ALICE IN CHAINS Is Working On Follow-Up To 'The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here'

ALICE IN CHAINS bassist Mike Inez has revealed in a new interview with Framus & Warwick that the band has returned to the studio to begin work on the long-awaited follow-up to 2013's "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here" album.

"Today I'm leaving this studio," where the interview took place, "and going to another studio, and I'm gonna make a bunch of racket," Inez said during the chat, which can be seen in four parts below.

"Yeah, we're hard at work," he continued. "We're always doing something — I mean, it's just what we do. We just play, and usually everything else will come together.

"We used to worry about the label, or the management and… The band has turned into a… It's a business, you know, and there's a lot going on [on the] business [end of it]. So when we go into these studios, this is kind of like our clubhouse, this is the place that we go, and we try not to make this business. This is fun, and we try to make our work environment fun for each other."

Inez added: "Being in the studio for twenty hours a day isn't fun, but it's a great job. But we try to make that our clubhouse and separate that from the business, kind of. So we're still in that… playing in the sandbox, kind of, for this new record anyways. We're still getting together in the same city, and plugging in in the same room.

"Today is actually our first day, and I'm already late, 'cause I'm here talking to you [laughs], so it shows you how professional we still are."

Inez also talked about how ALICE IN CHAINS' recording process has changed over the years, particularly as recording budgets have been slashed and many state-of-the-art commercial recording studios have closed down.

"There's been albums, say, like 'Jar Of Flies', where we were in between tours," he said. "So we wrote and recorded and mixed and mastered that album in ten days. We showed up, [and] I think Jerry [Cantrell, guitar] had one song — a song called 'Don't Follow', which was one of the later songs on the record. But we had nothing — we just showed up: 'Here's our time period.'"

"I kind of miss those days," he continued. "We don't do records like that anymore. I wish more people did records like that.

"There's no budgets to go experiment like that in studios. Usually in a place like this, we have already worked our song, we know what we're gonna play. [There might be] a couple tweaks here and there and stuff, or grooves and tones. But, for the most part, we know what we're doing when we walk into these places. We try not to waste too much money when we walk into these special cathedrals that are going away. All these places are going away. It's hard to see your favorite dinosaurs dying in a tar pit. [Laughs]"

"The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here" was the band's second disc with singer William Duvall, who joined in 2006 following the death of Layne Staley.

"The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here" sold 62,000 copies in its first week of release.