After years of releasing polished versions of archival material, Slash has confirmed that Guns N’ Roses is finally pivoting toward a completely fresh studio album. Speaking with Abe Kanan of Audacy, the guitarist revealed that the band has already amassed a significant amount of original material and that the recording process is imminent.
When asked if the trio of himself, bassist Duff McKagan, and vocalist Axl Rose plan to enter the studio to craft a collection of entirely new songs, Slash was direct about the band’s progress.
“We’ve already written a ton of s**t, so we just have to get together and actually get into the process of going through all the material and figuring out what the songs are gonna be and recording them and all that kind of s**t,” Slash told Kanan. “And so that’s something that’s pending. It’s probably gonna happen sooner than later, because we’ve gotten all this other stuff out and we’ve been touring for pretty much the better part of the decade.”
He noted that the main obstacle is simply finding the time to focus amidst their heavy touring schedule.
“And so we’ve been wanting to do this. It’s just a matter of buckling down. When is that gonna happen, where we’re, like, ‘Okay, no other distractions. We’re just gonna do this.’ Anyway. But it’s coming.”
The interview also marked the official end of the band’s recent strategy of reworking unreleased demos from the Chinese Democracy era. Slash confirmed that the December release of “Atlas” and “Nothin’” represented the final chapter of that project.
He detailed the process the reunited lineup used to select and update those tracks, which began shortly after their historic “Not In This Lifetime” tour kicked off.
“Well, there was a conversation that we had at some point after we got back together. Axl had a bunch of unreleased material, and so we listened to it. We said, ‘We could redo the bass and the guitars for this song and this song,’ and ‘this one would be cool.’ And we ended up doing that over time.”
He explained that while early releases like “Hard Skool” and “Absurd” tested the waters, the well has now run dry.
“We did a couple songs to begin with. I think ‘Hard Skool‘ and ‘Absurd‘ were the first two that we did, and then a couple of more after that. And ‘Nothin’‘ and ‘Atlas‘ were the last two songs that we did; everything’s been done, and these are the last two that were left over.”
Despite the material originating before his return, Slash spoke fondly of the creative challenge involved in modernizing the songs.
“And, yeah, it’s been fun, because they’re all really cool songs. And it’s not like writing it from its inception, but I still have to write stuff to go over the changes and everything. So it’s a fun kind of a project for me — and I think for Duff too, just to come up with new ideas for something that’s been pre-recorded.”
