The Darkness have announced a new album, Easter Is Cancelled, due October 4 via Cooking Vinyl. In advance of the release, the band have shared its first single and video, “Rock and Roll Deserves to Die.” You can check it out above.
Easter Is Cancelled is touted as the Darkness’ first concept album, examining “the role of the musician in the barbarous culture of the world today, and their almost divine responsibility to challenge the establishment—something that most rock and roll artists seem to have given up on in favor of easy celebrity,” according to the band.
Said frontman Justin Hawkins, “This far-reaching communiqué examines man’s brutality to man, the dichotomies that we live within and the alternate realities that exist alongside our blinkered comprehension of the universe. The song cycle defines human existence through a parable—the slow lingering death and eventual glorious re-birth of rock and roll.
"In the search for perfect sonic equivalents of core truths, every musical instrument of the world has been explored and exploited to its fullest extent. Endless days in studios, museums, spiritual retreats and places of learning turned into endless months, as deeper and deeper layers of truth were uncovered, translated and set for eternity in sound. The result is a literally Biblical record, and those who have said that rock and roll is the Devil’s music should listen and understand that it is, in truth, the voice of God.”
Easter Is Cancelled, which Hawkins calls the “grandest statement any band has ever made,” will be released digitally and in “full technicolor physical glory” as a standard CD, digipak CD with bonus tracks, gatefold LP, limited edition color vinyl gatefold LP and cassette. The album is available for pre-order here.
You can check out the cover art and full track list below.
(Image credit: courtesy of Publicity Please)
Easter Is Cancelled track list:
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1. Rock and Roll Deserves to Die
2. How Can I Lose Your Love
3. Live ‘til I Die
4. Heart Explodes
5. Deck Chair
6. Easter Is Cancelled
7. Heavy Metal Lover
8. In Another Life
9. Choke On It
10. We Are The Guitar Men
Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.
