ARTISTS CONTACT PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release November 11, 2021 VOLBEAT SHARE MUSIC VIDEO FOR “SHOTGUN BLUES” EIGHTH STUDIO ALBUM, SERVANT OF THE MIND, OUT DECEMBER 3rd VIA REPUBLIC RECORDS 2022 CO-HEADLINE ARENA TOUR WITH GHOST KICKS OFF ON JANURAY 25th Multi-platinum Danish band Volbeat share their new music video for “Shotgun Blues” off their forthcoming eighth studio album, Servant Of The Mind (Republic Records, December 3rd). Watch the music video, directed by Adam Rothlein and produced by by Ghost Atomic Pictures, here. The band recently also shared “Becoming,” the fourth song to be released from Servant Of The Mind. The song was preceeded by “Shotgun Blues” and the “double barrel” of Summer songs released this past June: “Wait A Minute My Girl” and “Dagen Før (feat. Stine Bramsen),” the former of which became the band’s ninth number one single on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. For Servant of the Mind, the band, which consists of Michael Poulsen (guitars/vocals), Jon Larsen (drums), Rob Caggiano (guitars) and Kaspar Boye Larsen (bass) took their signature heavy metal, psychobilly and punk ‘n’ roll sound up a notch while showcasing Poulsen’s keen ability for songwriting and storytelling. The new album will be available in standard CD, deluxe 2LP vinyl (in various limited-edition variants, full info below) and a deluxe digital edition. Pre-order the album here. “I wrote the whole album in three months,” recalls Poulsen, “I was in a good place and mood while at home, and had a captive audience of myself… There are a lot of Volbeat signatures in it. If you go back to the first record and compare it to where we are now, you can hear how the band has developed its style, while keeping the signature sound.” Other songs on the album weave intricate and fascinating tales. “The Sacred Stones” tells the story of “an earthly being who has committed himself to the dark side. He is on a mission, speaking to darker forces and fallen angels.” Meanwhile, “The Devil Rages On” looks at the idea of the devil taking human form. Album opener “Temple of Ekur” returns to the ancient themes explored in past songs such as “The Gates of Babylon,” while the epic album closer “Lasse’s Birgita” explores the story of the first witch burnings to occur in Sweden in 1471. Volbeat are two decades deep into a career that has found them sharing stages with genre legends like Black Sabbath, Metallica, Motorhead, Slipknot, Megadeth, Anthrax and more. They have racked up nearly three billion cumulative streams over the course of their career, notched a Best Metal Performance Grammy nomination for “Room 24 (feat. King Diamond)” from 2014’s acclaimed (and gold-selling) Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies, and have grabbed multiple Danish Music Awards. Not ones to rest on their laurels, their forthcoming album Servant of the Mind, which was written and recorded during the shutdown and quarantine necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is introspective but pulls no punches and is no less raucous or driving than their previous efforts. Volbeat have also announced their 2022 coheadlining arena tour with Ghost and special guests Twin Temple, coming to cities including Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix (full dates below). Tickets for the tour, co-Produced by Live Nation and Frank Productions, are available here. Limited VIP packages are also available at volbeat.dk. Since forming in 2001, Volbeat has gone from the clubs of Copenhagen to headlining stages around the world, including the famed Telia Parken stadium in Denmark (becoming the only domestic artist to ever sell out the venue). Over the course of seven record-breaking albums the band has picked up number one songs (including nine #1s on the US Mainstream Rock chart and counting, the most of any band based outside of North America), multi-platinum certifications, awards and accolades all over the planet. Their latest album, Rewind, Replay, Rebound, was released on August 2nd, 2019 and has spawned the hit singles “Last Day Under The Sun,” “Die To Live (feat. Neil Fallon)” and “Leviathan.” A live album featuring songs recorded during the subsequent world tour, Rewind, Replay, Rebound: Live in Deutschland, was released digitally on November 27th, 2020. They recently contributed a cover of “Don’t Tread on Me” to The Metallica Blacklist, with all proceeds from the track benefiting the All Within My Hands Foundation and the Børne Cancer Fonden of Denmark. SERVANT OF THE MIND Standard Edition Tracklisting: Temple of Ekur Wait A Minute My Girl The Sacred Stones Shotgun Blues The Devil Rages On Say No More Heaven’s Descent