Watch Steve Hackett’s New Video for ‘Love Song to a Vampire': Exclusive Premiere

Progressive rock fans who are into Steve Hackett and vampires are going to love the former Genesis guitarist's new video for “Love Song to a Vampire.” You can watch the exclusive premiere above.

The video was directed by Paul Gosling, and "shot in the historic and atmospheric city of Leicester," Hackett tells us. "Paul was keen to highlight the combination of Gothic imagery with the portrayal of an abusive relationship implicit in the song. We discussed the ideas together. ... The transformation from the glamour that lures the victim to the final destructive hold.”

The song is a highlight of Hackett’s new album, Wolflight, which comes out today. The record follows more than two years of shows with the Genesis Revisited project, which found Hackett visiting more than 20 countries last year. While he was happy to revisit his Genesis days, he says he was anxious to get back to his solo work. He even worked on Wolflight during his days off from the tour.

Hackett collaborated with members of his regular band on the new album and also invited some special guests to help out with the recording. “I’ve got guys from all over the place on this one," he says. Among the artists who make appearances are Yes bassist Chris Squire, who plays on "Love Song to a Vampire," guitarist Nick Beggs and Malik Mansurov, who "plays a thing called the tar, and he’s a hotshot on the tar -- a bit like a cross between John McLaughlin and Ravi Shankar," notes Hackett.

Wolflight is “basically a rock album,” according to Hackett, but he promises plenty of twists and turns to engage fans. “There’s some other instruments on it that I’ve not worked with," he says. "I was working with the fretless Arabian lute, regional instruments and world music -- there’s that aspect as well.”

He says there's also some "campfire stuff, small groups of musicians that work in a folky kind of way. It’s as if you’ve got one team that explores a harmonic idea within a song and then it gets handed over to the other team for the acoustic aspects, and then that gets handed over to the electric aspect with the band and then it gets handed over to the orchestral aspect, so that it goes much bigger."

So what that means is "if it’s an angry sounding song, I managed to get the orchestra sounding angry and intense," says Hackett. In other words, "it’s not as if it all goes lovey-dovey, just because it goes to a symphonic stage. It doesn’t work chronologically like that, it’s a bit like a race: They hand on the baton, one to the other and each do their own thing with different teams. It keeps coming at you.”

Wolflight is available on CD and vinyl and as a digital download. Hackett says he plans to tour in support of the albums later this year, starting in October.

See Genesis and Other Rockers on the Top 100 Albums of the '80s

Criminally Underrated Rock Albums