Skid Row Releases Rousing New Single ‘Tear It Down’
Skid Row has released a rousing new single titled "Tear It Down," the second off their upcoming album The Gang's All Here. You can listen to the song and watch the video below.
The clip, filmed in the band's native New Jersey, appropriately finds the quintet performing in front of a house that's being demolished. New lead singer Erik Gronwall mugs for the camera as he sings on the chorus, "No wall's too big for me / I want my friends to see / All my brothers just hear me now / No motherfucker's gonna tell us how."
"'Tear It Down' is about breaking down barriers. Because coexisting isn't about building walls; it's about getting rid of them," bassist Rachel Bolan said in a statement.
The new song arrives four months after "The Gang's All Here," the lead single and title track off Skid Row's next album, due out on Oct. 14. It marks the band's first collection of new, original material since 2014's United World Rebellion: Chapter Two, the second in a planned trilogy of EPs.
"The Gang's All Here" also introduced listeners to Gronwall, the 34-year-old Swedish singer who previously fronted H.E.A.T. and won the Swedish Idol television competition in 2009 after auditioning with Skid Row's "18 and Life." Gronwall replaced former Dragonforce singer ZP Theart, who joined Skid Row in 2016 but didn't release any music with the band during his six-year tenure.
Gronwall made his live debut with Skid Row in March when the band opened Scorpions' Sin City Nights Las Vegas residency. The singer recorded the bulk of his vocals for The Gang's All Here in his home studio before meeting his new bandmates in person and despite having "no idea what [he] was doing" — a fact he decided not to disclose until after joining the group in Vegas.
Bolan said Skid Row had started thinking about Gronwall several years ago when they toured with H.E.A.T. in Europe. "We'd hear him every night from the dressing room, and a couple of times, I was, like, 'Man, listen to this guy sing. He's phenomenal,'" the bassist told Eddie Trunk.
"Then I went behind the monitor board a couple of times, and in my head I'm like, 'Wow, when Skid Row has some downtime, I'm gonna get in touch with this dude and start a side project with him.' … As time went on and we got to the point to where we were with ZP and stuff … I told [guitarist Dave 'Snake' Sabo], 'We've gotta check this guy out.'"