Dagen Før (feat. Stine Bramsen) The Passenger Step Into Light Becoming Mindlock Lasse’s Birgitta Deluxe 2 CD/2 LP and Digital Deluxe Bonus Tracks: Return To None (Wolfbrigade cover) Domino (The Cramps/Roy Orbison cover) Shotgun Blues (feat. Dave Matrise from Jungle Rot) Dagen Før (Michael Vox Version) Vinyl variants (North America) Standard 180g black vinyl 2LP Translucent Rust 2 LP – Volbeat.dk exclusive, limited to 550 Transparent Yellow 2 LP – Revolver Magazine exclusive, limited to 400 Mystery Color LP2 – indie retail exclusive, limited to 100 Vinyl variants (Europe) Standard 180g black vinyl 2 LP Crystal Clear 2 LP, volbeat.dk exclusive, limited to 2,000 Glow In The Dark 2 LP, EMP exclusive, limited to 2,000 Orange and Blue 2 LP, UMG exclusive, limited to 3,100 Danish Red and White 2 LP – only available in Denmark, limited to 2,000 GHOST/VOLBEAT COHEADLINE TOUR DATES: Tue, Jan 25, 2022 – Reno, NV – Reno Events Center Thu, Jan 27, 2022 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena Fri, Jan 28, 2022 – Nampa, ID – Ford Idaho Center Arena Sat, Jan 29, 2022 – Portland, OR – Veterans Memorial Coliseum Mon, Jan 31, 2022 – West Valley City, UT – Maverik Center Wed, Feb 02, 2022 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena Fri, Feb 04, 2022 – Lincoln, NE – Pinnacle Bank Arena Sat, Feb 05, 2022 – Minneapolis, MN – Target Center Mon, Feb 07, 2022 – Columbus, OH – Nationwide Arena Tue, Feb 08, 2022 – Hershey, PA – GIANT Center Thu, Feb 10, 2022 – Newark, NJ – Prudential Center Fri, Feb 11, 2022 – Worcester, MA – DCU Center Sat, Feb 12, 2022 – Camden, NJ – BB&T Pavilion Mon, Feb 14, 2022 – Pittsburgh, PA – Petersen Events Center Tue, Feb 15, 2022 – Toledo, OH – Huntington Center Wed, Feb 16, 2022 – Grand Rapids, MI – Van Andel Arena Fri, Feb 18, 2022 – Chicago, IL – Allstate Arena Sat, Feb 19, 2022 – Cincinnati, OH – Heritage Bank Center Sun, Feb 20, 2022 – Milwaukee, WI – Fiserv Forum Mon, Feb 21, 2022 – St. Louis, MO – Chaifetz Arena Wed, Feb 23, 2022 – Independence, MO – Cable Dahmer Arena Fri, Feb 25, 2022 – Houston, TX – Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land Sat, Feb 26, 2022 – Dallas, TX – Fair Park Coliseum Mon, Feb 28, 2022 – El Paso, TX – Don Haskins Center Tue, Mar 01, 2022 – Phoenix, AZ – Footprint Center Thu, Mar 03, 2022 – Anaheim, CA – Honda Center http://www.volbeat.dk/us/ http://www.facebook.com/volbeat http://www.twitter.com/volbeat https://www.instagram.com/volbeat/ http://www.youtube.com/user/VolbeatVEVO For more information, please contact Mary Moyer (mary@qprime.com) or Emilio Herce (emilio@qprime.com) at Q Prime 212.302.9790, or Taylor Vaughn (Taylor.Vaughn@umusic.com) at Universal Music. ARTIST BIO Volbeat are two decades deep into a career that has found them sharing stages with genre legends like Black Sabbath, Metallica, Motorhead, Slipknot, Megadeth, Anthrax and more. They have racked up nearly three billion cumulative streams over the course of their career, earned gold and platinum certifications all over the world, scored a Best Metal Performance Grammy nomination for “Room 24 (feat. King Diamond)” from 2014’s acclaimed (and U.S. gold-certified) Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies, and have won multiple Danish Music Awards. At this stage of the game, Volbeat don’t have anything to prove. Not. A. Damn. Thing. Even so, Servant of the Mind, the band’s eighth album, takes the signature heavy metal, psychobilly, punk ‘n’ roll sound on which they have built their reputation up a notch. The lead single “Wait A Minute My Girl,” which frontman Michael Poulsen drafted as a love song to his fiancé, swiftly cruised into the No. 1 position on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay chart and camped out there for three weeks. It became the band’s ninth No. 1 at the format, which is a record for the most chart-topping singles by a band not based in North America. The rest of the songs on the album weave intricate and fascinating tales. “The Sacred Stones” tells the story of “an earthly being who has committed himself to the dark side. He is on a mission, speaking to darker forces and fallen angels.” Elsewhere, “Shotgun Blues” explores the ghostly events he had recently experienced upon moving into a new home. “Every time you move into a house, you bring dead people with you. Weird stuff happens whenever I move into a [new] house… it’s very otherworldly.” Meanwhile, “The Devil Rages On” looks at the idea of the devil taking human form. Album opener “Temple of Ekur” returns to the ancient themes explored in past songs such as “The Gates of Babylon,” while the epic album closer “Lasse’s Birgita” explores the story of the first witch burnings to occur in Sweden in 