Alex Williams Trades Hair Metal for Outlaw Country On Surprise Return

When Alex Williams decided to cover Ratt, Poison, and Skid Row last year on Space Brain, it felt like a detour—a fun one, sure, but a detour nonetheless. The Indiana native had built his reputation on outlaw country grit, starting with his 2017 debut Better Than Myself. But that hair-metal pivot turned out to be more than just a novelty; it revealed something worth paying attention to: beneath all that Eighties glam-rock bombast lived actual songs, actual craft. The bombastic production hid real songwriting.

Now Williams is closing that chapter and stepping back into the dusty boots that made him. His new EP, Discount Country, arrives this Friday with five tracks that feel like coming home—twangy, outlaw-leaning, and rooted in the country sound that Williams made his name on. The premiere track, Time on His Hands, showcases exactly why the detour was worth taking and why the return matters. There’s a maturity in his smooth baritone, a clarity in the storytelling that wasn’t there before.

Williams recorded Discount Country with producer Ben Fowler, mining songs he’d written shortly after wrapping the Space Brain sessions in 2024. The title itself is self-aware tongue-in-cheek—a bargain-bin collection of older country-style songs he’d dug up. There’s no pretense here, no grand statement. Just five solid tracks that fit together naturally, the kind of records that work best when you stop overthinking them.

The timing feels intentional. Williams heads back on the road later this month with an emphasis on his native Midwest, the same region where he first discovered both outlaw country and those Eighties rock staples gathering dust in his dad’s wooden CD case back in the basement. Those Tesla and Faster Pussycat albums taught him something about swagger and attitude. Now he’s bringing that energy back to country, where it belongs.

What makes this story interesting isn’t just that Williams is returning to what he does best—it’s that he doesn’t seem to view the detour as a mistake. Space Brain wasn’t a false step; it was a creative exhale that let him stretch different muscles before coming back stronger. That’s the mark of an artist confident enough to explore and secure enough in his identity to come home.