We’re still more than a month out from the release of The Mission’s The Brightest Light, but the band this week premiered the first full track off the record: “Drag,” a song Wayne Hussey describes as a “throwaway” blues rocker that was so fun to play that he ended up finding a place or it on the album.

Following the announcement this week that The Mission will release its new studio album The Brightest Light this September, the band today has shared a streaming sampler to let fans get short tastes of the album’s 11 songs. The new album is due out Sept. 17 in North America.

The Mission this September will release its new studio album The Brightest Light, an 11-song collection that marks the first time original band members Wayne Hussey, Simon Hinkler and Craig Adams have recorded together since the sessions for 1990’s Carved in Sand.

Eight months after first announcing plans for a new album, The Mission have convened in England to begin recording with producer David M. Allen — who has worked with The Cure, Depeche Mode, Wire and The Sisters of Mercy — and this week announced a new record deal and plans to release the album in September.

Wayne Hussey of The Mission today delivered an early holiday gift to fans in the form of a free download of his new recording of the classic “White Christmas,” writing, “I do hope you receive it in the spirit in which it is given and I hope it may raise a smile to your lips along with a glass of red.”

Next September, two years after reuniting to celebrate the band’s 25th anniversary, The Mission will tour North America for the first time in 11 years, playing a short run of 10 concerts set to take place mostly on the East and West coasts of the United States, with a lone Canadian date thrown in, the band announced today.