On Friday (March 25), San Antonio hard-rock band Nothing More released the song “Turn It Up Like,” its first new music since 2018, to give fans a taste of the upcoming album that the quartet plans to deliver by the end of 2022.
Singer-percussionist Jonny Hawkins says of “Turn It Up Like” in an exclusive quote for Billboard, “Something we’ve always pushed for as a band is to question everything. And I think we’ve just gone through a period where it had been unfashionable to question things. Because if you did, you were the pariah, you were the outcast, the other.
“For the last few years, I’ve felt like an animal in a cage, just pacing, and my teeth are showing more,” he continues. “I had nowhere to vent that rage and that frustration until we put it into this song. I think a lot of people feel this way. You saw it spill over into riots and protests. There’s all this stuff just pent up inside people. Thankfully, we’re going back out on the road soon, so I’ll have somewhere to put it.”
All four members of Nothing More (Hawkins, guitarist Mark Vollelunga, bassist Daniel Oliver and drummer Ben Anderson) wrote “Turn It Up Like.” Opening with a siren and a rousing chant of “Stand in the fire and become what you are,” the track is in a similar vein to “Do You Really Want It?,” the single from 2017 album The Stories We Tell Ourselves that reached No. 6 on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. The squalling protest of the status quo is one of the group’s signature themes — in this case, the social dangers of cyberspace. Its lyrics proclaim, “All my friends are dead/ We all got f—ed by the internet … we want this sh– to end,” and it’s the “same sh–, new day,” against a rousing mixture of layered vocals, chopped guitar riffs, a raise-the-roof chorus and touches of electronic tunings.
Featured below are exclusive stills from the video shoot for “Turn It Up Like,” which apparently continues the cardinal-red-and-white color scheme that Nothing More employed for the visuals to the three-time Grammy-nominated The Stories We Tell Ourselves. The video will be available within the next few weeks, while the first official radio single from the new album arrives April 29.
Hawkins in a still from the "Turn It Up Like" video.
Ben Guzman
Hawkins atop the Scorpion Tail, a frequent feature in Nothing More's concerts. Left: Vollelunga.
Ben Guzman
Hawkins in a still from the "Turn It Up Like" video.
Ben Guzman
Nothing More made its commercial breakthrough with the single “This Is the Time (Ballast),” from its 2014 self-titled album on Eleven Seven Music (which has since rebranded as Better Noise Music). It has so far scored six top 10 Mainstream Rock Airplay hits, including “Do You Really Want It?” and the chart-topping “Go to War.”
As one of the most energetic live acts on the rock circuit, it has toured with such names as Five Finger Death Punch, Disturbed and Papa Roach. It will return to the road for the first time since the 2020 outbreak of the pandemic on May 13 in Kansas City, Mo., for a 26-date spring co-headlining tour with labelmates Asking Alexandria, as well as Atreyu and Eva Under Fire.
Listen to the song below.