HALESTORM Will Spend January Writing New Material, Says Drummer

HALESTORM drummer Arejay Hale tells Billboard.com that the band plans to "lock ourselves" in its current home base of Nashville, Tennesee "for the entire month of January and just write our asses off" to make a follow-up to 2012's "The Strange Case Of..."

"With all the touring we've been doing we really haven't had a chance to all sit down and write together as a band," Hale explains. "We've been writing constantly, kind of here and there on the road. It's kind of tough on the road because our days are pretty swamped and it's hard to get into that creative mentality. We're focused on performing and the shows and not quite as consumed with the writing process."

He adds: "Every once in awhile we'll write something and crudely record it on our phones real quick or something. It's more about writing and ideas rather than producing a song; I think we get a lot more done when we're all together. So we're gonna go in and have the mentality of 'It's crunch time. We've got to write an album.' The best thing we can do is what gets us excited at the time. We did that with ['The Strange Case Of…']. We weren't trying to top the (first) album or mimic it. We were trying to create something we were excited about. This album is going to be the same thing; we'll all sit down and if we get excited about something we're gonna chase it."

HALESTORM recently released "ReAniMate 2.0: The CoVerRs eP", a six-song EP features tracks originally written and recorded by JUDAS PRIEST, AC/DC, PAT BENATAR, FLEETWOOD MAC, MARILYN MANSON and DAFT PUNK.

"Mz. Hyde" is the latest single from "The Strange Case Of…", which has sold 300,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Singer Lzzy Hale told The Pulse Of Radio that the song was inspired by her own onstage persona. "When I was growing up, I was a very kind of shy, introverted kid, so I more or less had to invent something or pretend to be something or bring something else out of myself in order to be the rock star that I wanted to be onstage," she said. "So 'Mz. Hyde', you know, was definitely a fun way to look at that."