STEVEN WILSON Confirms Second STORM CORROSION Album Is In The Works: 'It's Almost Entirely Played On Acoustic Instruments'

In a new interview with Anil Prasad, the creator of Innerviews, the first and longest-running online music magazine, British progressive rock icon Steven Wilson confirmed that he has "started work" on the second album from STORM CORROSION, his collaborative project with OPETH's Mikael Åkerfeldt. Regarding what fans can expect from the follow-up to 2012's "Storm Corrosion", Steven said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It's very different, but also you will recognize the aesthetic, shall we say. I don't wanna say too much about it, 'cause we've still got a long way to go on it. It's a massive chunk of music, and it's almost entirely played on acoustic instruments. But a lot of them."

Wilson continued: "We were talking earlier about my [upcoming] solo album ['Requiem For A Village'] being a lot of it playing instruments, approaching instruments in a kind of idiot savant way. There's a lot of that on STORM CORROSION as well.

"It's funny, I saw a couple of people reviewing the, the playback events we did for 'Requiem For A Village', and more than a few of them mentioned how it reminded them a little bit of the STORM CORROSION record — the first one, of course, they would've been referring to," Steven added. "And I think there is a little bit of that in 'Requiem For A Village'. So it's definitely continuing on the vocabulary that we created with the first [STORM CORROSION] record, but it's also very different, if that's not a contradiction in terms. And we wouldn't do it otherwise."

Regarding what appeals to him about the idea of collaborating with other musicians, Steven said: "I think that that's one of the things I love most about my career now, is there is no careerism involved in my career. That I have all these projects, and I have all these great collaborations, all these amazing musicians I work with — Tim [Bowness] in NO-MAN, Richard [Barbieri] and Gavin [Harrison] in PORCUPINE TREE, Mikael with STORM CORROSION. And it's just like getting together with some friends now and finding if we've got any interesting music in us, and music that excites us. And I think a lot of that contentment started when I developed my solo career, because I no longer felt frustrated that I was in a group context. In fact, quite the opposite. Once I established my solo career, I felt a lot more inspired going into collaborative situations than I had perhaps beforehand when I might have felt frustrated. Like, 'Well, why don't they like this idea? 'Cause I like this idea.' And, of course, that's the beauty of collaboration, is that you have to find that part of the Venn diagram where you all agree. That's collaboration. But there's always the frustration when you're someone like me, that there's a lot of stuff outside of that, that bit in the Venn diagram, that you don't agree on. So now I have my solo career well-established, I no longer bring that to the table. If I go into a collaborative situation and they don't like something I come up with, that's fine. I can do it with my solo album, I can do it with my solo career. So coming back to PORCUPINE TREE, coming back to NO-MAN, it's just been without any sense of ego, without any sense of frustration, and just the joy of collaborating with fantastic, creative people."

Some 12 years on from its original release, "Storm Corrosion" was reissued in September 2024 via Kscope on LP, CD and Blu-ray forms with a new Dolby Atmos remix by Steven Wilson. It included a bonus cut of "Drag Ropes" — the only song they've performed live to date — recorded when Mikael guested with Steven and his band at London's Royal Albert Hall in September 2015, plus extra documentary insights and footage.

A love letter to the esoteric and abstruse sounds of the past, crossing the mystifying noises of late '60s/early '70s German groups like TANGERINE DREAM and POPOL VUH with the sound of British folk heroes like Nick Drake and Bert Jansch, while also embracing the eclectic oddities of cult figures like Scott Walker, "Storm Corrosion" is the kind of album that takes you on a transcendental journey that you never really come back from. For the two friends, this kind of fierce originality is precisely what they set out to achieve…

"STORM CORROSION was the 2012 album made by myself and Mikael Åkerfeldt of the band OPETH, and one which both of us considered a deeply satisfying artistic success," Steven said when the LP was reissued in 2024. "It remains one of my favorite releases in my whole catalogue. Part of what made it so much fun was that pretty much anything that either of us suggested, the other would agree it should definitely be pursued, no matter how crazy and off the wall it sounded."

That sense of pride is shared by his accomplice Mikael Åkerfeldt, who feels it's easily one of the most experimental, if not bizarre, things either of them have ever recorded, and all the better for it. For him, and countless others, these enigmatic recordings seem to exist in a genre of their own — at times sounding more acoustic and minimalistic, and others infinitely more cerebral and foreboding, but in any case, always intoxicating.

"Throughout all of my years as a musician, it's very rare for me to return to a record I have participated in myself for the sheer listening pleasure alone," noted Mikael. "STORM CORROSION is the exception. It's such a lovely record to me. I can distance myself from my own work on it and just experience it as a fan of its music. Everything about this record is strange in the best way possible.

"I get the notion that some listeners are completely and utterly in love with it," continued Mikael. "I really understand that, since that's how I feel myself. It's strange and crazy in many ways. This record has got something. It's quite unique. I'm so happy to see it available again."

"We'd talked many times over the years about doing a project with just the two of us," continues Steven. "In 2011 we quietly got together for a week at my studio, and started to make music, not knowing where it would take us, but knowing that the last thing we wanted to do was the obvious. Instead, we found ourselves making an album of weird psychedelic chamber folk music, almost child-like in places, with lots of dissonance, orchestral arrangements and weird bits."

For Steven, who first started working with OPETH as the producer for seminal albums like "Blackwater Park", "Deliverance" and "Damnation", the sheer delight he takes from working with someone as utterly devoted to the surreal and obscure is something he has been continually vocal about. They are kindred spirits, and in more ways than one — this particular masterpiece demonstrating that in the most poignant of ways.

"That security in our collaboration could only have come from a place of mutual respect and admiration, even a sense of awe at what the other was capable of," continued Steven. "We loved the finished result. It had seemed so effortless to make it."

Once it was unveiled to the world, STORM CORROSION created just as much excitement as it did confusion. And as anyone familiar with either of these musicians will know, that's precisely what they were aiming for.

"I don't know what the people expecting a full-on heavy rock album made of it," laughed Steven. "In many ways it has become the cult classic we always intended it to be…"

Issued in 2012, "Storm Corrosion" sold 9,400 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 47 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD also landed at No. 45 on the official U.K. chart.

"Requiem For A Village", Wilson's ninth solo studio album, is scheduled for release on November 6, 2026 through Fiction Records.

Photo credit: Carl Glover (courtesy of Glass Onyon PR / Kscope)