THE DATSUNS Announce New Album + Single, “Moonstruck Man”!
The DATSUNS – one of Aotearoa / New Zealand’s most celebrated rock bands, the first band out of the Southern Hemisphere to make waves on the early 2000s rock explosion (they toured with the White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age, Metallica and others) and the only band of the era who have undeniably kept getting better – have announced a forthcoming new album Moonstruck Man, out through Hellsquad Records on November 13.
The first taste off the album, which was stitched together in Swedish recording joints & haunts, is out now. The single, also titled Moonstruck Man, is a gloriously rambling slice of classic 1970s-inspired rock. Wah pedals wail and guitars scorch, perhaps with nods to Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore and Mountain’s Leslie West. The high tenored vox & busy rhythms hark back to classic Rush. There’s glam weird & whimsy a la Sparks & Marc Bolan. Tis a tune bedazzled & besotted; moonstruck, indeed.
Before the new album’s release and following a run of New Zealand and Australian dates earlier in the year, the DATSUNS are currently on an extensive run of headline club shows and festival appearances in Europe. Europe – well Sweden to be exact – being the current home of front Datsun Dolf, who for a good while now has simultaneously managed his Datsun duties with those of being The Hellacopters’ bass man (and before that, with playing bass in head Hellacopter Nicke Andersson’s other high energy band, the hard rock power-popping Imperial State Electric.)
(And yes, that means we’ll see Dolf down under again next year, when The Hellacopters return to Australia for the first time in 2003.)
Time stumbles on. So does the clan DATSUN. Change the inevitable. Despite the ever warping landscape, the DATSUNS find those paths of least resistance up the mountain, and take their lifetime’s accumulated lessons & mastery of rock, up the proverbial giant rock, to dispel their latest riffage & learnings, from the highest point, upon the masses, with joyous savagery.
The workings towards an eighth volume of Datsun sonics have been marinated upon, wrangled thru, laid down & paid out. It will see the light of day in this year 2026. Though the clan have lost another drummer, Scandinavian thumper Adam Lindmark of Dead Lord fills the drum throne. A host of Swedish drumming familiars also litter recordings, to deliver the Stoogeoid evil, the powerpop crunch or the classic proto rawk assault & battery.
Lead string wrangler Christian comes to grips with the literal new hand he’s been dealt, after a literal handicapped year, whereupon next level surgical intervention was required to save a paw ravaged.
Entrenched in the semi-rural NZ paradise, Phil has wracked mind & mitts to conjure up new weaving guitaring rhythms to dispense to his comrades across the seas.
In the lands of ice & snow Dolf has sound boarded hooks & crunch w/his likeminded Scandinavian pals & also shot back many a reshaped idea & burst of rok energy to his Datsun brothers.
The end result, a new & eighth album. The promise delivered of more running, riffing, dancing rock, in the Western calendar year of 2026, both studio wrecked & wrangled.
Thus finally begins the reveal of these doings & dealings from Datsun times tethered & spent cajoling new searing & soaring tunes…
LISTEN:
https://music.drm.co.nz/moonstruck-man
the DATSUNS
New Album
Moonstruck Man
Out November 13, 2026 on Hellsquad Records
