Former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted is giving fans their first taste of his new self-titled band with a stream of his new single, "Soldierhead." The song was released digitally on iTunes and will be featured on Newsted's debut four-song EP "Metal," which will be released on January 8th on the music service.
Newsted used social media and fans to announce the EP release. As we previously reported he sent out a graphic of a hand-written note with details about the release, the fans then posted it on their Twitter accounts and Newsted retweeted their posts.
Newsted was interviewed on the 'Friday Night Rocks' radio show last month about his new band and why he decided to simply call it Newsted and his open-ended vision for the musical direction of the group.
He told the show this about the band name, "I've thought about this for a long time, putting my name on a project other than just coming up with a clever name, like Echobrain or Papa Wheelie or something. We have a lot of cool names for projects, but this is the first time with my name and really trying to get out to the people that I played for by the millions in the past with Metallica."
He also spoke about the musical direction from the new group, "Whatever it ends up being — if it's five songs, 20 songs, 50 songs … I don't even know what the heck I'm gonna do. I have so much music from over the years. I have a bunch of new stuff … I'm just trying to figure out exactly what I wanna unleash on everybody first. That's kind of what it's coming down to — the timing of things and how I wanna hit people with it." Listen to the new song here.