“I wanted it to be the biggest sounding Foo Fighters record ever. To make a gigantic rock record but with Greg Kurstin’s sense of melody and arrangement.” So speaks Dave Grohl of the mission statement made manifest in Foo Fighters’ ninth epic, the aptly-titled Concrete and Gold. Just as Foo Fighters’ anthem of the summer “Run” “opens as a dreamy, slow burner then quickly turns heavy as thunder” (Billboard) with its “huge triumphant chorus” (Stereogum), Concrete and Gold marries some of the most insanely heavy Foo Fighters riffs ever with lush harmonic complexities courtesy of a first time team-up with producer Greg Kurstin (Adele, Sia, Pink).

“So I think maybe Greg is the guy that we ask to be our producer because he’s never made a heavy rock record before and we’ve never worked with a pop producer.” Darrel Thorp (Beck, Radiohead) was soon enlisted to mix and engineer. This collective conceived a blueprint of the new record as, “Motorhead’s version of Sgt. Pepper…or something like that,” secretly booking into Hollywood’s esteemed EastWest studios to consummate this marriage of extremes…or as Grohl puts it: “Our noise and Greg’s big brain and all of his sophisticated arrangements and composition.”

Months, sounds, stories and so many guitars later, the 11-Grammy-winning, 25+ million-record-selling, last great American stadium rock band completed its most ambitious album to date.