CHEVELLE has entered Joe's House Of Compression studio in Pasadena, California with producer Joe Barresi (KYUSS, MELVINS, THE JESUS LIZARD) to begin recording its new album for a tentative early 2020 release. Earlier this month, drummer Sam Loeffler spoke HardDrive Radio about the upcoming follow-up to 2016's "The North Corridor", saying: "We've only done about 13 shows in the last year and a half, but we've been working every day in the studio, just slave driving Pete [Loeffler, guitar/vocals] to get songs written, and it's going really well. So, we start next week with Joe Barresi in Pasadena, at his place. And we're pretty excited about the songs, of course, because if you weren't excited, you wouldn't be recording. But it does feel like a lot of push, 'cause we have to get in there and do that, and then we go to Europe for a week, and then we're gonna do this 10-week tour [with BREAKING BENJAMIN] through the summer. So it's a lot, but it's good." Asked about the CHEVELLE songwriting process, Sam said: "It's just a matter of… Pete writes a song, and we sit down and try and learn it as a band and then start cutting it up to the important parts and then demo it and demo it and demo it, and play it again, then send it to our producer, and he says, 'This all fucking sucks,' and sends it back to us. And then we throw Pete back downstairs and tell him to go do it again, and he does, and then we do all that stuff again. That's actually really the process." According to Sam, he and his bandmates are "open to everything" when it comes to composing new material. "It's really good, because we do have somebody that we trust, which is Joe Barresi, that can weigh in on a song," he explained. "Pete likes to try every single thing — everything he can think of — so he'll spend weeks and weeks on one song, trying just to make sure that he's found the best thing that works for whether it's a solo or a melody, or even just for lyrics — are those the best words that fit in this place? So it's just putting that time in, doing the work, doing the research, really." As for a possible release date for the new CHEVELLE disc, Sam said: "I'd love to see a single in July or August — that would be ideal. As far as the record goes, we're not gonna be able to finish the record while we're there in Pasadena for three weeks, so we'll have to come back at the end of the year to finish the rest of it. We'll see how much we get done… And we'll see what the single is, after we get the songs recorded and see what works best." Last October, Pete told Billboard magazine that he wanted "to stretch a little bit more" on CHEVELLE's next album. "That doesn't always go over well with everybody, but we have to do it," he said. "We're creative beings. I think I could play five of these demo tracks that I have and fans would be into it, and the other four or five, I'm not sure. It will be interesting to see what people think." CHEVELLE's album of rarities from 2002-2016, "12 Bloody Spies: B-Sides And Rarities", was released in October via Epic. CHEVELLE's 2014 album, "La Gargola", gave the band its highest chart debut (No. 3) and produced a No. 1 single on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart in "Take Out The Gunman". "The North Corridor" debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 album chart and produced another No. 1 Mainstream Rock single, "Joyride (Omen)". Photo credit: Christian Lantry
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