Body Count are beginning work on their ninth studio album, with frontman Ice-T revealing that the band’s current working title for the effort is ‘Death Wish’.
The GRAMMY Award-winning crossover metal outfit recently spoke with Metalshop about their plans for the follow-up to 2020’s ‘Carnivore’ and 2024’s ‘Merciless’. According to Ice-T, the project is still in its infancy, with the band yet to begin the songwriting process in earnest.
“We got a title [for the next Body Count album]. And I just finished my rap album, which is called ‘Criminal Migraine’, that is coming out this month, on the 17th. I’m not streaming the record. We’re going strictly through IceT.com. That’s how we’re getting ready to sell all our records. We’re stopping the streaming. So the fact that I finished that, we’re getting ready to start the new Body Count album. So we have a working title. It’s gonna be called ‘Death Wish’.”
While ‘Death Wish’ has now been chosen as the working title, Ice-T stressed that the record is still a considerable distance from completion. The band are effectively starting from the ground up, with the initial focus being on riffs and ideas before those pieces are developed into finished songs.
“It’s a process. We’re starting from scratch, so it starts off with the guys making riffs and coming up with all these different ideas and stuff, and then we gotta make them into songs. So it could be at least a year off.”
That process could also see Body Count continue pushing toward the heavier side of their sound. Ice-T explained that spending time on festival bills alongside increasingly heavy acts has influenced the band’s desire to keep raising the bar.
“I think also, you’re out here [at various festivals] playing with harder bands, so you wanna compete. And you can see which way the music’s going. So everybody’s influenced by everything else. So you see the way it sounds. And I’ll listen to a band and I’ll say, ‘Man, I wish we had of made that song.’ You know what I’m saying? So now you go in the studio with those influences and it just keeps getting better.”
For Ice-T, however, simply making another album isn’t enough. He says the next Body Count record needs to surpass what they accomplished on ‘Merciless’ if it is going to be worth releasing.
“But we had a meeting today and I told them together, I said, if we can’t make an album better than ‘Merciless’, we shouldn’t make another record. So the object is always to outdo our last album.”
The discussion also turned toward politics and whether the current U.S. political climate will once again find its way into Body Count‘s lyrics.
Ice-T indicated that he has intentionally tried to move away from directly addressing politics, arguing that the current state of affairs is already so apparent that spelling it out through a song can feel unnecessary.
“I write the lyrics. I personally stayed away from politics. We did ‘Fuck What You Heard’ [with lyrics like] ‘both wings are on the same bird’ on the last album, because at the end of the day, it’s government. Whether you’re what side, whatever, it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, it’s government.”
“It’s so obvious that the United States is having a shit show right now, to the world. So to almost sing about it is redundant. It’s, like, we all know it. It’s obvious. So I try to pick things that are a little bit more abstract. You could come out and just talk shit about Trump forever, but it’s just, like, the world knows.”
He then offered a comparison to the years when Barack Obama was president, saying that he believes the United States was viewed differently around the world during that period.
“One good thing about being black is we’re not held accountable for America’s deeds. People are, like, ‘Y’all black. We not mad at y’all.’ We ain’t in charge of shit. So we’re just going along for the ride. And when Obama was in, the world wasn’t in this much disarray.”
With the band still at the riff-writing stage, ‘Death Wish’ remains a working title and the album itself could still be at least a year away. For now, Body Count appear intent on taking what worked on ‘Merciless’ and finding a way to push it even further.
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[Via ThePRP]
