VINNIE PAUL Says HELLYEAH Is Hoping To Release New Album By October

Shawn of Rockstar Radio (Hamilton, Montana's KBAZ-FM) conducted an interview with Vinnie Paul Abbott (HELLYEAH, PANTERA) on the "black carpet" of the third annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards, which was held last Wednesday, April 20 at Club Nokia in Los Angeles, California. You can now watch the chat below.

When asked about HELLYEAH's current recording and touring plans, Vinnie said, "Next week we're going to Thailand and the Philippines... [I've] never been there before — never played there with PANTERA, DAMAGEPLAN, anybody, so I'm really excited about that. Sorry to all our Japanese fans that we had to cancel the five Japanese shows; we really feel for you and hope things are getting better for you and we're gonna try and make it back to see them in December. And then as soon as we get back [from Thailand and the Philippines], we start recording [the third HELLYEAH album] and going full blast. We're hoping to have the record out by October and be back on the road."

In a recent interview with Pop Culture Madness, HELLYEAH guitarist Tom Maxwell stated about the songwriting sessions for the band's next CD, "Me and Greg [Tribbett, guitar] have been playing around, and the next record's gonna be way more aggressive than anything we've done yet."

Regarding whether the band will once again go back to Vinnie Paul's home in Arlington, Texas, where he has a studio set up to work on the next album, Maxwell said, "It's unclear where we're gonna go. I mean, we might — anything is possible. There's a lot of distractions at [Vinnie's] house. [Laughs] A lot of distractions. But it's kind of our home base. We all kind of scatter across the country and regroup down there. Vinnie has a place out in Vegas, too, but I think that's kind of out of the question, 'cause that's a massive distraction — Vegas. But, you know, if we do it back in Dallas, it's totally fine; the studio is already set up in his house . . . The way we do it, it's very affordable, because it's already in-house — we're not renting out big studios and paying $100,000 or $50,000 on everything, and then you have to fly all your techs out and back and forth, put them up in hotels. At Vinnie's house, it's all-inclusive — we live there, we eat there, we party there, we record and write. So it makes it really, really simple."

HELLYEAH's sophomore album, "Stampede", sold 28,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 8 on The Billboard 200 chart.

HELLYEAH's self-titled debut CD opened with 45,000 units back in April 2007 to land at No. 9.