KIRK WINDSTEIN Says Next CROWBAR Studio Album Will Have Some More 'Melodic' And 'Faster' Material

In a recent interview with Australia's Heavy magazine, frontman Kirk Windstein of New Orleans sludge metal veterans CROWBAR provided an update on the songwriting process for the band's next full-length album.

"We're hoping to actually have all the music done before we leave for [the Australian tour in early December], vocally," he said. "There's no big rush. Our approach is kind a little different this time. We've kind of been demoing things. Tommy [Buckley], our drummer, lives two, two and ahalf hours west of New Orleans. Myself and Matt [Brunson] and Shane [Wesley], our bass player, all live here. We get together a couple of times a week and write stuff. We have riffs and stuff, but we've been demoing the stuff with a click track to give us an idea to get the arrangements all set up. Then we want to get the timing… We made a couple of burnt CDs. We're all old-school. We can listen to it on our phones and all that stuff, too. But Tommy is really old-school. He had a couple of CDs that were sent to him. We actually have six songs that we're really happy with that are written already. We should be able to get the majority of one done tomorrow, then another one next week. By Halloween we really should have everything written musically.

"It's always fun," he continued. "It's always exciting to write, to create. I'm the kind of person that when I'm writing music, for me, it's always exciting. I love the creating, I love the arranging of it, and I love the newness about the brand-new material, about the brand-new riffs and everything. I love playing live, of course. I love touring and seeing the world. Writing and creating new music is always really exciting as well."

Windstein also discussed what has been inspiring him while he has been writing new CROWBAR material. "I always do my lyrics last," he said. "From a lyrical standpoint, I have zero ideas so far, but, the arrangements and the songs and whatnot are really coming good. It's a good mixture of some old-school stuff, some more melodic stuff, some faster stuff. We try to expand our sound a little bit as the band grows older and we continue to put out more records. We don't want to repeat ourselves over and over again. Then again, we want to stay true to what the original idea of CROWBAR was 30 years ago. I think we're on the right track with this one. I'm really enjoying the last couple of records. I think we're definitely on the right track with this one."

CROWBAR's latest studio album, "The Serpent Only Lies", was released in 2016 via eOne.