Queen drummer Roger Taylor has sprung a surprise on fans with the sudden release of a new song and short film titled "Journey's End."

As pointed out in the press release announcing the project, "Journey's End" follows his 2013 LP Fun on Earth — yet it's a creative about face from that album, presenting a side of Taylor's musical personality that's "symphonic in scale and autumnal in mood." You can watch it above.

"It's a 'piece,'" Taylor explains of the song, which clocks in at nearly seven minutes. "Which is why there is a long solo in it. I've just let it take its own course. I just didn't want to make it quick, edit it. I wanted it to be fairly contemplative, fairly dreamlike, a mood piece."

That "autumnal mood" described is reflective of the song's look at mortality — Taylor's admission that, as the press release puts it, "eternity is not an option."

"It is a sort of acceptance of the fact that this a journey, and that journey will come to an end," he adds. "Even the bass sequence, which is almost random, is a plodding footstep kind of thing. A journey towards the tail end, the September of one's years."

Those feelings, Taylor admits, are partly the aftereffect of a "dreadful year" in which Queen lost two members of its extended family through the deaths of David Bowie and George Michael. Yet even as he looks back on what he's lost — and contemplates the end of his own personal journey — he remains committed to the future of the band.

"This has been an incredible journey — our career, our band Queen, which we thought was over with the death of Freddie, it just seems to continue, almost with a life of its own," concludes Taylor. "And as long as people want to see us, we will be happy to indulge them."

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