Black Stone Cherry will release their new EP Celebrate on 6 March 2026 via Mascot Records. The first single Neon Eyes was released this afternoon, along with a video, which shows a typical day in the life of a band on the road, as they arrive at their headline performance at the 2025 Maid of Stone Festival.
“For Neon Eyes, we had the riff recorded on an iPhone,” the band said. “Immediately, we wrote a song around it when we first started writing for this EP. We knew we wanted the main riff to also be the chorus, so once we landed on the title, everything fell into place. A classic BSC banger.”
The Black Stone Cherry video is a blast, showing the much-loved in the UK band in a powerful mode. “From the opening of Me And Mary Jane through to the encore closure of Peace Is Free, they were in their element,” MetalTalk wrote of their Maid Of Sotne performance. “With Ben Wells high kicking and whirling like a dervish, the exuberance on stage was contagious.
Celebrate was produced by Black Stone Cherry and recorded at High Street Studios in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and they embody all this at the height of their powers. There is happiness and heartache, muscular hooks and raw soul.
It reflects the life experiences of four men approaching forty (two of them parents), in one emotive, unpolished diamond of a record. Six commanding, stage-ready original Black Stone Cherry tracks and an inspired cover.
“Any piece of art is a snapshot of that artist’s life,” singer/guitarist Chris Robertson reasons. “So, I look at these songs as a culmination of everything we’ve lived since Screamin’ At The Sky.”
“None of us are precious, because we’re all fighting on the same team,” Ben says. “So John Fred might have a guitar riff, or me or Chris might have a drum beat. And Steve is our bass player, but he played slide on the last album, and there’s parts on the new stuff where he plays guitar. It was cool to think you could start the day without a song, and five hours later walk out with a demo.”
Celebrate Is An EP Of Contrasts
Celebrate is an EP of contrasts. I’m Fine is a dreamily woozy, Nirvana-laced grunge singalong. But it was the searing, mid-tempo heartache of Deep that struck a really pertinent chord, with Ben in particular.
Following long struggles with fertility issues, he and his wife suffered a miscarriage midway through the writing process. Two days later, he was channelling the experience into Deep.
For a curveball, Celebrate is capped off with a strapping yet sensuous cover of Simple Minds’ classic Don’t You (Forget About Me), featuring guest vocals from old Black Stone friend Tyler Connolly (Theory Of A Deadman).
It may be a long wait until March, but until then, we can reflect on that day at Maid Of Stone through Neon Eyes. “To the Kentish hordes, they could do no wrong.”
Black Stone Cherry will release their new EP Celebrate on 6 March 2026 via Mascot Records. Pre-orders and more information can be found at lnk.to/BSC-MLG
