campion. The most unexpected moment comes at the climax of “Bending Hectic,” which bursts into heavy grunge guitar, stomping percussion, and soaring vocals. Most anyone would have assumed Yorke and Greenwood had abandoned this type of catharsis sometime during the Clinton administration, but as it turns out they were just waiting for the right time to deploy it.

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

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

The Black Keys have spent the past two decades carrying the banner of blues-rock revivalism into the present. The duo have sold more records than most pop stars and have proven, time and time again, that rock has always been here—if you were willing to look. The band, made up of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, emerged from Akron, Ohio, in the early aughts as a welcome counterbalance to what was monopolizing record shelf space at the time. The New York City alternative scene was thriving, with bands including The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, and Interpol dictating the sound coming out of venues, warehouses, and loft spaces up and down the East Coast. Auerbach and Carney, meanwhile, were crafting a sound that was more Mississippi Delta than Mercury Lounge. The duo’s shared love of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Thin Lizzy, and T. Rex formed the foundation of their lo-fi sound, and they spent the next two decades expanding their range, introducing elements of psychedelia and big-chorus anthems that made them festival-headlining mainstays. Now, The Black Keys are returning with album number 12, the aptly titled *Ohio Players*, a project that bubbles over with the energy of two dudes just here for a good time. “I think once we experienced success, it was like, ‘Let’s try to keep it going and not make the same record again,’” Carney tells ALT CTRL Radio’s Hanuman Welch. “But what happened during this process was the pandemic hits, and after a year of not seeing each other, we walk in the studio to start working on our next record, and something had just changed between us. It was like we finally became best friends; everything was enjoyable. Creatively, we were starting to kind of push things a little bit, but as soon as we finished \[2022 album\] *Dropout Boogie*, before it was even released, we started working on this record. The intention was to call our friends to come in and work with us.” Past collaborations have netted The Black Keys the sort of accolades other bands work their entire careers hoping to achieve. The duo’s *El Camino*, co-produced by Danger Mouse, won Grammys for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Performance in 2013. But *Ohio Players* is the first time the band has truly collaborated in the sense of sharing writing and performing duties. And then they brought on some friends. The album’s first single, “Beautiful People (Stay High),” was co-written by Beck and Dan the Automator, and is the result of supporting Beck on tour 20 years ago after meeting him at a 2003 *SNL* after-party. “I just busted out this promo CD,” Carney remembers. “And I was like, ‘This is my band.’ And two weeks later, Beck reached out and took us on tour. So, this track is a result of this relationship and fandom that I have for Beck. We’ve been talking about making music off and on for years, and right when we finished our last record, we’re like, ‘Get down, it’s time.’” The Black Keys managed to enlist another generational talent for the project: Oasis’ Noel Gallagher. “\[Collaboration\] can always fall flat on its face,” says Carney. “And so, we basically spent 80 grand running the gamble of, ‘This could not work,’ because we didn\'t have a song. So, we booked the smallest, tiniest studio in London, really, Toe Rag—it’s where The White Stripes did *Elephant*. It was, like, zero frills. We showed up, and Noel was there—a guy we’ve briefly met a couple of times, and a legend—and we’re now going to write a song from scratch. Within two hours, we had it, and within another two hours, we had the take. Noel was like, ‘I’ve never actually done this before.’” Two decades in, the novelty of working with people whose music they love still hasn’t worn off. “The thing I’m most proud of, as a fan of music, is to have gotten in the studio with people who I’m a fan of and make something I’m proud of and that they’re proud of,” adds Carney. “It just is a really amazing feeling.”

Given that it evolved from an urge to do something—anything—creative during the pandemic, The Smile has turned out to be one of the most liberating and fruitful projects of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s latter-day career. *Cutouts* is the third record in little more than two years from the trio, which also includes Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, and follows just 10 months after their captivating second album *Wall of Eyes*. Its creation mirrors the cross-pollination that occurred between a pair of classic Radiohead albums. In much the same way that 2000’s *Kid A* and 2001’s *Amnesiac* were made during the same recording sessions but inhabited different sonic spaces and textures, *Cutouts* contains songs committed to tape at the same time as *Wall of Eyes* in Oxford and London’s Abbey Road Studios with producer Sam Petts-Davies. Whereas *Wall of Eyes* mesmerized with a tightly wound, autumnal restraint, there’s an unfurling expanse at work on *Cutouts*’ 10 tracks. With its cascading riffs, soulful piano chords, and yearning vocals, “Eyes & Mouth” is the epic center around which everything else revolves. The record never settles in one spot for too long: “Instant Psalm,” featuring beatific strings from the London Contemporary Orchestra, is a hazy folk gem, and “The Slip” is a synth-laden banger, while the frantic punk-funk grooves of “Zero Sum” sound like they’re trying to wriggle out of themselves. It remains to be seen whether anything can be read into the trio clearing the decks with this collection of songs, some of which were played live around the time of their 2022 debut *A Light for Attracting Attention* (or in some cases, even deeper into the past—the title of contemplative closer “Bodies Laughing” can be traced back to Radiohead rehearsals in the mid-2000s). But if *Cutouts* is the end of an era for The Smile, it caps off a prolific, potent period for Yorke, Greenwood, and Skinner.

