Muse announce release date for heavy new single "Won't Stand Down"

A new Muse era is officially upon us. On Friday (January 7), the band announced its new single, "Won't Stand Down," will be dropping on January 13. The news shouldn't come as too big of a surprise to hardcore fans — over the holidays, frontman Matt Bellamy shared a snippet of the song on his Instagram story — but its sound might be a little surprising. In the teaser, Bellamy belts out the lyrics “Won’t stand down, I’m growing stronger / Won’t stand down, I’m owned no longer / Won’t stand down, you’ve used me for too long / For too long” before the track erupts into frenetic guitar riffs and some serious metal growling.

See the official announcement and pre-save the heavy new song below.

In 2020, Bellamy revealed what's next for Muse after releasing 2018's Simulation Theory. "It depends on what happens in the world, but at the moment we’re planning on getting together, ideally in the place we all came together, Devon in Southwest England, and sort of get back to our original ways," he said at the time. "And even get back to the way we originally used to make music by meeting a couple of times a week to rehearse."

"The idea was to do that in 2021. If that goes well, get an album or a bunch of songs together and potentially hit the road again in 2022," he added.

In October 2020, Bellamy confirmed that the band had started working on a new album. “I’ve started writing a new Muse album,” he told The Sun. “I started writing when all the protests and all the chaos were kicking off. It’s a weird thing to say but it suits the music I write. It keeps you a little bit on edge.”