During a recent interview with Metal Hammer, Body Count frontman Ice-T offered an update on the band’s new album “Merciless.” According to him, the group are “about halfway through” with the effort.

Ice-T said the following:

“We’re nine songs in, and we’re gonna put 15 on the album. It hasn’t been the easiest album to record, simply because we’re coming off the heels of ‘Carnivore.’ It was a great, award-winning record and we never got to perform it. Playing songs on the road is usually what inspires your next album, so we came into this kinda cold, from a dead space.”

He continued:

“I think we are staying in the same direction. ‘Manslaughter’ was a reintroduction to Body Count, not to just our old fans, but to a whole new group. ‘Bloodlust’ was even better than ‘Manslaughter,’ and ‘Carnivore’ was better than ‘Bloodlust.’ We’re going to stay in the same vein, sound and production, but make better and better records.”

He went on to say that the band may collaborate with Dave Mustaine (Megadeth) once again:

“Dave Mustaine has got at us already. He wants to write a song. Dave worked with us on ‘Bloodlust’ – he did ‘Civil War.’ But usually what we do with a Body Count album is make it first by ourselves, then call in people.”