It has been more than ten years since W.A.S.P. last delivered a full album of fresh original material, and fans hungry for the follow-up to 2015’s Golgotha have grown used to waiting. Frontman Blackie Lawless insists the record is genuinely on the way — but his latest comments make it clear that patience will still be required.
Asked about new material in a conversation with Erin Greatrix of “This Day In Metal“, Lawless confirmed the band has been chipping away at it for some time, while laying out exactly why progress has been so slow. As he sees it, the economics of the modern music business have flipped the priorities of a working band.
“We’ve been working on stuff for quite some time, but I’ve also been working on a book. And between that and doing the touring, because bands — it’s not what it used to be when you could make money making records anymore. Those days are over. The bands really make the money now touring, and our touring schedule has been such that it’s really been difficult to do. But, yes, new music is definitely in the works. It’s something we’ve been working on for about three years now,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
That answer will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the saga, because Lawless was singing a near-identical tune a year earlier. Speaking to Stoyan Tsonev of Bulgaria’s “Z-Rock” radio back in June 2025, he explained that the sheer scale of the band’s live commitments kept pushing both the album and his book down the to-do list:
“Not really, because, as we were saying, the tour schedule has been so crazy. Everybody wants to know when — ‘When are you gonna have this? When are you gonna have that?’ It’s, like, well, you know what? It’s a big world out there, and it takes a long time to get to all these different cities. For this tour that we’re on, we just finished doing North America and South America. Now we’re gonna be in Europe all this year. So it takes a long time to get to all these places. And so where does that leave us when we’re finished? Then we go back and look at doing a book, maybe finishing the album. But, like I said, the touring schedule is so intense that there just hasn’t been time to do everything,” he explained at the time.
The long stretch without a proper studio effort doesn’t mean the band has been silent in the interim. Since Golgotha, W.A.S.P.‘s most notable release was 2018’s ReIdolized (The Soundtrack To The Crimson Idol), a full re-recording of their revered 1992 concept album The Crimson Idol. Issued to mark the original’s 25th anniversary and to accompany a film of the same name, that version restored four tracks that had been left off the 1992 record.
While the wait for new songs continues, there’s plenty for fans to sink their teeth into on stage this fall. W.A.S.P. have lined up the “1984 To Headless” trek across the U.S. and Canada with KK’s Priest on board as very special guest. The run launches September 10 in California and rolls on through October 31, with the band digging into the hits from its first four albums.
As with past outings, the group is offering VIP packages that include a meet-and-greet with Blackie Lawless, a personal photo and autographs, access to a traveling W.A.S.P. museum stocked with items added since the last U.S. run, and an intimate Q&A session with the frontman. Those packages are available through waspnation.myshopify.com.
