What better way to celebrate Weezer's 'Pinkerton' officially turning legal today than with a brand new song?

The band released 'Pinkerton,' their now-beloved sophomore effort, 18 years ago today (on Sept. 24, 1996) and they also happen to be smack dab in the middle of promoting their upcoming 10th album, 'Everything Will Be Alright In the End,' which drops Oct. 7.

They've made the new song, 'The British Are Coming,' available as a free download for fans who pre-order the album, but you can also listen to it right here (via Under The Gun Review):

As for 'Pinkerton,' frontman Rivers Cuomo told Rolling Stone back in 2010 that a media backlash over the whimsical nature of the lyrics on Weezer's 1994 self-titled debut led to some of the most personal songs in the band's catalog.

"Critical reaction to that record was that these people are goofy," said Cuomo. "They said there was no depth of emotion there. That really bummed me out in a big way, so I was determined to head in the other direction with the second record and in the simplest, most direct language possible talk about what was happening in my life and how I felt about it. So, yeah. I would say 99 percent of what I'm about on 'Pinkerton' is what was actually happening in my life."

He also explained why the album might remind you of the opera 'Madame Butterfly.' "In 1995, I started to get into 'Madame Butterfly,' and I became so fascinated with that character, Madame Butterfly and ... At the same time, I ... I started becoming infatuated with that kind of girl that's singing in that opera I just saw how the events of my life were unfolding and how they paralleled some of what was happening in that opera. I was like this Pinkerton character. He's this American sailor that tours around the world and stops in a port in some exotic foreign country ... and tries to find a temporary girlfriend and then gets back on his ship and heads to the next town, and it just occurred to me, like, 'Wow, isn't that the rockstar dream right there?' By tying my work to [composer Giacomo] Puccini's work, it just enriched the whole thing and tied it to tradition."

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