Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, we highlight the funky new single from Les Claypool and Sean Lennon’s project, The Claypool Lennon Delirium.
The Claypool Lennon Delirium — the project of Primus mastermind Les Claypool and Sean Lennon — dropped a banger for its latest single, unveiling a new concept album in the process.
“The Golden Egg of Empathy” is pretty much the best use of Claypool’s bass skills that you could hope for outside of a Primus context. He lays down a textbook slap-bass funk riff, and the group rides this fat break for most of the song, aside from a tasty bridge section of Les working the low E. Moreover, WILLOW (yes, Will Smith’s daughter) provides guest vocal hooks, which sit nicely in the appropriately bass-heavy mix.
Claypool called this project the most labor-intensive he’s ever been a part of, something he wouldn’t say if he didn’t mean it. This heater of song is the sonic fruit of that labor.
Honorable Mentions:
Sepultura – “The Place”
It’s been a damn good run for Sepultura. The Brazilian metal masters are finally calling it a day at the end of their current farewell tour, and their newly announced EP, The Cloud of Unknowing, will be their swan song. The final track of the EP is “The Place,” a brooding prog-thrash composition with powerful lyrics by Derrick Green that deal with the plight of immigrants who arrive in a new country, only to be propagandized and manipulated by the state.
Social Distortion – “Born to Kill”
Social Distortion are making their triumphant return with a new album, Born to Kill, the legendary punk band’s first album in 15 years. The group’s been performing the title track on recent tours, but this week, Mike Ness and company finally released the studio version. It’s a joyous punk jammer fitted with driving chords and hard-rock swagger. And even after a battle with tonsil cancer, Ness still has it on the mic.
Terror – “STILL SUFFER”
Hardcore vets Terror just announced their new album STILL SUFFER, unleashing the vicious title track as a tease of what’s to come: more bone-bruising music for the mosh. This is a clinical display of physical hardcore from one of the genre’s modern progenitors, complete with a tasty beatdown breakdown around the minute-and-50-second mark that’s triggered by the throat-shredding calls of frontman Scott Vogel.
Wage War – “Song of the Swamp”
We love a good regional homage like Wage War’s “Song of the Swamp,” an ode to their native Florida. Clearly inspired by the concept, the band cranks up the brutality a notch, digging into visceral groove passages that recall an earlier entrant in this column, Sepultura — and specifically their Roots album. What the Brazilian forests are to the thrash legends, the Floridian swamplands are to these metalcore harshers.
