BLABBERMOUTH.NET
LAST IN LINE drummer
Vinny Appice spoke to
SiriusXM's
"Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk" about the progress of the recording sessions for the band's third album. The follow-up to 2019's
"II" is tentatively due next year via an as-yet-undisclosed record label.
"We got half the album pretty much done,"
Vinny said. "We're a band that has to be in a room together [to write music], so it's hard to send files back and forth to create something now. But we're doing that — we've got a cover song in mind that we're working on. And then we'll together soon and finish the rest of the record. And we're going for a new label as well — we've got a label that's [interested in releasing the album]… It looks like it's gonna happen. And then we've got some dates coming up."
Referring to the fact that
LAST IN LINE features
DEF LEPPARD guitarist
Vivian Campbell,
Vinny said: "We're waiting to see what
DEF LEPPARD's schedule is. We don't know what's going on yet exactly with the big stadium tour; we don't know what they're going to do this year, since we usually play in between
Viv's schedule with
DEF LEPPARD. So we'll wait and see. But we have dates in October so far, and then if we open up, we'll do something maybe in the summer. Who knows? We'll have to wait and see."
Last month,
Appice told
Metal From The Inside that former
DOKKEN and current
FOREIGNER bassist
Jeff Pilson, who produced both
"II" and 2016's
"Heavy Crown", is not involved with the upcoming
LAST IN LINE album. "We made a change," he said. "Actually, the guy who mixed the last record,
Chris Collier — he's great; he's working with
KORN — he recorded this record. And we're kind of producing it ourselves, between all of us.
"
Jeff is great —
Jeff's a great producer, and [he has] great ideas and stuff, but we just felt that we could probably do what we wanna do now that we're a band, we've been on the road, and we know what we wanna hear," he explained. "But it's coming out great. The stuff sounds fantastic.
"And yeah, I've been through a lot with
Jeff Pilson. I've known him for years. He's a great guy. He's like my brother."
Also in February,
LAST IN LINE bassist
Soussan told the
"Pat's Soundbytes Unplugged" podcast that the band was working on "a very, very special song that we're gonna be putting out fairly soon. I can't tell you any more than that, but it is something in the interim between us coming out with a new album, or releasing a new album, and now," he said. "So we'll do this as a video single."
As for the musical direction of the new
LAST IN LINE material,
Phil said: "The songs are another progression from the last album — the difference between
'Heavy Crown' and
'II', and now
'II' and whatever this next album is gonna be called; we don't know yet, by the way. But it's definitely evolved even more; it's gone into even more of an evolution, but we are always trying to keep the characteristics of
LAST IN LINE there. I mean, you can't shake those things — you can't shake
Vinny's drumming, you can't shake
Vivian's playing. And I'd like to say the same thing about myself, and, of course,
Andrew."
Some of the early recording sessions for
LAST IN LINE's third album took place in January 2020 at
Steakhouse studio in North Hollywood, California.
Formed in 2012 by
Appice,
Campbell and bassist
Jimmy Bain —
Ronnie James Dio's co-conspirators and co-writers on the
"Holy Diver",
"Last In Line" and
"Sacred Heart" albums —
LAST IN LINE's initial intent was to celebrate
Ronnie James Dio's early work by reuniting the members of the original
DIO lineup. After playing shows that featured a setlist composed exclusively of material from the first three
DIO albums, the band decided to move forward and create new music in a similar vein.
LAST IN LINE's debut album,
"Heavy Crown", was released in February 2016, landing at No. 1 on
Billboard's Heatseekers chart. Initially, the release had been preceded by tragedy when
Bain unexpectedly passed away at the age of 68 on January 23, 2016.
LAST IN LINE, honoring what they knew would be
Bain's wish to keep the band moving, brought in
Soussan and committed to sustained touring in support of the album before beginning work on the follow-up release, the aforementioned
"II".