METALSUCKS EXCLUSIVE: ATHEIST’S KELLY SHAEFER TALKS NEW ALBUM

Last week, Atheist frontman Kelly Shaefer kindly checked in with us to talk about his band’s addition to dates on the awesome Death To All tour. And just like he does with Atheist’s deceptively catchy jamz, Shaefer snuck into our gab a tantalizing detail for the attentive fan: Atheist is now preparing a follow-up to their first post-reactivation classic, Jupiter.

So I fired back to Shaefer a request to elaborate on that tidbit: Is this happening soon? With Jupiter as a jumping-off point, what are his expectations for this fifth record? How excited is he? Can I play on any/all of the songs? Ever the generous dude, Shaefer replied thusly:

On Atheist’s follow-up to 2009’s Jupiter:
“We will be writing all year for a spring 2013 release. It’s going to really be mammoth in terms of the tools we have to work with on this record, one being our new bass player Travis Morgan. He is a very talented young bass player very much in the spirit of Roger Patterson [late founding Atheist bassist], so I can hardly wait to craft a record around his bass and with Steve Flynn on drums, of course.”

On “getting back to work” on new music:
“It is indeed time to get to work. We are just gonna dip outta the studio long enough to do the Death to All tour dates and then it’s back to the grindstone!”

On expectations for lyrics, following Jupiter‘s thread of rejecting religion:
“To be honest, I never even think about [lyrics] until I sit down to write them — I can’t until the music moves me to write you know? [But] I can tell you this much: My topics will be far removed from any religious points of view or disdain for the church. There is a lot of other stuff pissing me off lately, so I have plenty of other topics to cover. I am sure that, if nothing else, they will make for some interesting reading while banging!”

-ADF

Catch Atheist on the Death To All tour, along with members of Death, Cynic, Sadus, and more (info here). Get Atheist music here and here.