Is the new MC5 album still happening?
Fans of proto-punk and hard-hitting garage rock received the surprise of a lifetime in 2022. The sole remaining founder of legendary Detroit outfit MC5, Wayne Kramer, announced a new studio album, along with a tour. It was to be the band’s first original record in over 50 years.
Then, tragedy struck. On February 2nd, 2023, Kramer passed away from pancreatic cancer. The finishing touches to the new album, which is said to feature Tom Morello, Slash and the MC5’s original drummer, Dennis ‘Machine Gun’ Thompson, were still being applied.
So what of the project now? It goes without saying that plans for a 2024 MC5 tour are off. But how about the thing fans have really been waiting for, the new album? Heavy Lifting, as Kramer confirmed the project would be called, was his baby.
As Kramer told Ultimate Classic Rock in December last year, he wanted to “pick up where we left off with High Time”, the group’s second studio album released in 1971, “pushing music forward, carrying a message of self-efficacy and empowerment – and just to have fun”.
Kramer had written 15 new songs for the album with Brad Brooks, the prospective vocalist for the planned tour. Work started on the record back in 2022, with inspiration arising from the Covid-19 pandemic and Donald Trump, suggesting the MC5’s revolutionary, anti-establishment spirit would be applied to the times we live in.
There’s reason for optimism, then, that Kramer and his new collaborators had plenty of time to create a sound that abounds, resounds, and rebounds off the ceiling before his sad passing. And while the MC5’s former manager, John Sinclair, also died earlier this month, Heavy Lifting’s producer Bob Ezrin is still very much alive and kicking out the jams.
In the week after Kramer’s death, Ezrin discussed the album openly with Louder, as a work already as good as finished. He called it “a heavy record” and “a guitar record left, right and centre, just a wall of guitars most of the time”. These words will be music to the ears of MC5 devotees.
So, too, were the live performances two years ago, with Kramer putting together a live band, including Brooks, called We Are All MC5. The sets include a version of what was intended to be the title track of the new album. We hear Tom Morello’s influence on ‘Heavy Lifting’ as a limber guitar riff rolls around a thudding fuzz-metal power chord.
But Ezrin’s comments also point to how crucial Kramer was to the making of the album. It was “mostly driven by Wayne and his ethos,” he explained. “It’s a snapshot of a guitar man at the height of his powers.” Those powers are tragically gone from this world now. So, if the album needed any more input from the man driving it, then Kramer’s death does cast doubts over its release, at least in the immediate term.
So, is the new MC5 album finished?
After all, the release was pencilled in for this spring. But since December, no specific date has been forthcoming. We’re now in April, and unfortunately, it looks as though the project still hasn’t been finalised and is ready to be shared with the world. That is, of course, unless Ezrin has a plan up his sleeve to catch us out with a sudden album drop, which would be completely contrary to the promotion storm that MC5 whipped up prior to their debut release.
However, the way Kramer talked before he died and the way Ezrin has talked since make it highly likely that apparent delays in confirming a release date aren’t cause for too much concern. A few details just need to be ironed out, which would have been easier if Wayne Kramer were still with us.
Expect the MC5’s guitar blitz of a swan song to be out at some point in 2024. Perhaps Trump’s latest presidential campaign in the autumn will come at the perfect time.
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