Another Day, Another Surprise Release: Wolfmother and 'New Crown'

Beyoncé is a trendsetter on several levels, but her biggest contribution to the music industry in recent years has to be the concept of releasing an album without telling anyone. The most recent group to jump onboard is Wolfmother, as the Australian rock band dropped its third LP New Crown on Monday. Fans can purchase the new album at the band's Bandcamp page, or stream the album for free.

It's not a total surprise. The band posted a teaser trailer for the album, then unnamed, and then posted an entire demo version of the album for one day during December. Fans were surprised enough that the band had any content left, considering they had split briefly during April 2013 and frontman Andrew Stockdale had released what was left of Keep Moving as a solo album.

The album is a little more rough than the previous two releases from the group, probably the result of both musical approach and the quick turnaround of the album. Although the group has gotten countless Zeppelin/Sabbath classic rock comparisons over the years, the more aggressive approach favored during New Crown seems to follow in the footsteps of Jon Spencer.

The jury's still out on whether dropping a surprise album makes for good sales. Beyoncé's self-titled album was a smash, although so are most of her albums. The furor created by the out-of-nowhere release helped generate twice as many first week sales as her previous album, 4. On the other hand, Kid Cudi's Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon sold 87,000 copies after he dropped the album by surprise late in February. That was a about a 30,000 drop-off from his first week sales for 2013's Indicud. There's no telling whether that's an indication of Cudi's performance or commercial approach.

Wolfmother was somewhat clever in dropping the album on a Monday, versus the traditional Tuesday release. This will give the album an extra day of sales before next week's Billboard 200 chart emerges.