Absolute Power, the heavy metal project of producer and vocalist Simon Efemey and Napalm Death bassist Shane Embury, have released "Needs Must When The Devil Drives", the title track of their second album. Time To Kill Records puts the album out on 6 November 2026, fifteen years after the band's self-titled debut.
The song features Tim "Ripper" Owens, formerly of Judas Priest and Iced Earth. Embury said it looks back at the industrial West Midlands where he and Efemey grew up, and at the part 1980s heavy metal played for them as teenagers from working class families: an escape from the realities of those areas, where "you did what you had to just to get by".
The two spent five years on the record, which draws on Judas Priest, Saxon, Black Sabbath, Dio and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. "I want people to have a good time in the old school way," Efemey said. "I want them to forget themselves for a couple of hours."
Efemey is known as a producer for Paradise Lost, The Wildhearts and Napalm Death.
Source: Metal Shock Finland