The Damned return with Not Like Everybody Else, a raw, emotional covers album that doubles as a farewell to founding guitarist Brian James, who passed away in March 2025. Kicking off the band’s 50th anniversary year, the record plays like a final conversation between old friends who helped invent British punk and never kept still.

James’ shadow is all over this album, by design. Rather than trying to replicate his songwriting, the Damned chose to honor his musical DNA, recording 10 songs by the artists that shaped him and, by extension, shaped the band. It’s a wildly personal set that moves from R. Dean Taylor’s Northern soul burner “There’s A Ghost In My House” to Pink Floyd’s kaleidoscopic “See Emily Play” and the Animals’ snarling “When I Was Young.” These are songs that helped wire James’ musical brain, now refracted through The Damned’s own haunted, swaggering lens.

The emotional core of the album can be summed up with “The Last Time.” Drawn from James’ final live performance with the band at London’s Hammersmith and painstakingly remixed for this release, it lands like a curtain call. Hearing his guitar riding alongside Dave Vanian’s voice again doesn’t feel archival. It feels alive, fragile, and deeply human, the sound of a band saying goodbye the only way they know how, with volume and heart.

There’s also something powerful about how this record was made. Not Like Everybody Else was cut in just five days at Revolver Studio in Los Angeles, fueled by grief, memory, and a rush of unfinished business. It marks the first time Rat Scabies has recorded with the band in four decades, reuniting the classic lineup of Vanian, Captain Sensible, Scabies and Paul Gray, with longtime keyboardist Monty Oxymoron adding texture and atmosphere. You can hear that chemistry in every track, loose, urgent, and crackling with the kind of electricity that only comes from people who’ve lived inside these songs for half a century.

The first single, “There’s A Ghost In My House,” plays straight to the Damned’s strengths. Captain Sensible’s guitar snaps and snarls, Vanian leans  into the song’s eerie romanticism, and suddenly a 1960s soul staple sounds like it was written for a gothic punk band in 2026. It’s exactly the kind of left-turn cover the band have always excelled at, and a perfect tribute to James’ love of melody and grit in equal measure.

To understand why this album hits so hard, you have to remember who Brian James was. He wrote “New Rose,” the first UK punk single, and was the driving force behind Damned, Damned, Damned, the album that helped ignite the entire British punk explosion. Even after leaving the band in 1977, his imprint never faded. The Damned’s mix of menace, romance, and mischief all traces back to those early James compositions.