Metal Edge Presents
Highlights
ASAVA MADE A DETECTIVE SHOW. THEN THEY HAD TO SCORE IT.
Photo: Shelly Duncan "Saveyourself," out today, is the latest single from Mahjong, the Canton, Ohio band's forthcoming album. It's also the newest episode of How Long Is Forever?, the serialized detective saga ASAVA has been threading through its videos since 2025's self-released Mantras. Every previous chapter, including "Leigh" and "Rue," started the usual way: finish the song, then shoot the video. This time the band cut the episode first, went looking through their catalog for something that matched its tone, and came up empty. "So we wrote one for it," frontman Liam Brocious says. "Essentially our first score we made for an episode." The episode plays like a self-contained short film. Two detectives (played by members of the band) grind through a missing-person case with the flat procedural rhythm of a network crime drama — until the killer surfaces, and the episode takes off running. The chase ends at another house entirely, one that abandons the network-TV palette for Seven territory — with a few frames of infrared thrown in, a blink-and-miss-it nod to The Silence of the Lambs. The song follows the episode's rhythm. It opens in eerie, ambient electronics, closer to the weightless dread of Nine Inch Nails' "A Warm Place" than anything with a breakdown, and hangs there just long enough for the investigation to settle into routine. When the song tears open, you already know why. Writing to a locked picture, Brocious says, meant serving two masters: the song had to hit its cues, but it also had to survive on its own as "a great, relistenable rock song in its own right." Getting there took "a lot of time and iterations." ASAVA is Brocious, bassist Greg Cochran, drummer Spencer Cindia, and guitarist Zach Rusher. Mahjong arrives August 28.
READER POLL: THE 5 BEST ALICE IN CHAINS SONGS OF ALL TIME
Metal Edge readers rank the five greatest Alice in Chains songs of all time.
TOM MORELLO ANNOUNCES FIRST SOLO ROCK ALBUM 'EVERYONE GETS EVERYTHING THEY WANT,' SHARES NEW SINGLE "DATE NIGHT"
Photo: Danny Clinch Tom Morello has spent three decades turning a guitar into a weapon. On September 25th, he'll aim it again with Everyone Gets Everything They Want, his first full-length solo rock record, out via Mom + Pop Music. The album finds the Rage Against the Machine architect swinging at fascism, anti-immigrant hysteria, and a world that keeps handing him fresh material. The lead single, "Date Night," out today, digs into one of World War II's most astonishing true stories: Dutch sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen and their friend Hannie Schaft, teenage girls who spied, sabotaged rail lines, smuggled weapons, ferried Jewish children to safety — and lured Nazi officers into the woods on phony dates, where the evening ended with a bullet. Schaft was eventually captured, tortured, and executed. She gave up no one. "I make anti-racist songs for anti-racists. I make anti-fascist songs for anti-fascists. And I make anti-Nazi songs for anti-Nazis," Morello says. "'Date Night' is really a 'which side are you on?' song. If any of that offends you, do the math. Oh, and Roman Morello wrote the killer riff in this tune." About that. Roman Morello, Tom's teenage son, has been detonating jaws on tour with his father for three years and shares writing credits on five of the album's tracks, supplying riffs heavy enough to make dad's day job look hereditary. The guest list runs deep elsewhere too: System of a Down's Serj Tankian, Belfast agitators Kneecap, and Beartooth all show up, while production duties rotate among Tyler Smyth, Carl Restivo, Zakk Cervini, Dan Carey, and Sam Nelson Harris. Tankian and Roman both appear on the previously released "Adjourn It," a broadside against the rising tide of racism and anti-immigrant bigotry. Its video splices in footage from Salt of the Earth, the blacklisted 1954 labor drama, drawing a straight line from mid-century resistance to the present moment — the kind of homework assignment only Morello would sneak into a rock video. The man himself remains in perpetual motion. He just wrapped another stretch with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on the "Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour," tore through Newport Folk Festival last weekend, and hits Louder Than Life in Louisville on September 19th. Then comes the main event: the sold-out Power To The People Festival, October 3rd at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. Curated by Morello as a celebration of peace, justice, solidarity, and community action, the one-day bill reads like a fantasy draft of the righteous: Foo Fighters, Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, Killer Mike, Brittany Howard, Dropkick Murphys, Serj Tankian, The Linda Lindas, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, a Shepard Fairey DJ set, and Jack Black fronting a kid supergroup featuring Roman Morello, Revel Ian, Yoyoka Soma, and Hugo Weiss. We've teamed up with Tom Morello to bring you an exclusive pressing of Everyone Gets Everything They Want: red-and-black stripe vinyl, limited to just 300 copies and up for pre-order now.
