With their new self-titled album due on 28 August 2026 via Spinefarm, Airbourne have shared the single Alive After Death (Last Plane Out), along with an open letter from Joel O’Keeffe to Motörhead legend Lemmy.
Here, Joel reflects on how Lemmy’s advice guided them through years of hard work, collaborations, and challenges to create their new album, one that the band are proud their roadies finally love.
The Joel O’Keeffe letter reads:
Dear Lemmy,
Well, mate, it’s been a long time since we’ve said “g’day” or shared a stage together. We’ve never forgotten one of the things you said to us, which was: “No matter what, stay true to yourselves. Don’t worry about all the other bullshit in the music industry. Make music that your roadies will like. Because they’ve heard your shit more than anyone else, if they like it, everyone will love it.”
Mate, we did it.
Six years ago, we shut the roller doors to everyone and got to work writing songs for this record, spending many, many hours, many, many days, weeks, months and years writing and writing, throwing things out, starting again, and always sifting for gold.
After about five years of this, we felt that we had a solid bunch of Rock’ n’ Roll songs happening. Then, Mutt Lange and Bryan Adams brought in their big guns, and a couple of those songs we wrote with them have made the record.
We wrote a lot with Bryan, and he was incredibly inspiring, and we learned a lot from him-a true rock ‘n’ roll gentleman. At that point, a long-time mate of ours, Vick Wright, flew out to Australia, and we wrote and wrote and wrote some more with him. He’s a rock ‘n’ roll street poet, and he taught us a lot as well. We ended up with some real good rockers with him.
We sent everything to Brian Howes, and he said we have a solid record now, and he was pumped to work his magic.
Dante from Spinefarm, who has been a real champion all along the way on this record, gave us the green light to make Airbourne.
We shipped out a ton of gear from our Manchester compound and from all over the world, loaded it into a semi-tonne truck, and drove it up the Eastern guts of Australia from Melbourne to Music Farm Studios, hidden in a jungle on the surf coast of Australia. This place is surrounded by snakes, Sydney funnel-web spiders, rats and cane toads—plenty of stuff that can kill ya. We know you would have loved it there because that which doesn’t kill you only makes you louder!
We coped with hurricane weather, flash flooding rains, palm trees that were torn out of the ground. One of them almost killed Streety, our bass player. That was a very near miss.
The tape machine was a fucker. It wouldn’t stop blowing up but she sounded great, so she was worth dealing with and waiting on.
Every day we would wake up, jump over a brown snake or python, feed the pigs, say “g’day” to the goats, watch the one male rooster with a harem of hens swooning around him whilst he’s strutting around the place like he was King Dick. Who knew that fowl could be so inspiring?
We’d make our way down the hill to the studio, jumping over “old mate,” the resident snake that lived at the front doors of the studio. When we entered the studio, we’d make some heart-starting coffees, put some pies in the pie warmer, VB’s on ice, then Brian Howes, Mike Fraser, and Karl Dicaire would show up.
A few cigarettes, laughs, and caffeine later, we’d talk some bullshit, and then we’d get rocking. For about 12-16 hours, we would go. Time ceased to exist for us, and it was the best fun we’ve ever had making an album.
The last batch of songs we wrote with Brian around the Studio Kitchen table, often whilst hurricanes had killed the power. While they were smashing the studio together, we brought this album home.
The main console was the original Neve desk from Albert Studios 1 here in Australia, (AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, The Angels, Billy Thorpe and more), there’s an unmistakable Raw Oz rock tone in this desk and you’d love it.
We didn’t finish the record in time, as we had to go back out on tour, which actually worked out really well because lyrics that weren’t written in that studio needed to come from being on the road, and that’s exactly what happened with the song Alive After Death.
We came back after the tour to our Melbourne studio home, down in St Kilda, the famous Hothouse Studios, where we recorded our first EP.
We’ve always had a love affair with Hothouse—it has the Neve console from Albert’s Studio 2, so it was gutsy to go back there and finish this record off.
Craig Harnath, who we’ve been mates with forever, joined the team, and after another tour, another few months and trips down to Hothouse, we finally finished the record.
Zakk Cervini joined the team and mixed up a Rock ‘n’ Roll storm of a record. He’s a real weapon! Ted Jensen—aka “the great one”— gave Zakk’s atomic mixes a real supercharged spit and polish and brought it all home with his classic trademark Sterling master print that only he can do.
So, we finally ripped off the Band-Aid and mustered up the balls to play it to the roadies…. And guess what? They love this one! Thank fuck! Only took us 20 years!
Thanks again for all of your words back then mate. We’ve never forgotten them and we wouldn’t be here without ya. We’ll always keep you ‘Alive After Death‘.
Rock on, Lem.
Much Love,
Joel.
Airbourne release their new self-titled album on 28 August 2026 via Spinefarm. Pre-orders are available from airbourne.lnk.to/Airbourne.
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