14 DAY TRIAL // It has no name and no release date yet, but Kings of Leon’s upcoming studio material, the band’s fifth and the follow-up to their immensely successful “Only by the Night,” is both darker and more fun. Drummer Nathan Followil talked to Billboard after a recent press conference and said that the album was not recorded with the idea of having it replicate the success of the previous one.
Followil, who’s to embark on a tour with his band mates this June, reveals that most of the album, which he’d describe as “almost finished,” was recorded in New York, with producers Jacquire King and Angelo Petraglia. They wanted to come up with something different from the 2008 platinum and Grammy-winning record, so they decided that a change in scenery might do the trick. And that it did, Followil explains.
“[We] did a majority of [the album] in New York City and decided to come home to do the last couple of weeks just to fool around and do it at home. Honestly, with the success of the last record... a lot of people thought we would put a lot of pressure on ourselves and go in there and try to recreate what we thought was successful on the last record. It’s the first time we’ve ever recorded in New York City, [so] we thought we’d come out with a little darker record ‘cause we’d done all our [other] records in either Nashville or L.A., where it’s a little more chilled out, not as much hustle and bustle,” he says.
As far as he’s concerned, he can promise fans that the record is good – so good in fact that he doesn’t know how he and his mates will be able to resist temptation of singing all the songs on it on the upcoming tour. “And I’ll be damned if we didn’t go in there and make a fun record. It’s got songs that are beachy. It’s got songs that are a little more of our [2003 debut album] ‘Youth and Young Manhood’ days – pretty much all across the board. We’re super excited. Everything, we feel, fits perfectly for this project. It’ll be interesting to see how well-received it is,” Followil adds.
Speaking of the tour and the band’s new songs, the drummer reveals in the same interview that at least 4 never before heard tracks will be included in the set. If they were to have their way, they would include the entire album – and even force the record label to chance the release date to earlier, Followil jokes.