You may have already heard U2’s latest single, “Get on Your Boots,” the first official release from the album “No Line on the Horizon,” due out March 3. It’s an ode to loving life during chaotic times, bolstered by the Edge’s hard-driving, fuzzed-out guitar riff and a chorus that sounds like an eerie blend between The Beatles and Alice in Chains.

While that tune’s already all over the radio and iTunes, the rest of the album remains a relative mystery, except for the lucky few who’ve heard the whole thing. When it comes to early listens, the band likes to play favorites, especially with Irish TV host and deejay Dave Fanning and Brit music writer Neil McCormick. Here’s what they have to say about the record:

“You know in hearing it that they remain a great creative force as a band,” Fanning told U2.com. “Some of the lyric writing seemed more personal than usual to me, and there’s lots of buried songs on there too, songs that will grow on you. ‘Stand Up Comedy’ [is] the nearest thing they’ve ever done to Led Zeppelin. But I could change my mind – wait till I’ve heard it in the bath a few times.”

“[Bono] says ‘No Line on the Horizon’ is the album U2 always wanted to make. He always was an excitable fellow, but he might actually be right,” McCormick wrote in the music blog of the UK’s Telegraph. “So what can I tell you without infringing copyright? It took two listens to find my way into it, which has to be a good thing. It is dense, twisty, shiny, modern pop music, a big mash up of Eno ambience, Edge electricity, rhythm and soul.”

Or, as one fan who heard a few of the record’s leaked tracks – supposedly recorded when Bono blasted them loudly from a villa in the south of France – wrote on a torrent-sharing site: “Bloody hell, that sounds swell!”