Danish rock and rollers VOLBEAT — Michael Poulsen (vocals, guitar),Jon Larsen (drums) and Kaspar Boye Larsen (bass) — will release their ninth album, “God Of Angels Trust”, on June 6 via longtime label Vertigo/Universal. The LP’s arrival will coincide with plenty of summer touring on the band’s “Greatest Of All Tours Worldwide”.
Ahead of the “God Of Angels Trust” release, VOLBEAT has shared the video for the impactful track and the album’s third single “Time Will Heal”. Watch it below. The track is a supremely catchy, mid-tempo anthem that captures everything you love about VOLBEAT‘s sound. The visual pairs performance footage with some sanguine-soaked action in a red room. And a G.O.A.T. Literally.
Overall, though, it’s an intensely personal track for the band and its frontman.
“Through life, we go through these ups and downs, and sometimes, it’s like turning on a switch and it can change from one minute to another,” says Poulsen. “We suddenly get in a sad, emotional mood where there just doesn’t seem to be a way to see the light or good in anything. But we always find a way to make things good again. I’m good at turning those moments around quickly, but that comes with accepting the good with the bad and using the bad moments to grow and learn instead of letting them bother you more that it should and having your mind manipulate reality. The important thing is to realize that while nothing can be good forever, do not let the dark side of life take over. Have the confidence to know there will be better days ahead when we’re dealing with these moments or demons and we’re struggling to find anything good in what we’re doing.”
He pulls the curtain back even further, sharing, “I’m still struggling with the loss of my father. I would say 80 percent of the time I’m coping with the loss and doing well. But then sometimes, I’m falling into these black holes where everything is empty and nothing is fair. I’m so grateful I have kids because when they come into your life, suddenly, everything is not about you. It’s about the kids and you can’t spend too much of your energy being down because they need you. So, it’s been a blessing having kids. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
With “God Of Angels Trust”, the Danish band — which has scored ten No. 1 songs on the Billboard Mainstream Rock airplay chart, the most ever for a band based outside North America — has thrown caution to the wind, ignored comfort zones, and paid little heed to traditional songwriting in the search for something more immediate and surprising. The end result will thrill VOLBEAT‘s dedicated legion of fans.
“In the past, I’ve taken a long time to write and obsessed over so many elements of the songs before finishing them,” says Poulsen. “This time, I wanted to make a VOLBEAT record without thinking too much about it. Instead of following any kind of structure I said, ‘Okay, there are no rules. I can do anything I want. I can start with a chorus or do songs that are just a bunch of verses stacked on top of each other. Anything goes.’ That was freeing for me and made it exciting to write this album.”
Poulsen‘s excitement to thwart convention is palpable throughout “God Of Angels Trust”, a punchy, crunchy album that’s undeniably VOLBEAT, yet marches to a fresh new metallic and melodic energy.
Poulsen started working on songs for the follow-up to 2021’s “Servant Of The Mind” in the summer of 2024. VOLBEAT was taking a year-long break from touring to give Michael a chance to recover from throat surgery and to tour with his death metal band ASINHELL. Driven equally by his excitement to record a new VOLBEAT album and by his determination not to follow convention, Poulsen worked on songs for a mere three weeks with bandmates drummer Jon Larsen and bassist Kaspar Boye Larsen. Amazingly, they worked on a new song at every rehearsal. Three weeks into the process, VOLBEAT had arranged half of “God Of Angels Trust”. That’s when Poulsen decided that having no rules meant he could follow his muse wherever it took him, and he veered off on a different path. He and the band still wrote and rehearsed two songs a week, but they started composing more familiar rock songs that drew from traditional elements.
The band entered the studio with their longtime producer Jacob Hansen in the fall of 2024. As with the songwriting, Poulsen wanted to work quickly and rely on instinct, so they just plugged in and started to play. To keep the music sounding urgent and immediate, VOLBEAT recorded live in the studio, playing as few takes as possible before moving from one song to the next.
When it came time to add lead guitar, there was no question that VOLBEAT would tap Flemming C. Lund, who currently tours with the band and worked with Michael in ASINHELL. A mere 13 days after they started working with Hansen, VOLBEAT were finished.
As impressive as it is that VOLBEAT wrote and recorded an entire album in about five weeks, what’s more incredible is that “God Of Angels Trust” sounds as fleshed out, eclectic, and fulfilling as albums that have taken 10 times longer (or more) to create. In the end, creating such a strong album so quickly was a tremendous challenge that demanded Zen-like calm, a joy for exploration, maximal creativity, and razor-sharp concentration to pull off.
“In some ways, it feels like we’ve come full circle,” Poulsen explains. “If you start drawing a circle over an extended period of time, eventually you’ve going to get back where you started, and that’s how I feel now. I’ve dealt with medical operations, lineup changes, and all these things, and now it feels like a rebirth. It doesn’t feel like we’re doing our ninth studio album, it feels like we’re on our first album again and there’s something really refreshing about that.”
VOLBEAT will return to the road on the “Greatest Of All Tours Worldwide”, beginning in June and running throughout 2025. The tour begins in June with a co-headline Canadian run with THREE DAYS GRACE and special guests WAGE WAR, which will be followed by headline treks in the U.S. with special guests HALESTORM and THE GHOST INSIDE, and Europe with special guests BUSH and WITCH FEVER, including today’s newly announced second show at Copenhagen’s Royal Arena on September 20.
“God Of Angels Trust” track listing:
01. Devils Are Awake
02. By A Monster’s Hand
03. Acid Rain
04. Demonic Depression
05. In The Barn Of The Goat Giving Birth To Satan’s Spawn In A Dying World Of Doom
06. Time Will Heal
07. Better Be Fueled Than Tamed
08. At The End Of The Sirens
09. Lonely Fields
10. Enlighten The Disorder (By A Monster’s Hand Part 2)
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