FOZZY Has 'A Lot Of Great Tunes' Written For '2020' Album

FOZZY frontman Chris Jericho recently spoke to PureGrainAudio's Paltrocast about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's follow-up to 2017's "Judas" album. He said (hear audio below): "It's interesting, because the writing process has been in full swing for probably six months or so. And now it's at the point where I get sent new demos — finished demos — maybe once a week. So I think now we're at the point where it's time to start recording. But things have changed. We're on Sony Music now, and the days of recording a record and then releasing a single and having 'em kind of come out together, simultaneously, are done. Now it's more about keeping the momentum going by just releasing singles, which is why [2019 single] 'Nowhere To Run' came out when it did. So we have a lot of great tunes. And whether we need to release another single before the album is ready, that's fine too. So it's kind of a work in progress, but there's a lot of progress being made. The record is called '2020', so it's gonna have to come out within the next 12 months or it's gonna be irrelevant at that point."

FOZZY's next album is once again being produced by Johnny Andrews, who worked on "Judas" and previously co-wrote FOZZY's "Lights Go Out" track back in 2014. He has also written songs with the likes of ALL THAT REMAINS, THREE DAYS GRACE and HALESTORM.

Jericho recently said that FOZZY will take the time it needs to make a worthy follow-up to "Judas", whose title track has 33 million YouTube views, was No. 1 on iTunes charts in eight different countries and spent nine weeks in the top ten on the Active Rock Charts in the USA.

"The thing is you can't rush something like this, because 'Judas' had three Top 10 singles on it," he explained. "So it was a huge breakthrough for us — it really took us to the next level. Your next record has to be better — not as good; it has to be better. And so there's no reason to rush it. I find in this biz, 'Here today, gone later today,' if you make the wrong decisions, is very easy, and also, 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' So while people are waiting, as long as we know we've got some of this, like, 'Wow, this is very, very good, and we're gonna really continue this build that we've got,' then we'll be ready. Until then, we're gonna take the time it takes to get it right."

There is no danger, however, that FOZZY fans will undergo the same struggles experienced by followers of GUNS N' ROSES, who spent more than a decade waiting for the arrival of "Chinese Democracy" before it was finally released in 2008.

"I guarantee it won't take 14 years to put out the next FOZZY record," Chris said. "And I think you see that with [other] bands — METALLICA [taking] eight years between records. I don't think there's any reason for that — especially not for us. We wanna get it done, but we don't wanna rush it. But we also know there's a black hole, like a window that you have to go through. If you wait too long, people forget about you."

"Nowhere To Run" was released in August.