GEOFF TATE: 'I Don't Ever Wanna Be In A Band Again'

Metal Kaoz recently conducted an interview with QUEENSRŸCHE singer Geoff Tate. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below.

On whether he is writing any new music at the moment:

Tate: "I'm working on a new album now. I just started writing it, and I hope to have it out early [next] year.

"My goal is to write albums and put them out without a lot of time going by. In the past, I've had to wait for years to put records out, and I don't wanna work like that anymore; I wanna be more immediate with my art. So I wanna put out a record every six months….

"It's not hard at all [to write and record an album that quickly]; it's just making the time, because it's difficult to write when you're on the road. You just have to be disciplined about it.

"I've spent the majority of my career waiting for the guys in the band to write, or to come up with songs, or to be ready to write, or to be done with going to the dentist so they can come to rehearsal, and that kind of thing, and I'm just done with that now; I don't need to have to worry about that, so I can put out records at my own pace.

"I either write by myself or I write with a group of people that I choose, which I'm very into; I like working with, in a collaborative sense, different people, and I don't ever wanna be in a band again — a band band that sticks together through thick and thin and all that. I've already done that. I wanna work with different groups of people and I wanna constantly be changing it up to make it interesting and different. And I wanna play with as many great players as I possible can. Because I can. I can call up [former JUDAS PRIEST guitarist] K.K. Downing and say, 'Ken, hey, you've got time, two weeks in November, to play a short tour?' I can do that. And why not? Why not have that experience of playing with these fantastic players. That's kind of what I started doing on the last record, 'Frequency Unknown' — working with all these great players who I admire."

On which moniker he will release his next album under:

Tate: "I don't know yet what moniker I'm gonna release it under yet. I haven't decided yet. Hopefully by November [when the legal dispute between Tate and his former bandmates in QUEENSRŸCHE over the rights to the group's name is scheduled to go to court], it will all be settled.

On what his chances are of winning the court case in November:

Tate: "Honestly, what the whole thing is about is money. It's a corporate dispute, and corporate disputes have a formula that is in place that is set by the state and the federal government as to how the dispute is settled. So that's what we'll be going with — the formula that the state set forth. And it's just about money — who is going to compensate who? That's strictly the whole thing. It doesn't have anything to do with who said what, it's just a matter of exchanging money, which is kind of ridiculous at this point, but that's what it's about."

On the details of the album that he is currently working on:

Tate: "I can't about it too much at this point, but I can tell you that it's a trilogy — it's three albums that all relate to each other; it's a story. It's something I've been working on quite a long time, and I'm finally in a position to do it now. So I'm very excited about it. It's a very cool and very interesting subject. It's very topical, it's very 'now.' I can say that it's an international story, it's set in a number of different countries around the world, and it has some central characters who are involved with an international incident. It has to do with virtual currencies and Internet banking and stock trading."

Interview (audio):