Lola Montez

Volbeat's gift for making heavy music feel playful reaches a kind of apex here — "Lola Montez" is built around a riff so infectious and swaggering that it practically demands physical movement before the first verse even arrives. Named for the 19th century Irish dancer and courtesan, the song carries the energy of its subject: theatrical, sensual, slightly dangerous, and entirely self-aware. The guitars swing with rockabilly looseness before locking into crunching passages that remind you this is still a metal band underneath the showmanship. Poulsen delivers the verses with a storyteller's relish, clearly enjoying the mythology he's spinning. The production has warmth and space — you can hear the room around the drums, giving everything a live, breathing quality. It occupies the same imaginative space as Tarantino film scores or old Western soundtracks updated for a contemporary heavy music audience. This is music for driving through unfamiliar cities, for dancing awkwardly with someone in a kitchen at a party that's winding down, for that specific energy of being in a good mood for no particular reason and wanting to stay in it.