On top of being one of metal’s most celebrated guitarists, it turns out Zakk Wylde is quite the cinephile. Along with the other members of his long-running Black Label Society, the metal icon is celebrating classic Eighties Ozploitation through their new, Mad Max-referencing single, “Lord Humungus.”
Described in a press release as harnessing “downright Berzerker quality ferocity,” BLS’ latest single indeed shouts out the hockey-masked beefcake who led a gang of Outback merauders in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.
Accordingly, the metal band fill the song with downward-spiral chunkiness and yowled-and-growled lines about “wheels of rolling thunder” ripping their way along a deserted wasteland. While Wylde sings that “destruction is in the air,” he and co-shredder Dario Lorina are also firing back-to-back-to-back-to-back solos into an apocalyptic, pink-tinted sky.
The video, meanwhile, takes on a lighter air, with the BLS members — garbed-out in Humugus-like masks and inflatable sumo suits — navigating a clutch of three-wheelers along a psychedelic sound stage. We suppose you could call this triker metal.
Black Label Society’s new “Lord Humungus” single follows last fall’s death-swingin’ “The Gallows.”
A full-length follow-up to 2022’s Doom Crew Inc. has yet to be announced, but the band had previously suggested that their 12th album could arrive by the end of 2025.