Van Weezer


Van Weezer is the upcoming fourteenth studio album by American rock band Weezer, set to be released by Crush Music and Atlantic Records.

Background

In February 2019, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo began working on new songs with a hard rock influence, in contrast to the pop rock and electropop sound that had been featured on the band's previous albums Pacific Daydream, the Teal Album, and the then-upcoming Black Album. In an interview that month with Entertainment Weekly, Cuomo mentioned that an album tentatively titled Van Weezer was in the works, and that it would take the band "back to big guitars". He remarked that when the band would perform "Beverly Hills" live in concert, he would perform a guitar solo that was not present on the recorded version of the song. "We noticed that, recently, the crowd just goes crazy when I do that. So it feels like maybe the audience is ready for some shredding again."
The album has been compared to their fourth studio album Maladroit, and is inspired by 1970s and 1980s hard rock and heavy metal bands such as Kiss, Black Sabbath, Metallica and Van Halen. Cuomo would also state that the album is "Blue Album-ish, but a little more riffy."

Release

On September 10, 2019, the first single from Van Weezer, "The End of the Game", was released, along with an announcement that the album would be released on May 15, 2020. The announcement coincided with the revelation of the Hella Mega Tour, a 2020 concert tour featuring Weezer, Green Day, and Fall Out Boy. On May 6, 2020, the second single "Hero" was released onto streaming services. The same day, Weezer announced on social media that the album had been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and teased that within the week fans would be getting "surprises".
The song "Blue Dream" was debuted in The Simpsons episode "The Hateful Eight-Year-Olds", in which Weezer guest starred.