Two years ago, Behemoth released The Satanist, a rare example where a band’s 10th album was arguably their best. As of last year, the band suggested that the best way to follow up the album was to perhaps break up. Then frontman Adam “Nergal” Darski announced that he’d be working on a solo album with elements of blues, country and folk, which seemed to perhaps underscore that the band could be done. However, earlier this year, the band teased some new material, And bassist Orion opened up to Planet Mosh recently stating that a new album could be out as early as next year.

“I think there will be a new album. I mean, you can never know. We started to jam, to work on some riffs, some songs, some ideas, but we’re still talking about that. That’s gonna take… In our case, that’s a long, long time, long process to make things happen, and we’re not really ashamed to say that we take months, half a year, a year for the whole process. So it’s rehearsing, it’s writing, it’s recording, it’s producing, then it’s releasing the album. We’re one of these bands who can do this within two months. We just can’t. There’s people who are better than us. We can’t do this. So we are planning on doing the new album next year. This is the plan. Let’s see what happens.”

Taking time to make an album that’s equal (or even close) to The Satanist makes it worth it. Hell, they can take another year if they make something as good as that. In the meantime, we’ve got an acoustic folk/blues/country album to look forward to, and if anyone can make that cool, it’s Nergal.