“The Strength / The Sound / The Songs” was first released by Mascot Records in 2005, launching the band on to the greater European music stage with bone-shaking performances at Roskilde, Download and Pinkpop. The album, which includes their first single, a cover of Dusty Springfield‘s “I Only Wanna Be With You” and fan favorites “Pool Of Booze, Booze, Booza” and “Soulweeper”, crashed into the Danish charts and earned the band a slew of Danish Music Awards. The album has gone on to be certified double platinum in their home country, gold in Germany and has generated over 180 million streams and (still) counting. These new limited vinyl variants celebrate both the legacy of the album and the future that will bring countless more performances of these songs to the stage.

Last August, VOLBEAT guitarist Rob Caggiano told Matt Pinfield of “Raise Your Horns” that he and his bandmates have been writing new music during the coronavirus pandemic. “Michael‘s [Poulsen, VOLBEAT guitarist/vocalist] been writing a bunch of stuff,” he said. “I’ve been super busy here [at home] in New York. It’s really all we can do at this point — is just create and write music. There’s not much else going on. So I’ve been super creative; they’ve been super creative… The past couple of months, I’ve just been writing music — just getting ideas out; just my own stuff. Where the stuff ends up, I’m not really sure yet. But yeah, it’s been a lot of fun, just coming up with new ideas.

“Obviously, this whole coronavirus pandemic is a terrible thing, and at this point, it’s gone on way too long,” he added. “But I think we kind of needed a reset. I’ve been enjoying a lot of family time. It’s nice to not be traveling all over the place for once. I haven’t been idle like this in I don’t even know how long — 25 years, 30 years. It’s kind of crazy. But, yeah, it’s a really great time to be creative and do stuff that we normally wouldn’t have time to do, and things like that.”

In June, Poulsen told “Whiplash”, the KLOS radio show hosted by Full Metal Jackie, that he was “very much inspired” to write new VOLBEAT songs. “I can’t wait to start working on these songs in the studio when the time is right, because there’s a certain energy that really, really takes me back to the beginning,” he said. “There’s a lot of heavy stuff in some of the new songs that I’ve got.”