Perennial Australian favourite The Mountain Goats return with a new album, 'Beat The Champ!'

Following the release of 2012's dark 'Transcendental Youth,' band member John Darnielle shifted his focus to raising his young family and publishing his debut novel 'Wolf in White Van,' which spent several weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List and was nominated for the National Book Award. His subsequent return to recording came in the form of 'Beat the Champ,' a collection of songs about professional wrestling.

Of the bands upcoming 15th studio album, Darnielle says, "'Beat the Champ' is about professional wrestling, which was an avenue of escape for me when I was a kid. Wrestling was low-budget working class entertainment back then, strictly UHF material. It was cheap theatre. You had to bring your imagination to the proceedings and you got paid back double. I wrote these songs to re-immerse myself in the blood and fire of the visions that spoke to me as a child, and to see what more there might be in them now that I'm grown."