“The devil is busy” is what churchgoers say when trouble arrives, and Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 take the phrase, as “Devil Just Busy”, and point it at the darkness closing over contemporary society. Seun turns the preachers’ own words back on them: on the title track and first single of his upcoming album Na Dem, he already listed reverends, bishops, pastors and imams among the “winch men” he wants saving from, and his father Fela Kuti went after the same pulpits on “Shuffering and Shmiling” in 1978.

“DJB” gives the phrase seven minutes of dark, mid-tempo afrobeat, laid down by two drummers, Mario Orsinet and Femi Koleoso, and two bassists, Kunle Justice and Gbeke Ojutiku. Seun sings and plays saxophone on top, with two trumpets and four more saxophones building the horn arrangements around him. Koleoso, who leads Ezra Collective, also produced the track, as he did the whole of Na Dem.

Na Dem arrives on 6 November via Django Music, eight days before Fela becomes the first African solo artist inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Seun, who inherited Egypt 80 at 14 when his father died in 1997, will be in Los Angeles to represent him at the ceremony, five weeks after the band play the city’s Regent Theater on 9 October. That date sits in a US run that also takes in Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach on 7 October, FORM Arcosanti in Arizona and Webster Hall in New York on 14 October.

Listen to “DJB” HERE