QUEENSRŸCHE Singer TODD LA TORRE Says New Album Sounds 'Very True And Authentic'

Rocket Sports & Entertainment recently conducted an interview with QUEENSRŸCHE singer Todd La Torre. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Rocket Sports & Entertainment: Congratulations on inking the new record deal [with Century Media]. You and your guys must be excited to be releasing it in June. Have you guys decided on a name for the new album yet?

Todd: Kind of. But if I did, I couldn't tell you right now anyway. Yeah, I think we've got it narrowed down. You know, we will reveal that very soon. We're finalizing the artwork, the track listing and the order and all those goodies, the thank yous and liner notes and all of the things that go into it. The record's done. It's just in the final mixing and then mastering stages. So we're excited about the June release.

Rocket Sports & Entertainment: What should we be expecting in regard to the sound of the new album? Is it back to the basics or back to the old-school QUEENSRŸCHE with a mix of some new material?

Todd: The new record, I would say, has… sounds better, you know. There's something that you'd say, "Hey, that sounds like it could have been off 'Rage For Order'," or "This sounds kind of like 'Mindcrime'-ish," or "This could be an 'Empire' thing," but with a new flavor on it. There's some new sounds. The guitars sound, you know, crunchier. And, you know, Ed's [Jackson] got his classic bass tone. This is a very organic collaborative body of work that we all wrote. We didn't say, "We need somebody to just give us a handful of songs." We did write all our own stuff. I mean, hell, I wrote a guitar solo as just an idea I had, and Michael [Wilton] actually used it and — for an outro melody of one of our songs. Michael Wilton had a whole song and had the melody for it but he didn't have the lyrics. He came to me and said, "Hey, Todd, check this melody out." And it's now one of the best choruses on the whole record. All of this is a very wonderful, natural, quality piece of music and all of us feel that way. Are we gonna say it's a balls-to-the-wall heavy album? No. It's a hard rock record with some metal elements to it. But I would never want to say that it's a heavy metal record because I don't want to box in QUEENSRŸCHE. I don't want to box our sound in. If we want to use strings and be orchestrated, we can do that. If I want to scream 'till I'm blue in the face, you know, we can do that. If Michael wants to play something really shreddin or soft and pretty, we want to have all of those avenues to go down without boxing us into a genre or niche. Overall, I think it's a strong record. It's very true and authentic to us. And we hope that that translates musically to the fans. And everyone here thinks differently. But, overall, I think that people are really gonna like it, and I think it's a huge deviation from the last couple records. It was only the band writing. There's no outside influence.

Rocket Sports & Entertainment: Tell us a little more about the collaborative effort in regard to the music and especially the lyrics.

Todd: I've written some drum parts on a song that Parker [Lundgren, guitar] wrote. I've written, out of the quantity of songs we have I think I wrote lyrics for six or seven of them maybe. Five, six, seven. I don't know. They would say, here, check this idea out. And then I'd run with it. And then we all work together on it. But most of the time, they're like, "Dude, that's awesome." And then there might be a, "Hey, let's try this on the melody here." But lyrically, they don't tell me what to do or how to be. That's why this is such a wonderful thing for everybody. There's no — you know, it's not a dictatorship, dude. It's a democracy. And we all talk about it. And we do what we feel is best for the band musically as a group. And so they allow me that freedom. I feel very fortunate and thankful and — you know, it's awesome. Its sweet, you know, all the ingredients are right. And it's — it's tasty.

Rocket Sports & Entertainment: Well, will you guys be releasing a single, and do you know what that first single might be?

Todd: That's something that we haven't focused on. Really, right now, we've just been so busy doing the recording. We just did our first show last night of this leg of the tour. That's stuff that we haven't really even gotten into. I mean, we have our label and management and the respective people that talk about those things. We have discussed it. I think we may release something soon. You know, possibly before the entire record is out, there may be a full song out there, before even our release date. That's very likely. I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but it's probable. There was a lot of great feedback from that — from that teaser of the song "Redemption" and Eddie Trunk world-premiered it on his [radio] show. And the first words out of his mouth when it was done was, "Man, it sounds like QUEENSRŸCHE." So that was a wonderful stamp of approval from a guy who knows so much about the music and the players and the sounds and whatnot. That was a wonderful thing that he got from it.

Read the entire interview from Rocket Sports & Entertainment.