From the Fires

From the Fires, released on 10 November 2017 through Lava/Republic, is the eight-song set Greta Van Fleet billed as a double EP. Half of it is the band's debut EP, Black Smoke Rising, carried over intact from that April; the other half was newly recorded. The four new tracks were cut at Rust Belt Studios in Detroit in the month before the record was announced, again with Al Sutton and Marlon Young producing, the pair behind Black Smoke Rising. Two are originals, "Edge of Darkness" and "Talk on the Street"; the other two are covers of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and Fairport Convention's "Meet on the Ledge". Josh Kiszka said the common thread running through all eight songs was basic humanity. The sleeve and the title were Josh's idea too. When the band members were children, their families and friends spent part of every summer at a place called Yankee Springs, where the evenings were passed around a campfire, playing music and telling stories. That picture of people gathered at a fire, handing stories down, became the starting point for both. "Highway Tune" had reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Songs chart dated 16 September 2017 and held the top spot for five weeks, and "Safari Song" followed it there on the chart of 24 February 2018. From the Fires entered Billboard's Hard Rock Albums chart at No. 1 (dated 2 December 2017) and peaked at No. 36 on the Billboard 200. At the 61st Grammy Awards it won Best Rock Album, in a category whose other nominees were albums by Alice In Chains, Fall Out Boy, Ghost and Weezer; the band were also up for Best New Artist. In Japan the record circulated only as an import until Universal Music Japan issued the first Japanese edition on 7 August 2024 (UICY-16233). It came out ahead of the band's Summer Sonic 2024 appearance, their first Japanese dates in about five and a half years, as an SHM-CD with liner notes, lyrics and translations.