VII: Strum und Drang is easily the most anticipated metal album of the year. Sure, the big four bands could have albums out this year as well, but no one in any of those bands were thrown in prison in Prague. The first song we’ve heard from the album, “Still Remains,” was directly informed by Blythe’s stay, and it kicked major amounts of ass.

Today via Rolling Stone, the band unveiled a second song, “512,” and it’s even better. It’s a signature LoG song, and its title refers not to the area code of Austin, but his cell number. He opened up to Rolling Stone about the song:

 

Much of Blythe’s time in lockup – which he also chronicled in his upcoming memoir Dark Days – was spent in a dark, unsettling basement dungeon. The guards placed the singer there, he says, so they could monitor him for depression. “They stick you in the worst, dimmest, darkest place in the prison,” he says. “I couldn’t even see the sun to tell what part of the day it was. It was just steadily lessening levels of gloom.”

Those thoughts, he says, inspired the “512” lyrics, “The time is slipping by no peace in sight/But the teeth of time still hold their bite.” It’s a metaphor for the one hour a day he was able to see a clock.

“I was in my cell 23 hours a day,” Blythe says. “One hour a day, I would go to this little area where we would walk and, on the way out, I could see this clock that was above the courtyard. I’d check the time as I walked in and out to make sure time was still moving. I had no watch, no nothing. It’s a weird mental trip.”

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