British hard-rockers The Cult this weekend are releasing their first new song in three years — a three-and-a-half minute track called “Everyman and Woman Is a Star” — via iTunes as a taste of a new four-song “capsule” due out this fall.
Prodcued by Chris Goss (Queens of the Stone Age), the single — which marks the first new studio material from Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy since 2007’s Born Into This — officially is due out Sunday as a two-week iTunes exclusive, although it appears the online music retailer already is selling the track.
Astbury, in a news release announcing the single, calls the new Cult recordings “a mixture of violent guitars, emotive vocal performances with high melody and driving beats. Textured metaphysical rock music for the contemporary music head.”
The song will be the first taste of a forthcoming four-song “capsule,” a new format the band — in the midst of another European leg of its Love Live Tour — says is “a collection of not just new music, but film, art and fashion” that will “span across multiple media formats including vinyl, digital, USB, CD and DVD.”
Sounds like a fancy name for an EP, although don’t get Astbury started on that. In a recent interview, the frontman took issue with that designation: “Check your calendar. It’s 2010. mate. ‘EP’ is old technology that stands for ‘elongated play.’ That’s dated. So we’re not releasing an EP. We’re releasing a ‘capsule.'”
In other Astbury news, the singer will release an old-fashioned EP with Japanese noise-rock act Boris called BXI on Aug. 17. That four-track disc will feature three Astbury-sung originals, plus Boris, sans Astbury, covering The Cult’s “Rain.”
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS:
- The Cult takes its Love Live Tour back to Europe, adds Arizona festival date
- The Cult’s ‘Love’ to be reissued in deluxe 4-disc ‘Omnibus’ box set
- The Cult to perform 1985’s ‘Love’ on upcoming world tour
