The Red Hot Chili Peppers, the world-famous California funk rock band, have been quiet in recent years. The band launched in 1983 and launched many industry-defining songs throughout the 90s and early 2000s including their excessively popular studio albums Californication, By The Way, and Stadium Arcadium. Now the Red Hot Chili Peppers are preparing to release their first new album with guitarist John Frusciante, who has not played with the Chilis on an album since Stadium Arcadium in 2006.
In a recent interview with the Rolling Stone magazine, Chilis drummer Chad Smith has announced that the band is getting on well and is nearly ready to release their brand-new album. Frusciante took a decade-long hiatus from the band and re-joined back in 2019. According to Smith, the new album will celebrate their classic sound but with a new and different feel to it. Speaking about Frusciante, Chad said “[he] hasn’t been in our group in ten years. That’s a long time. So of course, it’s going to sound different, but it’s gonna sound like the four of us because we do have this special chemistry together. It sounds like Red Hot Chili Peppers, but it’s different and new.”
Apparently Frusciante’s absence hasn’t caused any issues with his re-joining the group as Smith claims the bond between the group is “completely natural” and that the group is “really listening to each other in a new way.” The Chilis are not focused on replicated the success of their past albums, either! Smith calls the prior successes of the band “real good snapshots of where we were at that time” but also said that the do not want to start their song writing process by thinking “I hope it’s as good as…” or any other preconceived notions of what they want to write.
While he held off on announcing an official release date, Smith did state that the currently unnamed new album would be released before the band embark on their huge global tour in Summer 2022. He promises the new album will “sound like Red Hot Chili Peppers, but [also] different and new.”