Photo: Diana Lee Zadio

We’ve known for a while that there’s a new Pallbearer album coming in March, and today we get our first taste of it. “Thorns” debuted earlier today on Rolling Stone, and while it’s got the band’s signature doomy sound, it’s a little more lively than what you’ve come to expect from the Little Rock quartet. Bassist Joseph Rowland says Heartless is more “progressive and technical” than anything they’ve done, and this song is proof of that. Not only is it short for the band (5 1/2 minutes), but there’s a delicate part in the middle where there’s a section after the solo where there’s acoustic interplay that sounds almost proggy. The band actually compare themselves to Boston in the interview:

Say Boston: You can argue both ways – they’re a hard rock band, but they’re really, really melodic and catchy, too. Every song has so many hooks in it. It also has all these cool ideas that they executed well that are heavy. For all of us, that music is timeless. We’re pulling from lots and lots of eras – popular music, experimental music, and older classical stuff. But more than ever, we’re in touch with this element of, “Yeah, we really fucking like Boston.” Why shouldn’t we aspire to like write music as well as they did? I hope one day we’ll be as good as Boston.

Check the song out here:

Heartless will be out on Profound Lore on March 24th.