As Anakin Skywalker will tell you, it's best not to give up the high ground. On Asking Alexandria's new Never Gonna Learn EP, however, the British rockers forgo the "mid-ground."
The four-track collection, out now, includes the song "Never Gonna Learn," the current single off the new Alexandria album See What's on the Inside, as well as the Inside cut "Find Myself" and two brand new tunes: "New Devil" and "Miles Away."
As frontman Ben Bruce tells ABC Audio, he feels the EP represents the two extremes of the Alexandria sound, from the "high-energy" and "raw" "Never Gonna Learn" and "New Devil" to the "slower," "sad" and "very emotional" "Find Myself" and "Miles Away."
"We reach those two ends of the spectrum of our fanbase with this EP," Bruce says. "There's no mid-ground. It's just one second you're here and then the next you're over here, which, as a listener, I quite enjoy that juxtaposition. It's cool."
"New Devil," in particular, came from a desire to meet the demands of fans who "like something a little bit heavier."
"I'm afraid of mosh pits, maybe they're not," Bruce says, grinning. "There's still people out there that crave that sort of stuff, and I think we wanted to give them something a little bit heavier to ingest."
"New Devil" also comes with a extra treat: guest vocals from In This Moment's Maria Brink.
"As soon as we laid the music down and [vocalist] Danny [Worsnop] started singing, what he was doing with his vocals, I was, like, 'Maria has to be on this song,'" Bruce recalls. "It wasn't like the song was finished and we thought, 'Who should we get?' It just sounded like it fit her voice. I could hear her singing over it."