Listen To Bruce Springsteen's Premiering 'Death To My Hometown'

"I have spent my life judging the distance between American Reality and the American dream," online music magazine Paste reports Bruce Springsteen said recently a European press conference.

The New Jersey-born Rock and Roll Hall of Famer was talking, at least in part, about his upcoming new album Wrecking Ball, possibly as much a snapshot summation of the last several years' economic crumbling as Nebraska was his vision of the 1980s middle-class realities. The forthcoming set's fifth track, "Death To My Hometown," is Paste's featured song today and it reads and sounds like classic, anthemic Boss.

It's not really a ballad, nor a dirge. Still, it's got a proud Celtic heartbeat atop which Springsteen tells the tale of the American small town's death at the hands of the "robber barons" that he sings used it up and spit it out. For all the surging optimism and relief felt when Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, and all the dreams of he and two Democrat-controlled houses of Congress undoing all the wrongs that had already been done, it's clear Springsteen still feels unsettled and dissatisfied.

And he doesn't feel any safer, he says, from the wealthy he calls on the carpet for looting the less privileged. It's been a bloodless sort of invasion and conquering decimation without a single shot ever being a fired, without one bombshell ever raining down from the sky.

"They destroyed our families' factories and they took our homes/They left our bodies on the planks, the vultures picked our bones," he sings.

But still, he believes the fight's only ever over when one stops fighting.

"So listen up, my sonny boy, be ready for when they come/For they'll be returning sure as the rising sun/Now get yourself a song to sing and sing it 'till you're done..." begins his last verse.

Wrecking Ball hits stores March 6. Meanwhile, check out "Death To My Hometown" below and let us know in the Comments section what you think.

"Death To My Hometown"

Oh, no cannonballs did fly, no rifles cut us down
No bombs fell from the sky, no blood soaked the ground
No powder flash blinded the eye, no deathly thunder sound
But just as sure as the hand of God, they brought death to my hometown
They brought death to my hometown, boys

No shells ripped the evening sky, no cities burning down
No armies stormed the shores for which we'd die
No dictators were crowned
I awoke from a quiet night, I never heard a sound
Marauders raided in the dark and brought death to my hometown, boys
Death to my hometown

They destroyed our families' factories and they took our homes
They left our bodies on the plains, the vultures picked our bones

So listen up, my sonny boy, be ready for when they come
For they'll be returning sure as the rising sun
Now get yourself a song to sing and sing it 'til you're done
Yeah, sing it hard and sing it well
Send the robber barons straight to hell
The greedy thieves who came around
And ate the flesh of everything they found
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now
Who walk the streets as free men now

Ah, they brought death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, whoa!