A Perfect Circle kicked off their North American tour this past Saturday (21) at Aftershock Festival, and we saw their live debut of “The Doomed.” It’s been thirteen years since the group released anything new (with the exception of one song on their greatest hits album a few years back), and hearing the new song tune has made more than a few fans impatient for the new album to arrive.

Guitarist Billy Howerdel recently spoke to Razor 94.7 and provided an update on their upcoming record:

“We’re working less physically together, in the same room, but I have more input from him [Maynard James Keenan] than ever. Which is nice. It’s also challenging when you’re, ya know, it’s easy when you do your own thing. But it’s also nice to have some collaboration when you have a macro idea to go from and then sometimes it’s detail. So it’s been an interesting process. I’m working with a producer.

I wanted to bring a producer on in this record just to take the musician’s role more than the engineer/producer/… ya know, looking at budgets and the whole thing. It’s let me, I think, hone in and see a 20,000 foot view of these songs in the way that I’ve not been able to do in the past.

I mean, I’ve said this before so I’m being a little redundant. But I can talk you out of anything, really and I can talk you out of listening to our music or anything I’ve ever done. But I would say that this record is some of the best songs we’ve ever done, and certainly some of the favorite things I’ve ever heard Maynard sing.”

Later, Howerdel revealed the group will continue to work on the forthcoming LP while on the road:

“We’re over the hump, we’re over the midpoint. I feel really good about it, I think Maynard feels good about it. I’ve just built a… I’ve had a roadcase built for my home studio rig [to] basically take my whole home studio on the road.”

[via The Prp]