Long-running Los Angeles punk icons Social Distortion today announced that their seventh album — Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, the band’s first in more than six years — will be released Jan. 18 on Epitaph Records and preceded by the release of first single “Machine Gun Blues” via iTunes on Nov. 9.
The 11-track album — Social D’s long-promised follow-up to 2004’s Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll — was recorded over several months earlier this year at a studio in Burbank, Calif., and marks the first record produced solely by frontman Mike Ness, who, after more than 30 years at the helm, remains the band’s sole original member.
According to Epitaph, the disc opens with an instrumental called “Road Zombie,” and also features a cover of the Hank Williams classic “Alone and Forsaken,” a “biker bar dance number” dubbed “Bakersfield” and “California (Hustle and Flow),” a song featuring backing gospel singers that Ness is calling his tribute to Exile on Main St.-era Rolling Stones. (See live video of first single “Machine Gun Blues” below.)
Of the latter, Ness is quoted in today’s announcement of the album:
“It started out as pretty much a roots rocker, ended up morphing into kind of a tribute to the Stones. Also if you listen to the opening line it’s third person, and it’s talking about some kid with an attitude and dyed jet black hair and motorcycle boots and running around like he don’t care. It basically chronicles my career in music. Just how it started out, how rock n roll has been good to me… And I’d like to think I’ve been good to rock ‘n’ roll ya know.”
Social Distortion currently is in the midst of an extensive fall tour with cowpunk act Lucero that will continue through late November (see dates here). Epitaph reports the band is “expected to announce more dates in the coming weeks.”
See tracklist for Social D’s ‘Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes’ after the jump…
Tracklist: Social Distortion, Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes
1. “Road Zombie”
2. “California (Hustle and Flow)”
3. “Gimme the Sweet and Lowdown”
4. “Diamond in the Rough”
5. “Machine Gun Blues”
6. “Bakersfield”
7. “Far Side of Nowhere”
8. “Alone and Forsaken”
9. “Writing on the Wall”
10. “Can’t Take it with You”
11. “Still Alive”
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