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

For the follow-up to their 2018 Grammy-winning *Electric Messiah*, stoner-metal trio High on Fire enlisted Big Business’ Coady Willis to replace longtime drummer Des Kensel. “Coady is one of our favorite drummers, and it just seemed like it would make sense musically,” bassist Jeff Matz tells Apple Music. “Once we started jamming with him, it became apparent that it was going to work out really well. He has his own style, but he understands the High on Fire aesthetic.” Despite winning the Grammy for Best Metal Performance for their last album, High on Fire felt no pressure in writing *Cometh the Storm* with a new member. “I don’t really think like that,” vocalist/guitarist Matt Pike says. “It was nice to be appreciated by our peers and such, but we didn’t really get to take full advantage of it because the world shut down not long after we won. I think we got exposed to a lot of people who hadn’t heard us prior to that, but that’s probably it. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be weird to win another one?” Below, Pike and Matz discuss each track on *Cometh the Storm*. **“Lambsbread”** Pike: “Well, I always have a song about weed. It’s basically a description of a bong hit working in a higher mental element, like what pot does to a meditative state, I guess. I don’t know how to word that correctly, but that’s just what pot does to you.” Matz: “The music for the chorus has been kicking around since probably 2010, and it reflects my obsession with Middle Eastern folk music, so we added some acoustic baglama to that part. The intro and outro just popped into my head when I was driving around, so I scat-sang it into my phone. It’s so Beavis and Butt-Head.” **“Burning Down”** Pike: “That’s more of a serious one, and it’s a tiny bit political. I’m calling out people like the World Economic Forum and the billionaires who fly around in jets and tell us if we give them a billion more dollars, they’re going to fucking fix the world for us. Who the fuck are these people?” Matz: “Musically, that was one that Matt and Coady were working on when I arrived at practice one day. That riff’s got old-school High on Fire vibes. It definitely harkens back to the early albums, but it’s got some really interesting little timing changes.” **“Trismegistus”** Pike: “The title means ‘thrice great,’ which comes from Hermes, who I always thought was an interesting character in mythology because he combined the wisdom of the material and the spiritual worlds. The music sounds kind of Egyptian, so in the lyrics, I’m talking about Osiris and Duat and Anubis. I’ve always been into esoteric mythology, but I’ve never really done one on Egypt.” Matz: “The verse riff came from when I was jamming with Coady down in LA. It reminded me of Lucifer’s Friend or something, like a weird classic-rock riff, but I tried to make it a little more like Voivod with some discordant intervals. The chorus uses a Middle Eastern scale, so I think that’s what set Matt off in that Egyptian lyrical direction.” **“Cometh the Storm”** Pike: “This is basically about nuclear war and how foolish it is. It’s kind of an elaboration of ‘Burning Down,’ how we’re just starting wars and talking about nuclear war like it’s normal.” Matz: “The track started out of a little thing I started playing at practice, just tapping on the bass, and Matt just started coming up with a vocal right on the spot. I really like the vocal melody, and it’s probably my favorite vocal performance on the whole album.” **“Karanlık Yol”** Matz: “I’ve been studying Turkish folk music pretty intensely since just before the pandemic. I’ve been studying the Turkish folk lute, the baglama, and just learning how to play different folk tunes and different styles with different teachers in Türkiye and the Philippines. So, I basically wanted to try to write something in the style of a Turkish folk dance because I think those types of sounds blend really well with the particular kind of heavy music that we play.” **“Sol’s Golden Curse”** Pike: “That’s the first song I wrote with Coady when I flew down to LA so we could feel each other out. I took something out of our riff vault, which is just hours and hours of music that me and Jeff have compiled over the years, and started working on it with Coady. Lyrically, it has more weird, esoteric shit about the Sethians and Abraxas.” **“The Beating”** Pike: “That’s our D-beat song. I’ve always been into the martial arts world, especially MMA and boxing, but I don’t do too many songs about it. This one’s pretty much about ring fighting. It seemed to take the right shape. It’s a ripper and definitely one of the faster-paced ones on the album. And I’ve got to put a \[Jeff\] Hanneman solo on every album, so this is the song.” **“Tough Guy”** Pike: “We’ve played with many hardcore bands in the past, so we were being smart-asses and wrote this hardcore breakdown about 10 years ago. It turned out really good, even though we were just joking around. But it’s got more of a metal mentality to it, just fighting and moshing, but it’s also about rebuilding our band from scratch. It’s truly violent sounding, so I went with that theme for the lyrics.” **“Lightning Beard”** Pike: “The title was kind of an inside joke between me and Jeff. I took this picture of him when he was posing all crazy with his bass, and I had this camera app, so I put all these lightning bolts all up in his beard and on his fretboard. We called it ‘Lightning Beard,’ which just sounded cool. But the song is about my El Camino. During COVID, I got it going really fast and was doing doughnuts in front of all the street racers, and they were cheering me on, so I made lyrics out of that.” Matz: “That’s another ripper that we came up with at practice. It’s got a pretty crazy freak-out section during the solo where the bass just completely goes nuts. It’s pretty fun.” **“Hunting Shadows”** Pike: “That one has some deep lyrics to me. I was just having a hard time with depression and my alcohol recovery and all sorts of stuff. I wrote that song not thinking about it, but really, I was trying to heal myself. I ate a bag of shrooms to try to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. I thought I was singing those lyrics to someone else, but I was singing them to myself, so I had this crazy conundrum. But it’s about self-reflection.” Matz: “Musically, that one’s really interesting. It’s got more of a positive, hopeful energy to it that’s definitely a little bit different for us.” **“Darker Fleece”** Pike: “Once we started writing the new record, I went over to Jeff’s to put some ideas together. I had this riff, but it was so long and complicated. Then we made it more complicated by adding subdivisions. It’s almost a lesson in timing, how you can cut up a whole note into quarter notes and 32nd notes. Lyrically, it’s just about life and war—it’s very much a war march. I’m part Scottish, and Coady’s dad plays the bagpipes, so I put a bagpipe-style guitar solo on it.” Matz: The direction that Coady took with the drums on this song really changed the character of it and made it a lot heavier and beefier sounding. It’s definitely one of my favorites on the album. With the intro and outro, it seemed like the perfect closer track.”