Napalm Records Alter Bridge‘s just-released EP Walk the Sky 2.0 includes a brand-new song called “Last Rites.” The track’s origins date back to the sessions from Alter Bridge’s latest album, 2019’s Walk the Sky, but the band didn’t feel that the dirty, grunge-y tune fit with the comparatively brighter record.
“To me, [‘Last Rites’] definitely hearkened back to the early ’90s,” frontman Myles Kennedy tells ABC Audio. “I feel like the song overall is kind of a tip of the hat to Alice in Chains, especially with the way that the vocal was approached and the guitar part and everything.”
Alter Bridge eventually decided to finish “Last Rites” to give fans something while quarantined amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The lyrics make veiled references to the pandemic with lines such as “Say goodbye to the only way of live you’ve ever known,” but Kennedy wanted to keep the track’s message “ambiguous.”
“Now, when I listen to that song, it almost sounds like a conversation,” he says. “It almost sounds like the verses are one angle, and then the chorus is almost a reply to it. But it’s ambiguous enough you could look at it a number of different ways.”
Along with “Last Rites,” the EP includes live versions of six Walk the Sky songs, which Kennedy feels are a “good representation” of what you might’ve experienced had COVID-19 not put a stop to concerts. Interestingly, Alter Bridge didn’t know they were being recorded when they played those live tracks.
“I think if any one of us would’ve know that, we probably would’ve been a little more inhibited during the performances,” Kennedy laughs. “Fortunately, the powers that be were, like, ‘Don’t tell the guys, let’s record these shows!'”
Walk the Sky 2.0 is out today.
By Josh Johnson
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