The dark, American Gothic sounds of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's latest single, 'Beat the Devil's Tattoo,' form an inviting introduction to the band's upcoming album of the same name. Still, it almost didn't make the cut -- the band didn't even finish writing the song until the night before the album's deadline.

"We called our engineer in the middle of the night and worked all night 'til the sun came up," bassist Robert Levon Been tells Spinner. "The next day we delivered the record to our label and it went straight to the mastering lab. It was a mad dash, hearts pounding down to the last second."

He makes it sound like an Edgar Allan Poe poem, which is entirely appropriate: Been says he named both the song and the album once upon a midnight dreary, when that phrase -- "beat the devil's tattoo" -- jumped out at him while reading Edgar Allan Poe's short story 'The Devil in the Belfry.' Leave the light on and have a listen for yourself.