Premieres
Listen to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Viking-centric Main Theme
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will undoubtedly be one of the top titles of the holiday season this year, and now gamers can hear the song that will soundtrack the series’ first journey into Nordic territory. Featuring metal drummer-turned-Nordic folk frontman Einar Selvik (who’s also appeared alongside his music on History Channel’s Vikings), the track serves as both a seemingly accurate and appropriate representation of 9th-century Viking culture as well as a launching point to excite players for their action-packed adventure. Created by veteran film and video game composers Sarah Schachner and Jesper Kyd, the theme carries the weight of protagonist Eivor’s personal conflicts and overarching journey throughout the game. “We wanted the main theme to simultan...
Fountains of Wayne’s Jody Porter Shares New Single, Announces Album
While Fountains of Wayne’s future may be put on hold, the band’s former lead guitarist is going solo…kind of. Jody Porter is teaming up with his new backing band, the Berlin Waltz, for their latest single “Sunsick Moon” and new album, Waterways, out this fall. The LP, which Porter recorded in London, features his former Fountains of Wayne bandmate Brian Young on drums. The three-minute track showcases Porter’s distorted shredding abilities and lead vocals. In a statement, he detailed how the track evolved over time. “‘Sunsick Moon’ was birthed on the North Sea,” he said. “It was meant to be an instrumental, but then the lyrics started to flow.” This isn’t the only time Porter and Young have recently shared space on wax. Earlier this year, after Fountains of Wayne’s ...
Protomartyr Release New Video for “June 21″
The veteran rockers in Protomartyr released their fifth album, Ultimate Success Today (Domino), last week — and now they’ve got a brand new music video to go alongside with it. After teasing the album with a few singles, the first post-release video is for the album’s fifth track, “June 21.” With the rollercoaster of an album tackling heavy personal and societal themes, “June 21″ and its video have a firm focus on the topic of nostalgia and looking back on lighter days — or at least some different aspects of them. “[It’s about] nostalgia and regret under the dwindling shade,” said singer, Joe Casey. “For instance, there’s a translated lyric from Alexander Robotnick’s song ‘Problèmes d’Amour’ [‘it’s on ice but it won’t keep’]. A 12-inch remix of that song was so popular in De...
MAITA Covers Elliott Smith’s ‘Coming Up Roses’
Elliott Smith’s self-titled debut album will be reissued for its 25th anniversary in August. And with it, comes not only a remastered version and a previously unreleased live album, but an imaginative cover from Portland’s MAITA. The DIY-inspired act, which dropped their debut album in April, has a soothing sound that mirrors that of Smith, and gives the track some additional punchy harmonies toward the end. With Maria Maita-Keppeler on vocals, MAITA gives fans of Smith — who lived in Portland for much of his life — something to be proud of. “Elliott Smith’s music has been a part of both [guitarist] Matthew [Zeltzer]’s and my life for years — our connection to Elliott’s music was one of the first musical commonalities we found, and continues to be a touchstone,” she says of the releas...
Josh Klinghoffer’s Latest Pluralone Single Features Flea and Jack Irons
Josh Klinghoffer has remained extremely busy since he was dismissed from the Red Hot Chili Peppers last December. He’s hunkered down in his Los Angeles area home and threw himself into creating new music, which is something he told us he would do, but certainly didn’t expect to happen before the coronavirus pandemic struck. In the guise of Pluralone, his solo project, Klinghoffer was slated to open for Pearl Jam on the first leg of their Gigaton tour before that got pushed (though he did recently perform with them on “Dance of the Clairvoyants” on the All in WA special). He’s shared a few covers from quarantine, but now, he’s ready to unveil some new original music. Enlisting former Red Hot Chili Peppers bandmate Flea and ex-Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons, Klinghoffer has share...
Acceptance Premieres Video for First New Song in 3 Years & Announces Q&A on SPIN’s Untitled Twitch Stream
Seattle’s favorite 2000s emo pop-rockers returned a couple of weeks ago with their first track since 2017’s comeback record Colliding by Design, and now they’ve put out a brand new video to go with it. Having recently hit the 15th anniversary of their seminal debut, Phantoms, Acceptance is back in full force with a new 4-song EP, Wild, releasing on July 24 (Tooth & Nail Records) and rumors of a full album coming later this year. A handful of years removed from the decade-long hiatus that almost immediately followed Phantoms, Acceptance becoming more consistent both on the road and in the studio has been a welcome change for the band’s dedicated following. “The lyrics in ‘Cold Air’ present a snapshot of a community that is being broken apart by prejudice, indignation...
