New Music Friday: 5 Songs You Need Hear This Week (10/10)

A very happy New Music Friday to you, friends.

This is, honestly, a great week for new music, and with a plethora of songs to choose from, narrowing it down to just five was tough. However, I feel good about these selections, and I hope you will too!

“Broken and Blind” – Black Label Society

Ol’ Zakk Wylde and the BLS boys are back with a new song,” Broken and Blind,” and it’s exactly the kind of bluesy heavy metal we’ve all come to know and love from the legendary band.

In maybe the absolute best press comment on a song I have ever heard, Wylde quipped: “What’s going on gang? This is Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society. This is a new song called Broken and Blind. The song is about peanut butter and chocolate and what happens when you don’t have any of it. My soul is broken and I’m blind with rage if I don’t have any peanut butter and chocolate, so there you go, it’s a new song called Broken and Blind. Thank you, have a great day.”

“Holy Roller” – The Format

This is another one of those situations where I’m not going to get into all the lore, but suffice to say, The Format is one of those “band that launched a 1000 bands” kind of bands.

It’s been more than 15 years since the band members went their separate ways, though they’ve periodically dropped music over the past decade. Now, they’re back with “Holy Roller,” a callback to the early 2000s indie garage rock days that many of us (Millennials) so deeply glamorize.

“Wrong One” – Gideon

Here’s what I love about Gideon… and I’ve been following these dudes since pretty much the beginning… but in the last several years, they have sort of adopted the approach of, like, “what if Pantera’s Great Southern Trendkill was a whole band?” And I fuck with it so hard.

This new track, “Wrong One,” is as pummeling as you think it is. It’s like a musical stampede, or being crushed to death by a rusty John Deere combine harvester. It’s a roadhouse beatdown you should have seen coming.

“Sick Sad World” – Bob Vylan

Bob Vylan has been steeped in controversy over the last several months, stemming from their unabashed support of Palestine, and this week the punk-rap duo dropped their third single of the year, “Sick Sad World.”

In addition to being a song with conviction, it’s catchy as hell, and you’ll want to play it on repeat. Get to know it before they head out on tour.

“Third Shot” – Astronoid

Massachusetts’s own progressive metal masters, Astronoid, have announced a brand new album, Stargod, which they are heralding with a brand new single, “Third Shot.”

The track is fast-paced and guitar-driven, full of high-end melody and clearly inspired by equal parts ’80s rock and 2000s post-prog. It’ll unlock something in you.