Get Out Your Metronomes Because Animals As Leaders is Gearing Up for New Music

Instrumental progressive metal band Animals As Leaders are apparently in the lab, cooking up some new sonic concoctions and getting them ready for release sometime in the future. It’s been a while since the release of their 2022 album Parrhesia, so recent news that they’re putting together some new music shouldn’t be all that surprising, really.

Yet during a recent interview with Guitar World, Tosin Abasi said he wants to make 2025 the year he puts his nose to the grindstone and gets working on a new record.

“We are about to begin pre-production on an album. We do have some touring – we’re headed to Europe in a few weeks – but I want to spend a portion of this year writing the record. In a perfect world, it’ll be written and recorded by the end of this year.”

So for all intents and purposes, it’s extremely likely that we won’t actually get the new album until 2026. That’s not exactly a long time to wait, but it’s not exactly tomorrow, either. So… silver linings?

Abasi was also asked about the supposed blues album he’s supposedly working on. And while he said he was dabbling with the genre as of late, he doesn’t feel he’s at the right level to be able to compose and put out his own album out of “respect” for the art.

“This is funny, because [Abasi Concepts COO, Ivan Chopik] is a fantastic blues guitarist, and I’d never really gotten into the genre. And there’s amazing players like Josh Smith and Eric Gales that I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ve been missing out.’

“So I had a moment over the pandemic, where I was like, ‘I’m learning the blues,’ and I got really into it, and I said I’d do an album. I gotta respect the art, and I don’t know that I’ve evolved to the point where I can [do it justice], you know what I mean? But it’s fun. It’s fun to mess around with.”