1471. “Dagen Før” offers a brief respite from the ‘thunder and lightning’ and features guest vocals from Danish artist Stine Bramsen, who is renowned for her solo work as well as being a member of the band Alphabeat. The song, in the tradition of “The Garden’s Tale,” “Maybele I Hofteholder” and “For Evigt,” features both English and Danish lyrics, and marks the first commercially released song featuring Stine singing in her native Danish. “I wrote the whole album in three months,” recalls Poulsen, noting that the process of drafting a Volbeat album is normally two years in length. That’s due to things like constantly being on the road, family matters, and various other distractions that life throws one’s way. However, this time, he wrote at a decidedly quicker clip and completed the album faster than he did even in the earliest days of the band. “I was in a good place and mood while at home, and had a captive audience of myself,” he remembers. He found himself inspired and as a result, the music and lyrics just flowed out of him. Isolation and idle time can be either very good or very bad. For Servant of the Mind, Volbeat were forced to craft new material during the shutdown and quarantine necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While this is a scenario that every band dealt with and will certainly lead to asterisks next to many album titles of this time, Volbeat used the isolation brought on by social distancing and the idle time of being in lockdown to charge forward in their songwriting process. “Mother Nature told everyone to sit down and behave, and let’s see if we can get this pandemic monster out of the way,” the frontman recalls about the moment the band decided its next steps. “I thought, ‘what the fuck should I do? I should just write a new album.'” While he was semi-joking at first, he realized why not just do it while he had the time on his hands? The pandemic-dictated time off meant he wouldn’t be writing parts backstage while on tour or while holed up in a hotel or on the bus on off-dates. It afforded him time to pull out material and contextualize his own work. “Think of all the energy you use on the road and onstage,” he says. “You let all that energy out, come home and write a record. The live energy is gone, so it’s a different writing mode. This time, I thought, ‘Where do I burn off this fucking energy?’ I’ve been doing my morning run, biking, and training…” Poulsen also listened to interviews that he did about the band’s history for P3 Radio Denmark’s Hvem et Volbeat podcast and found inspiration came from internal and external sources. He burned off his excess energy by funneling it into the new material. “I started digging up old records again,” he shares. “I do that constantly, but listening to it after doing the podcast interviews, I felt like I was hearing them again for the first time. I felt like a kid again when I picked up the guitar and thought ‘let’s see what comes out of it.’ I couldn’t stop myself. The material was shot out of my body.” While he is keenly self-aware that the album is a product of the pandemic, Poulsen also realizes it’s completely and totally Volbeat in 2021. He admits, “I don’t think it would have sounded like this if not for the pandemic. There are a lot of Volbeat signatures in it. If you go back to the first record and [compare it] to where we are now, you can hear how the band has developed its style, while keeping the signature sound.” He is proud, understandably so, that the band has arrived at a place where its songwriting is unfuckwithable and it’s no longer just writing riffs and adding vocals. In fact, the band is at a place where you hear the opening chords and the distinct timbre of Poulsen’s voice and you know it’s Volbeat. Poulsen also feels that Servant of the Mind is a marked shift from 2019’s Rewind, Replay, Rebound, which was filled with stadium-sized hooks and choruses built upon a foundation of layers upon layers. The frontman reflects on that period as “draining but worthwhile” since “you need to go that route to see how far you can take it. I am extremely proud of it.” Having gotten that out of his system, he was able to approach Servant of the Mind in a more laid-back way. It’s a cleaner, crisper listening experience.Ultimately, Volbeat took a step back to take a giant leap forward. It’s not time to start thinking about what’s next. It’s time to indulge and immerse fully in Servant of the Mind. CONTACTS PUBLICITY - USA PUBLICITY - UK PUBLICITY - INTERNATIONAL BOOKING - USA BOOKING - INTERNATIONAL PHOTOS PHOTO BY: Ross Halfin PHOTO BY: Ross Halfin PHOTO BY: Ross Halfin ALBUM ARTWORK VIDEOS © Q Prime Management 2021. All Rights Reserved. Site by FADE AGENCY.