BLACK STAR RIDERS bassist Robbie Crane spoke to Underkill TV at last month's Steelhouse Festival in Wales about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's follow-up to 2017's "Heavy Fire" album, tentatively due in the summer of 2019. "Ricky [Warwick, guitar/vocals] and Damon [Johnson, guitar] and Scott [Gorham, guitar] and all of us, we all just get together and write as much as we can," he said (see video below). "They write individually, we write collectively, and there's a lot of great ideas Ricky's come up with, and we're all just getting those together at this point. But [it's] far along. We're getting ready to start to plan the get-together to start the process of getting the record going."
Asked if the upcoming BLACK STAR RIDERS disc will be a more collaborative effort than some of the previous albums, Robbie said: "On the last record, I had a couple of ideas that made the record, which I was very appreciative of, and I thought it was great. I think that this album definitely is gonna be more of a band effort, with all of us doing the same thing — sending ideas to each other and bouncing ideas off. Ricky's got a couple of great ideas. I sent him a part, and he's incorporating it into some of his ideas. Scott's some great riffs and ideas that we've been happy to hear; he's always got that feel and that sound."
He continued: "It's just great to see the songwriting coming together. We're excited about this new record. It's gonna be the fourth one — a big one — and we're excited just to do what we do. It's really about capturing what we do and what comes about organically as a band. It's really that simple. Most people ask us: 'What's the big magic formula?' It's, like, just working hard, putting your head into it and enjoying it, enjoying what you do as a team and just working together."
Last year, BLACK STAR RIDERS inked a new worldwide deal with Nuclear Blast Entertainment, the label that has released all three of the band's albums so far: 2013's "All Hell Breaks Loose", 2015's "The Killer Instinct" and "Heavy Fire".
"Heavy Fire" was a worldwide success, reaching position No. 6 on the U.K. chart, No. 11 on the German chart, and No. 91 on U.S. Current Top Albums chart.
Crane, who has previously played with RATT, VINCE NEIL and LYNCH MOB, joined BLACK STAR RIDERS in 2014 as the replacement for Marco Mendoza.