Incubus Share New Live Version of ‘Agoraphobia’
Nearly 16 years after writing and recording “Agoraphobia,” Incubus is bringing new meaning to “I wanna stay inside” with a quarantine-style live video for the song. The footage from the updated version of the song sees singer Brandon Boyd and guitarist Mike Einziger perform acoustically as black-and-white visuals of Jacques Drouin’s 1975 animation “Mindscape” flash on the screen. The group originally penned the track in a “post 9/11 world,” Boyd says, and singing it now has the same uncomfortable familiarity. “I was lamenting reading the daily news feeds and seeing where things were heading and feeling more and more called to just give in to a sense of hopelessness and just stay inside for the rest of my life,” Boyd says of the song. “By the end of the song I wake up to...
Dead Posey Release New Video for “Parasite” from New EP, Malfunction
While many bands have struggled with communication and teamwork throughout the COVID-19 quarantine, that’s not really an issue for Dead Posey. The Los Angeles-based duo just released their new EP, Malfunction (Sumerian Records/Position Music), on Friday and are already back with a brand new video for “Parasite,” the second track on the release. The industrial-style production and skull-heavy imagery give an appropriately dark tone for these ominous times, but perhaps the most fitting facet of the entire release is how the married couple had to improvise to direct and edit their own video when the chaos known as 2020 swept away their original plans for something a little more ornate. “We had shot some footage with the idea of it being loosely used as a performance video surrounding the...
Tiana Major9 Shares Enchanting New Single ‘Lucky’
Tiana Major9’s magic touch isn’t a roll of the dice at all. London’s latest soul riser and the recent Motown signee proves on her latest single “Lucky,” which is out tonight, that the grooviness of her previous releases wasn’t luck… She hasn’t missed yet. The enchanting track, featuring Tiana dishing out melodies catchy enough to have a classroom of preschoolers singing along, channels the best of early ’00s R&B: crispy harmonies, a flex of percussion and a voice we’re glad made its way to the U.S. It will be on her forthcoming EP. “’Lucky’ is a song about feeling ‘lucky in love,’” Tiana says. “Things are very heavy right now for Black people everywhere — we’re grieving and experiencing trauma simultaneously. Although it was written before the double pandemic (COVID-19 and Lynchi...
Grant-Lee Phillips Shares ‘Straight to the Ground’ From Upcoming Album
Veteran singer/songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips will be returning with his first new album since 2018’s Widdershins. Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff, his 10th studio album, continues to build on his gentle songwriting that’s defined his career. Phillips has shared the video for “Straight to the Ground” from that album and is the second song to be shared from the upcoming 10-song collection, following “Lowest Low.” The song has a methodical build and the lyric video, which you can see below, is shot in black-and-white and features footage of a small town out west. [embedded content] “I tapped into my own youth to render a character whose small-town upbringing finds them feeling hemmed in and disillusioned. Imagining an idyllic vista out west, that all seems achingly out of re...
Coheed and Cambria’s Claudio Sanchez Reignites the Prize Fighter Inferno in Lockdown
Everyone’s handling this COVID-19 crisis differently. For the most part, Claudio Sanchez, the mastermind behind Coheed and Cambria, is trying to make the most of the lockdown, working on new material for his long-dormant solo alias, The Prize Fighter Inferno — in between excessively washing his hands and helping to homeschool his 5-year-old son, Atlas, of course. “I have had this project sitting around for a while, and the only time I ever really release stuff is when it doesn’t affect Coheed and Cambria,” Sanchez tells SPIN. “I feel a sense of guilt when I’m like, ‘Oh, I wanna go do this thing … I wanna go exercise my ego with a side project.’ It makes me feel horrible, so I never do it.” Now, with life at a standstill and the quarantine thwarting the writing sessions for Coheed’s fo...
Chris Jericho Forms ’80s KISS Cover Band Kuarantine
Chris Jericho was sitting at home in quarantine on April 11th like everyone else. He couldn’t wrestle (he’s one of AEW’s biggest attractions), and his band Fozzy wasn’t touring either. Then his pal Kent Slucher — Luke Bryan’s drummer — sent him a text with a drum part, and from there, things came together really quickly. “I said it sounds like KISS’ ‘No No No,’” Jericho told SPIN over the phone. “I asked him what he was doing and he said, ‘I’m just laying down some fun tracks with a friend of mine and we’re going to do a cover of the song.’ I asked him if they needed a singer and he said, ‘Absolutely.’ And that’s how it started. Calling themselves Kuarantine (get it?), Jericho and Slucher enlisted guitarist Joe McGinness and PJ Farley from hard rock band Trixter to fill out...
