Jason Newsted has the bug for heavy music again. Since the mid-2010s, the former Metallica bassist had been focusing his musical energy on his group the Chophouse Band, which began with an acoustic-driven folk-rock sound that was a far cry from the thrashy sonics of Newsted's most famous endeavors, 'Tallica, Voivod and Flotsam and Jetsam. However, in a new interview with Gator 98.7 FM (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), Newsted revealed that he's "stepping back into heavy" with a "loud" new band.
"Actually, I spent six months of last year putting together The Chophouse Band Volume 1," Newsted said of his recent ventures. "The Chophouse Band has been together making music since 1992. So it was our first album after 30 years. I spent a lot of time on that. And then, once I got that under my belt, I'm kind of stepping back into the heavy now."
"So the last couple of weeks I've been auditioning guitar players for a heavy project," he continued. "I'm back on bass and singing with a metal drummer — double bass, you know; getting loud again. So I've got a couple of irons in the fire. I'm putting two new projects together right now — but loud."
As Blabbermouth notes, Newsted teased last year that even the Chophouse Band's new material is on the heavier side. "The Chophouse Band started out as almost a bluegrass-tinged thing," Newsted told Gator 98.7 in April 2022. "And now it gets to some places that are as heavy as anything else that I'd been involved with — Voivod, Ozzy [Osbourne], Metallica, Newsted band; any of that stuff — it gets to those places now."
See Newsted's new interview with the Gator Garage below via YouTube.
