The Used’s Upcoming Album ‘A Lot Like’ Their Debut, Singer Bert McCracken Says

If there's one main parallel the Used's Bert McCracken draws during a recent conversation with Kerrang, it's that the band's upcoming album bears a striking resemblance to their first. But how close will the new effort be to the 2002 self-titled staple from the Utah-born post-hardcore rockers?

According to the frontman, quite a bit, it would seem. McCracken, when asked if the themes behind the group's latest single "Blow Me" represented the forthcoming the Used album as a whole, painted a bigger picture. Still, while he alluded to those broad ideas, his points focused on nostalgia.

"No, this record is really a cornucopia of different messages," the singer responded. "A lot like the first record, we wanted to just … write a huge, large stack of great songs that are catchy. We never really tried to push a concept or narrow things down into anything digestible that's cohesive."

Elsewhere in the chat, McCracken pushed the comparison again. "A lot of this stuff sounds like the first record," he explained. "I think that this music is having a bit of a resurgence because it had such a feeling to it, and people just want to feel things and feel like they belong."

But that doesn't mean there's not a method to the Used's madness. The singer indicated the upcoming album's callbacks to the group's debut arise "in a way that it's speaking out to the emptiness, to the boredness, and the entitlement of the moment. It's a feeling of being stuck but not stuck."

Released last week, "Blow Me" features a guest appearance from Fever 333's Jason Aalon Butler. It's the Used's first new music in two years, following 2017 The Canyon single "Over and Over Again."

Early next year, the Used will set out on a month-long U.S. tour that takes the band to 20 different cities across the country. Tickets go on sale to the general public this Friday (Dec. 13) — get them here.

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