The GRAMMY-winning Irish-American musician, Everlast has announced Embers to Ashes, his first album in eight years, arriving August 28 via Martyr Inc Records in partnership with Thirty Tigers and Regime Music Group.
Alongside the announcement comes new single My Hollywood, a wry, clear-eyed take on fame’s false glitter and the hangover that often follows. It lands after earlier single Stones, which traced a path from self-loathing to forgiveness.
Produced by Yelawolf and mixed by Chris Lord-Alge, Embers to Ashes leans into Americana, blues and roots-rock without losing the grit that made Everlast such a singular voice in the first place. It sounds like an artist who knows scars can be architecture.
The album arrives after a punishing decade that included the 2018 Woolsey fire destroying his Los Angeles home, the pandemic and divorce. Rather than turn those events into self-mythology, Everlast appears to use them as raw material, writing songs about chaos, loss, endurance and the small wins that keep people moving.
There is history here too. This is the same artist who helped soundtrack the early ‘90s with Jump Around as part of House of Pain, then reinvented himself with Whitey Ford Sings the Blues and the enduring outsider anthem What It’s Like.
Few artists pivot from rap notoriety to blues-worn storytelling with any credibility. Everlast did it decades ago, then kept refining the blend.
New tracks reportedly range from heartbreak meditations like ‘Love Don’t Heal’ and ‘Broken Heart for Hire’ to protest-minded cuts such as ‘Rubber Bullets’, written in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Elsewhere, ‘Young Man’ closes the album with the voice of someone old enough to know advice only matters if it has been lived first.