Heartbreaking Bravery

No matter how many times 2015 seems like it’s going to inevitably taper off in terms of outstanding new material, it confronts and defies that notion with an almost extravagant flair. The start of this week’s proved to be no different, making room for strong new full-length efforts from Blank Realm, Widowspeak, August West, Woolen Men, and Findlay Brown. So Young, Dave Monks, Gardens & Villa, Pookie & the Poodlez, Air Waves, and Sharkmuffin injected life into the music video format while a variety of acts unveiled powerful new songs, including Clearance, Frankie Broyles, Slight, Zulus, Wavves, The Garden, Christian Scott (ft. Elena Pinderhughes), and Siouxsie Sioux returned after an eight year absence alongside composer Brian Reitzell with a Bond-ian torch song for the jaw-dropping series finale of Hannibal, one of the most artistically inclined shows to ever air on television.

While it was tempting to throw caution to the wind and completely subvert this site’s established pattern to analyze (and wax ecstatic about) Hannibal and its legacy, the focus of today’s post instead falls to the fiery re-emergence of a band that’s earned praise on this site before: OBN III’s. Embracing a very evident Thin Lizzy influence this time around, full stop, they’ve delivered a rough-hewn reminder of their considerable power. Easily one of the band’s most accessible songs to date, “Let The Music” is seemingly a meta showcase that underlines the band’s own songwriting approach. Even this coy, though, the band finds a moment of deeply impassioned confrontation in the repeated line of “What about my voice?” At first, it’s a question in earnest, and then it’s a surprised echo before it finally becomes a rhetorical rallying cry before it gives way to a guitar breakdown that leads into a searing solo.

Everything packaged together comes off as a unique showcase for a band that’s already earned a devoted following thanks to some relentless touring and an incredible discography. All of the band’s best qualities are in place and the band’s zeroed in on those attributes, maximizing them to startling effect. Grimy, honest, tongue-in-cheek, and unabashedly rock n’ roll, “Let The Music” is the latest in a string of loud victories for OBN III’s and bodes extremely well for the band’s forthcoming full-length, Worth A Lot of Money. A small handful of fairly astonishing tracks from the album have been revealed and with the release date now just a few weeks away, September 14’s going to be a date to remember.

Listen to “Let The Music” below and pre-order Worth A Lot of Money from 12XU ahead of its September 14 release date here.