Tom Morello teams up with former Styx vocalist Dennis DeYoung for The Last Guitar Hero

Former Styx vocalist Dennis DeYoung has released a new single, The Last Guitar Hero, which features electric guitar pyrotechnics from Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. You can check it out above.

The track hails from DeYoung’s forthcoming album, 26 East, Vol. 2, which is set for release on June 11 via Frontiers Music Srl. DeYoung has said it will be his final studio effort.

The new album follows in a similar vein to the first volume, with DeYoung mining “direct links to the classic Styx sound.”

"The last album was supposed to be my final album, but there were so many songs written that Serafino [Perugino] of Frontiers suggested dividing it into two albums rather than one,” DeYoung said.

Dennis DeYoung album

(Image credit: Frontiers Music Srl)

The title of the records, meanwhile, refers to the 26 East address where DeYoung grew up in Roseland, IL on the far south side of Chicago. Across the street lived the Panozzo twins, John and Chuck, who along with DeYoung would go on to form the nucleus of Styx in DeYoung's basement in 1962.

DeYoung previously issued the 26 East, Vol. 2 track Isle of Misanthrope. You can pre-order the new album here.

Richard Bienstock

Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.