CHAD GRAY Wants New MUDVAYNE Music To Be 'Timeless'

In a new interview with Pablo of the Minneapolis, Minnesota radio station 93X, 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 a decade and a half has gone by without a single fresh MUDVAYNE song.

Asked if he and his bandmates have done any "file sharing" to create their new music, Chad said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We've done it pretty much every fucking way you can do it at this point. But we did some file sharing and stuff like that. Greg [Tribbett, guitar] sent around some risks and then Matt [McDonough, drums] — 'cause Matt does a lot of like ambient-style music on his own, so he can definitely program. So he programmed some drums, and, obviously, when I get that… All I need is basically the guitar riff and I can start kind of feeling it out for melody and lyrical direction and shit like that. I don't need necessarily the whole thing. I can just have very basic shit for me to start writing… But I'll have the nuts and bolts, and, ultimately, that's what file sharing is all about. It's about getting the nuts and bolts of what you're wanting to do. And then from there, you go in the studio and you fucking tweak it, and you fucking add harmonies and you add fucking layers and fucking overdubs, and you can go crazy and then really make it special. So I'm excited about that. We haven't done that yet. That's the one thing we haven't done yet, is got in a room with a fucking producer."

Addressing the pressure he and his bandmates feel to make music of a high-enough quality to live up to the fans' expectations, Chad said: "Honestly, dude, if we were to go into a studio situation and we were to record something, if every single fucking person on our team — us, the producer, our fucking manager, our fucking lawyer — if everyone on our team is not fucking jumping up and down and high-fiving, then it ain't worth putting out. That's just me — I only wanna put out fucking great shit. And with great shit, [I mean] timeless. You wanna create timeless music, and you have to ask yourself the question, 'Is that timeless? Is this timeless music or is this a fucking fad? Are we following something here or are we leading something here?'"

Gray also talked about the relationship he has with his MUDVAYNE bandmates, particularly as it relates to the creative process. He said: "We are who we are. How we are with our personalities is almost the dynamic of what makes MUDVAYNE great. And it's not conflict or whatever, but we test each other. But I think that that comes across in the music we create. And I think we've always had that since the beginning or whatever. And I think that that's one of the things that kind of makes it great. Obviously, we overcome it and we get through it, but there are like times when we start writing, man, where it's, like, 'Do we want the same thing?' We're trying to mold it. But the good thing is that everybody in the band is really open-minded, and that's what it takes. But when we start, like, I have a vision, Matt has a vision, Ryan [Martinie, bass] has a vision, Greg has a vision, and they're not always the same. Through that, you bring it together, but you've gotta give a little, take a little, give a little, take a little, but you've gotta be willing to do that.

"But, yeah, it's really cool," he continued. "I like the dynamic we have. I like the personalities that we have in the band, and I think that, honestly, that's one of the things that makes it great. And I think that's one of the things that make it special.

"Our music is emotional music, whether it's helplessness or fucking anger or aggression or any fucking gamut — our music definitely covers the gamut of all emotions — and I think that those emotions are what bring people close to our music, because they can build a relationship with it," Chad added. "'Cause I'm not the kind of writer that's, like, 'This is what the song is. This is what the song's about.' I kind of get you going down a road, maybe reel you in a little bit so you kind of get the vibe on where I'm at, but I'm giving you off ramps all the way through it where you can take it and make it applicable to your life. But that's what makes it special, 'cause now you're building your own relationship with it and not what I'm telling you the relationship has to be. There's no boundaries on it, so it's pretty boundless."

This past March, Chad told The Jesea Lee Show that he and his MUDVAYNE bandmates were still "trying to figure out" where they wanted their new material to go.

"Right now, we've got some, you can call them whole songs 'cause they have a start and a finish, but I feel like they're kind of half-songs," he said at the time. "I just don't think they're realized yet. I don't think we have figured out exactly how we want this to play out with what we're doing in our business or how we want it to sonically sound."

Gray continued: "Nothing inside of me wants to be the MUDVAYNE of [the band's 2000 debut album] 'L.D. 50'. I think that the more albums we wrote, the better we got as songwriters. A lot of people would probably disagree with me, but [2008's] 'The New Game' is probably one of my favorite fucking albums. It's got like 'Dull Boy' on it, it's got just some really quintessential MUDVAYNE stuff that's not anything like anybody else was doing. I feel like we fucking finally had kind of found our groove. 'L.D. 50', to me, was a very gratuitous, individual workshop, and we put all four pieces together and called it an album."

Last October, Gray told Australia's Heavy that he and his MUDVAYNE bandmates had "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. Only the people that are closest to us have heard anything, and, like I said, it's really rough; it's demos," he explained. "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 [last] summer."

In August 2023, 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 completed its first headlining tour in over 14 years, "The Psychotherapy Sessions", last summer. 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.

Gray spent 15 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 six years ago.

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