Butthole Surfers Talk Tough Road To First Album Since 2001: “No One Has Put Out A Decent Record 35 Years Into Their Career”

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

Butthole Surfers Talk Tough Road To First Album Since 2001: “No One Has Put Out A Decent Record 35 Years Into Their Career”

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

Butthole Surfers are working on their first new album since 2001’s Weird Revolution, and the band recently talked to Rolling Stone about their state of mind and expectations going into releasing what’ll be their first album in 17 years (if it comes out next summer as anticipated). “No one has put out a decent record 35 year[s years into their career],” Gibby Haynes told RS. “Well, except for Johnny Cash. But we’re not Johnny Cash. It’s gonna be a tough road to do a record that’s presentable. It’s really gonna be hard. … But, given that, looking forward to it!”

The new album will reunite Haynes, Paul Leary, King Coffey, and Jeff Pinkus, and they plan on recording it in Leary’s home studio in Austin. They said that they probably won’t tour behind the record (“I will probably never tour again, it’s just not fun,” Leary says at one point) but that they’re having fun picking up where they left off. Here’s Leary:

It kind of feels the same, which is sort of an empty void of all emotion. “I kind of divorced the thought process from all of it because thinking has never served us well. It’s gonna be all over the map once again, there’s gonna be rock songs and there’s gonna be some ambient things and some really stupid things. So, I imagine in that respect it will probably be like a lot of the other Butthole Surfers albums. … . A couple of old songs will probably make it to the record from our old albums, except done in a completely ridiculous format.

And here’s Haynes on how they compare to other big-name acts:

We’re not in a position like a lot of other bands. Like, take Metallica. God bless ‘em, I love Metallica. But all they gotta do is put out another Metallica record. The same thing with Foo Fighters. That’s all they gotta do is put out another Foo Fighters record. ‘Cause, I mean, they’ve got a sound. Or, they’ve got a song. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But, I guess we’re just continually broken and in a struggle to fix it. So, it’s gonna be a wild one.

The interview’s a lot of fun — they address their infamous All Tomorrow’s Parties 2009 afterparty antics — and you can check out the whole thing here.

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