Light 'Em Up

You are locked on The Zoo, the commercial-free rock of the air that still treats a riff like it means something. Park it at thezoorocks.com and stay with the deep cuts. Right now the speakers are doing what a good set is supposed to do: kick the door in. This is The Dead Daisies and the title track from their seventh studio album, Light 'Em Up, and it does not ask permission.

The single hit the street on May 9, 2024, four months ahead of the full album, which landed September 6 through The Dead Daisies' own imprint with SPV and Steamhammer handling the worldwide pressings, and Ward Records looking after Japan. It runs about three minutes and forty-two seconds, clocked near 166 beats a minute, and it was built to open a record the way a good road crew opens a truck: hard, loud, and pointed at the stage. Songwriting credit sits with John Corabi, Doug Aldrich, producer Marti Frederiksen, and Stevie Dacanay. Frederiksen already knew the room. He had cut Make Some Noise and Burn It Down with the band, and he came back for this one after sessions in Nashville and down at Muscle Shoals, the same Alabama stretch of river that has been turning sweat into records since the Chess and Atlantic years. The band called the result dirty, pure rock and roll with a retro seventies guitar vibe. That is not marketing copy. That is the sound.

Corabi introduced the single the way a frontman should: a kick-ass, straight-ahead rock and roll tune, turn it up, bang your head and break something. Aldrich was already talking about the 2024 tour that carried the album name across the States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, with The Treatment and The Bites on the British run and guests such as Gilby Clarke turning up on selected American dates. The album itself is ten tracks and a little over thirty-six minutes. After the title cut come Times Are Changing, I Wanna Be Your Bitch, I'm Gonna Ride, Back To Zero, Way Back Home, a cover of the Angels' Take A Long Line, My Way And The Highway, Love That'll Never Be, and the longer closer Take My Soul. Orange-and-red marble vinyl and clear pressings went out beside the CD. The cover art came from David Pear and Mark Allison. On the studio tracking sheets the drums are credited to Evan Frederiksen, with Michael Devin on bass, David Lowy and Doug Aldrich on guitars, and Corabi out front. Tommy Clufetos, back in the chair by the summer of 2024, took the kit on the road.

The lyric is road language. Rolling in from the other side, one more shot, one more round, raise a fist, sinners and saints in the same room. The chorus is four words and a match: light 'em up, over and over, until the room answers. Reviewers heard an AC/DC lean in the opener, the kind of no-nonsense, unapologetic hard rock that does not need a concept or a string section. Aldrich's lead guitar is the engine. Corabi's voice, scraped and confident, is the driver. It was the first new Dead Daisies single since 2022, and the first with Corabi since Burn It Down in 2018. That gap matters. The band had spent the years in between with Glenn Hughes out front on Holy Ground and Radiance. Getting Corabi back was the story the fans had been waiting on, and Light 'Em Up was the proof that the reunion was not a nostalgia lap.

The Dead Daisies started as a collective, not a fixed lineup, which is why the history reads like a road map of classic rock side projects that decided to become a band. Founding guitarist David Lowy, the Australian who put the name on the door, pulled the first records together around 2012 and 2013. Early lineups carried Jon Stevens, Richard Fortus, Dizzy Reed, Darryl Jones, Marco Mendoza, and a rotating drum chair. The self-titled debut arrived in 2013, and the band went out with ZZ Top, Aerosmith, KISS, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, and Lynyrd Skynyrd before most people had the name straight. Revolución in 2015 brought Corabi in for real. Make Some Noise followed in 2016, the live set Live and Louder in 2017, Burn It Down in 2018. A 2017 Concert for Freedom at Woodstock Festival Poland put them with the Gorzów Philharmonic in front of a crowd counted in the hundreds of thousands. Festival stages at Download, Graspop, Sweden Rock, Hellfest, and Rock Fest Barcelona filled the calendar. Corabi stepped aside, Hughes took the mic and the bass, and the band kept working. A Best Of in 2023 marked a decade. Corabi and Whitesnake alumnus Michael Devin came back in 2023. Light 'Em Up was the first full album of that return. A blues set, Lookin' For Trouble, followed in 2025. The roster has kept turning, the way this band always has, with Lowy and Aldrich as the constants and the songs as the point.

That revolving door is not a flaw. It is the design. Lowy has said from the start that the Daisies were built to put world-class players in a room and chase the feel of Bad Company, Aerosmith, and Foreigner without pretending the calendar stopped in 1979. Aldrich came out of Whitesnake and Dio with a lead tone that still cuts a mix in half. Devin brought the same pocket he had used with David Coverdale. Corabi's résumé, from The Scream and Union through the Mötley Crüe years and a long solo road, gave the choruses a voice that already knew how a big room works. Frederiksen, whose outside book includes Aerosmith, Def Leppard, and a long list of radio rock, kept the tracks short and the hooks rude. Nobody on this record is inventing a genre. They are defending one.

On The Zoo that defense is the whole job. Light 'Em Up belongs in a set with the Angels, with early Whitesnake, with the Crüe records that still had dirt under the nails, and with any band that would rather break a string than fade a chorus. Crank the title cut, then let Take My Soul show you the other side of the same album, five minutes of soul and blues under the same roof. The catalog, the tour dates, and the new chapter live at thedeaddaisies.com. The band keeps the porch light on at Facebook, Instagram, and X. The long-form history is parked at Wikipedia, and the official link hub is at Linktree. When you are done digging, come back to The Zoo. Listener-supported, commercial-free, still playing the records that light the room up.