Video Premiere: LORDI's 'Hug You Hardcore'

"Hug You Hardcore", the new video from Finnish heavy metal monsters LORDI, can be seen below. The song is taken from the band's upcoming album "Monstereophonic: Theaterror Vs. Demonarchy", due in Europe on September 16 and in the U.S. on September 30 via AFM Records. The follow-up to 2014's "Scare Force One" was produced by Nino Laurenne (APOCALYPTICA, STRATOVARIUS, CHILDREN OF BODOM, AMORPHIS),who previously worked on the band's 2008 effort "Deadache".

The "A side" of the album, "Theaterror", is a damn catchy collection of traditional hard rocking LORDI songs. The riffs and obscene words of "Hug You Hardcore" will stick in your mind forever — whether you like it or not.

The thematic "B-side", "Demonarchy", tells the story of The Undead Son, The Bloodsucking Count, The She-Wolf and The Witch. Musically "Demonarchy" represents LORDI more modern than ever. Highly complex song structures and aggressive in-your-face riffing is something we have never heard from these monsters before.

Speaking to Spark TV, which is part of the Czech monthly magazine Spark, LORDI frontman Mr. Lordi stated about the band's new album: "We are trying to do something different within the LORDI frame this time. It's like a split album between ourselves.

"There's two kinds of LORDI material on the album. The first six songs are your classic LORDI kind of stuff — three- or four-minute songs with hooky choruses and stuff; eighties-orientated hard rock, like the shit that we're doing. That's our main stuff. But now, the last six songs of the album is gonna be a story.

"It's our first conceptual half an album — not a full conceptual album, but half of the album is a conceptual storyline with six songs. And musically, also, it's a lot more modern for us; I mean, it's nothing new in the world of music, but, for us, for LORDI, it's completely different. It's more metal. It's more progressive. The songs are eight minutes long, and there are a lot of different parts. And it's a storyline. Because I'm a huge KING DIAMOND fan; I have always been.

"I am really fucking thrilled about the result, how it came out. It's different for us. I know that it's gonna be different for the LORDI diehard fans too. I don't know for your average rock or metal fan. It's, like, 'Eh….' But, for us, it is really breaking new territory, definitely."

Mr. Lordi went into more detail about the lyrical themes covered on the new LORDI album. He said: "It's a horror story. It's called 'Demonarchy'. It has, like, these classic old-school monsters having rivals… They are having territorial rivals. There's one vampire, one witch, on zombie, and a werewolf. And they are having a bit of a dispute about how to share their territory, because they all live in the same town. That's the story."

The LORDI frontman also spoke about the band's brand new look, which can be seen in the photo above.

"It was really shitty that the timing was overflapping now. 'Cause originally we were supposed to be in the studio [to record the new album] already in December [2015]. Then we were supposed to have the album out already in May, last month. But then my father died two weeks before the studio [was scheduled to start], so everything [got pushed back]. And then there was the Christmas break and the fucking New Year, and we lost our original producer, Mikko Karmila, who was supposed to do it. And then we were kind of, like, 'Oh, what the hell do we do now?' So, well, we found Nino Laurenne, who actually produced 'Deadache' eight years ago, nine years ago or something, which was fucking awesome to go back to the same studio. So it will come out in September. So, of course, now the timeline was, all of a sudden, really pushing. So that means that at the same time we were in the studio, I had to start doing the new costumes and masks.

"It's cool, actually. The new costumes are also something different. Like I said, the album is like a split album with ourselves. The costumes are gonna be split in half too. There's this half and that half, so there's something new also in the costumes. It's like two different versions of each character."

"Monstereophonic: Theaterror Vs. Demonarchy" track listing:

01. SCG8: One Message Waiting
02. Let's Go Slaughter He-Man (I Wanna Be The Beast-Man In The Masters Of The Universe)
03. Hug You Hardcore
04. Down With The Devil
05. Mary Is Dead
06. Sick Flick
07. None For One
08. SCG VIII: Opening Scene
09. Demonarchy
10. The Unholy Gathering
11. Heaven Sent Hell On Earth
12. And The Zombie Says
13. Break Of Dawn
14. The Night The Monsters Died