Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Chaoszine, Samael’s Michael “Vorph” Locher offered an update on the band’s new album. According to him, the effort will likely be released in 2026.

Locher said the following:

“The album is pretty much recorded. It’s done, but Xy’s [Alexandre ‘Xytras’ Locher] still doing some adjustment with editing. We are looking for the mix. I mean, we were supposed to start mixing in January, but it didn’t happen. So, it’s gonna be before the summer, I will imagine, then mastering. So our plan is to release one song this year at least, and most probably the album next year then. It’s not in the stone, but, yeah, that’s the plan so far.”

He continued when asked about the musical direction:

“Well, it will have a strong bond to ‘Hegemony’, but it’s not the same. I mean, we kind of try to take advantage of the fact that we’ve done different things throughout the years. So we got some space that people will accept that this is SAMAEL. So we kind of try to enjoy that space. Some of the crowd, they enjoy [when a band sticks to a formula] — you know what you’re gonna get. With us, it’s a bit different, but it won’t be a total surprise. There is no experimentation of things that we’ve never, ever done before, but the mix is different and there is a lot more guitar. It’s a lot more guitar-oriented. So, yeah, that’s one of the differences, I would say.”

He went on to discuss the band’s current plans:

“We haven’t planned any tour on this year. It’s just gonna be [standalone] shows. We do this festival in Texas in March, and we go to Brazil. We’ve got three shows in Brazil, we’ve got two shows in Greece, some little festivals. But, basically, what we wanna do this year is finish the album. That’s very much the priority. Let’s hope it will happen. But I’m very confident about the material we got. It took us forever, but it happened during COVID, so we had a lot of time. We were listening the stuff together. So it was like a — I will not say a group material, because Xy’s still doing all the music, but we were discussing it together, so I think it had the time to mature and to reach point where it should be.”

He also added the following after it was mentioned how it can be “a little bit dangerous” to continue tinkering with new material:

“It is. It definitely is. I mean, all the work that Xy’s doing now, for me it is not that important. Because he will play me the song and I’ll say, well, ‘Oh, the break there with the drums, that was not [there before], ah, it’s cool, but does it make the song really better?’ Ah, maybe [very little], but for him it’s very important, especially because it took him so long, so he don’t wanna miss one little thing… I’m a bit more, ‘Let’s do it.’ He’s really picky about everything.”

[via Blabbermouth]