Eric Church The Outsiders

"I really see this album as a game-changer for us," Eric Church says of The Outsiders, his fourth album and the follow-up to his platinum breakthrough Chief. "I want people to understand that we're here and that we will be reckoned with."

Although Church has already built a reputation as a restless creative force while blazing an unconventional path to country superstardom, The Outsiders represents an audacious quantum leap. The aggressive set, which consists almost entirely of Church compositions or co-compositions, finds the iconoclastic singer-songwriter-guitarist covering a dizzying amount of musical and lyrical ground, taking advantage of a wide range of sonic options to construct an adventurous, consistently thrilling ride. The result is Church's most revealing, personally-charged statement yet—and one that challenges many of the accepted rules of contemporary country music.