CREED Getting Ready To Hit Studio

CREED will enter the studio in about a week and a half to begin recording its first new album in eight years, singer Scott Stapp told Billboard.com on Thursday (May 22).

"We're excited to share (the new music) with our fans, and we really have a lot we want to prove" after a five-year hiatus, Stapp said. He said CREED — which hits the road August 6 for a 10-week tour — has "13, 14 songs that we would consider as album keepers" for the group's first set of new material since 2001's "Weathered". We've written more than that, but we've got this many that are fighting for a spot on the record. So we're in a good place." The group plans to record in Nashville with producer Howard Benson.

With the reunited band going out on a summer tour for the first time since disbanding in 2004, Stapp told The Pulse of Radio that he felt it was important for them to make new music together too. "From the beginning, I was 'new record, new record,' but as we all had been apart for a while, there was, you know, 'Well, how is everybody now?'" he said. "The thing that really pushed us through that is to be able to talk about our wives and our children and have that common bond of family. I think it allowed the trust level to move a little faster, and soon after that is when everyone was fully committed to making a record."

Stapp told Billboard.com that the band hopes to have the album completed in the next five weeks, with a tentative August release in the works.

The record's tentative title is "Full Circle". The title track could arrive as a single by late June.

CREED will begin its comeback tour on August 6 in Pittsburgh.