CHAD GRAY On New MUDVAYNE Music: 'You Can Tell It's Special'

In a recent interview with Kris Peters of Australia's Heavy, MUDVAYNE frontman Chad Gray spoke about the progress of the songwriting sessions for their next studio release. The reunited metallers haven't put out any new material since 2009, which means we're coming up on nearly a decade and a half without a single fresh MUDVAYNE song.

"We've started putting some new stuff together a little bit and people that have heard [some of the early demo] stuff are really excited about it," Chad said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "Only the people that are closest to us have heard anything, and, like I said, it's really rough; it's demos. But you can tell it's special. And I think that we have to make sure it's MUDVAYNE. We have to make sure that it's what we want. So we'll just have to see. We were working on it, working on it, working on it a little bit here and there.

"We all live states away from each other — nobody lives even close to each other — so it makes it a little bit difficult," he explained. "But we were able to get some stuff demoed up or whatever, but with us being so far apart, it's a little slow going. And then we just kind of hit a wall. We were, like, 'Okay, we've gotta get back into touring.' So we put everything together and we went back out this summer.

"We'll see what this fall brings," Gray added. "We all just got home [at the end of August], so we're still kind of decompressing. I'm feeling pretty good now. We just put everything on hold and we just wanted to focus on touring. But now that we're done with it, as everybody starts raising their head out of the sand, hopefully we can get together and do something. I don't know — maybe we'll have something new by the time we come down there [to Australia in February 2024] and see you. We'll see."

This past August, Chad told The Oakland Press that he and his MUDVAYNE bandmates had "four [songs] in the pipe. I've written each one of them probably three different times, 'cause it's like nothing's good enough," he revealed. "We're gonna keep pushing. We're all getting along really good. We're all talking. Hopefully we all want the same thing from our music, so we'll see. It's definitely the thing that makes the most sense to do now."

MUDVAYNE kicked off its first headlining tour in over 14 years, "The Psychotherapy Sessions", in July. Support on the 26-city trek, which was produced by Live Nation, came from COAL CHAMBER, along with GWAR, NONPOINT and BUTCHER BABIES.

Previously, MUDVAYNE made waves in 2022 when they embarked on the "Freaks On Parade" tour co-headlined with ROB ZOMBIE. This 2023 tour, however, marked MUDVAYNE's first headlining endeavor since 2009.

Gray told The Oakland Press that his "main motivation for putting [MUDVAYNE] back together and coming back was our fans", including those who discovered the band during its absence. "There's so many younger kids that are coming up and coming into our world, the metal world, and they're learning about MUDVAYNE," he said. "So you have this, like, the ground's kind of rumbling and it goes out and touches more and more people, but we weren't out there to scratch that itch. You still have your actual fan base but you're accumulating new people. So when we came back it was very exciting for us. It was about our fans and giving those new fans the experience."

MUDVAYNE formed in 1996 and has sold over six million records worldwide, earning gold certification for three albums ("L.D. 50", "The End Of All Things To Come", "Lost And Found"). The band is known for its sonic experimentation, innovative album art, face and body paint, masks and uniforms. MUDVAYNE is Gray, Greg Tribbett (guitar, backing vocals),Matthew McDonough (drums, synthesizer) and Ryan Martinie (bass).

Gray spent 17 years fronting HELLYEAH, which released its sixth studio album, "Welcome Home", in September 2019 via Eleven Seven Music. The disc marked the group's final effort with drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott, who passed away more than five years ago.

MUDVAYNE did not tour behind its fifth album, which was barely promoted and sold weakly upon release.

Photo courtesy of Live Nation