Jethro Tull Release New Song “Hammer on Hammer”

Jethro Tull has recently released the third single, “Hammer on Hammer,” taken from their upcoming album, RokFlote.

“Hammer on Hammer,” was inspired by the hammer-wielding Norse god Thor, whose mortal enemy was Jormungand the sea serpent. The music video features a statue of Thor that gets nearly swallowed by a much larger statue of Jormungand, before cutting to visuals of fighter planes and tanks amid a war-torn landscape.

The band’s 23rd album, RokFlote, follows last year’s The Zealot Gene. Jethro Tull previously teased the album with the songs “Ginnungagap” and “The Navigators.” The album is now available for preorder in a variety of formats and is set to be released on April 21.

Talking about how he came up with the title of the album, frontman Ian Anderson revealed in an interview:

“I started with the idea of a predominantly instrumental album for rock flute – as in rock music.

“When the subject material of the album presented itself, I was drawn to the term Ragnarok from Norse mythology – their version of apocalyptic end times or Biblical Armageddon. The ‘final showdown’ scenario is ubiquitous and inherent in Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, for example.”

He continued:

“Ragnarok translates as ‘destiny of the Gods,’ the ‘rok’ part meaning destiny, course, direction. With umlaut firmly in place, courtesy of the Germanic origins of Old Norse, Flute became ‘flote’ in keeping with the spelling. With me so far? I just can’t miss the glorious opportunity for a good and legitimate umlaut.”

Meanwhile, Jethro Tull recently launched their European tour that is scheduled to run through October. Stream their latest single below.