Eric Church gave the live debut of his new single “Hands of Time” at the 2025 ACM Awards, delivering a performance that included a pair of horn players, five back-up vocalists, and his own band.

Church kept it cool in his signature sunglasses on the ACM stage. He performed in front of a giant projection of an old-school clock and gears. Some of the audience members enthusiastically got to their feet while he was performing.

“Hands of Time” is the first track on Church’s new album, Evangeline vs. the Machine, a record framed by horns, strings, and a rousing choir on nearly every song. It’s the closest Church comes to giving fans something familiar the album — a catchy, glossy, radio-ready anthem with a singalong chorus and shoutouts to familiar classic-rock fare like “Hollywood Nights,” “Back in Black,” and “Even the Losers.” (Church did something similar in the lyrics to his 2016 hit “Record Year.”)

Evangeline vs. the Machine also includes the studio version of “Johnny,” a song he performed live in Nashville last year at all 23 of his To Beat the Devil residency shows at his bar Chief’s. The song, inspired by Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” was the climax of the show, involving a “flash” choir that materialized seemingly out of nowhere to help send “Johnny” to the rafters.

Trending Stories

Rolling Stone’s four-and-a-half-star review of Evangeline vs. the Machine hailed the LP as a “masterwork…that cements Church’s legacy as a try-anything artist, one with more in common with, say, Dylan than his peers. It’s impossible to think of another mainstream country singer daring enough to emphasize French horn over electric guitar on a major-label album.”

Church is set to perform Evangeline vs. the Machine in full during some special shows in Nashville, London, and at Colorado’s Red Rocks, before launching his Free the Machine Tour in the fall.