BUMBLEFOOT Wants To 'Really Up The Intensity' On SONS OF APOLLO's Second Album

Former GUNS N' ROSES and current SONS OF APOLLO and guitarist Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal recently appeared on the Detroit radio station 101 WRIF's "Talkin' Rock With Meltdown" podcast. The full conversation can be streamed below. A few excerpts follow (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether SONS OF APOLLO wrote any new material during their 2018 world tour:

Ron: "Every once in a while, one of us would start playing something at rehearsal, and we would all just start jamming to it. We'd be like, 'Save that! Save that for the next record!' When I was at home in between touring, every day I would send them a riff — like, 'Here's what I came up with today,' and send them all these crazy ideas. A lot of them, I'm sure we'll use. Some of them, I'm probably going to end up using on another Bumblefoot [solo] album."

On whether he approaches writing for SONS OF APOLLO differently than his solo material:

Ron: "I do, but I find that one tends to affect the other. Whatever I'm doing affects my own solo music, so when I was playing with GUNS or doing ART OF ANARCHY and now SONS OF APOLLO, it bleeds into my own stuff a lot. I'm sure the next solo album I do is going to be more progressive and a little heavier because of the influence and just living SONS OF APOLLO for two years."

On what fans can expect from the next SONS OF APOLLO album:

Ron: "I think it will still sound like us. That's not something we can get away from. It will be similar, I'm sure, to the first record, but maybe just turning up the intensity knob. I'd like to — I'd like the heavier stuff to be heavier, the crazy stuff to be crazier and just really up the intensity... I can't wait. It's going to be good. I just really want to make sure we outdo the last record, and the record after this upcoming one outdoes this one, and we just keep raising the bar and demanding more of ourselves and meeting that higher setting that we keep pushing [for]. In anything, you just always want to become better. You want to keep bettering what you've done and keep growing and keep improving and keep developing. I'm excited to take that step and see what we come up with."

On how the group prepares before they enter the studio:

Ron: "[We] come in with ideas, but a lot of things happen spontaneously. Most of the [first] record happened spontaneously. Even then, when we have ideas, the last thing you want to do is over-build the idea on your own – you want to leave room for it to grow as a band and [allow] everybody to contribute, and make it something that's truly us, not something where somebody runs with it and ends up writing the whole song. That can happen — and on the first record, that happened a bit, which is fine — but [the goal is] trying not to over-write, so if I come up with an idea, if I come up with a riff, I try to just leave it at that riff and resist the urge to make the next part and the part after that and say, 'Hey, check out this whole song I wrote.' We all want it to be a band effort where we all contribute so that it does sound like all of us."

On whether he thinks he's a good fit for SONS OF APOLLO:

Ron: "Absolutely. I started doing some crazy progressive stuff, like my first record, my second record. It changed over time, and this sort of brings me back to that. I forgot how much I love playing crazy progressive stuff."

SONS OF APOLLO will record their sophomore album in January, but due to the busy schedules of the group's individual members, the record is not expected to be released until 2020.

SONS OF APOLLO's debut album, "Psychotic Symphony", was released in October 2017 via InsideOut Music.