Foo Fighters have announced new details of their forthcoming eighth studio album. Sonic Highways, due out on 10 November, was recorded in eight different cities, with a different “local legend” sitting in on each song.
As previously reported, Sonic Highways was conceived as “a love letter to the history of American music”, with sessions at iconic studios in Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Seattle and Washington, DC. But the album artwork, revealed on Monday, gestures to Foo Fighters’ conceit of a consolidated American rock’n’roll: the nine different covers can be combined to reveal an imaginary, Frankenstein’s monster of a city, with landmarks from all eight recording sites.
“This album is instantly recognisable as a Foo Fighters record, but there’s something deeper and more musical to it,” Grohl said in a statement. “I think that these cities and these people influenced us to stretch out and explore new territory, without losing our ‘sound’.”
As on 2011’s Wasting Light, the Foos worked with producer Butch Vig. The album’s other guests are rumoured to include Public Enemy’s Chuck D, Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye, the Eagles’ Joe Walsh, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes and Kiss frontman Paul Stanley. The album will also be documented in an eight-part HBO miniseries, due to premiere on 17 October.
Foo Fighters have sold more than 25m albums since 1995, including three UK No 1s. They are scheduled to perform at London’s Invictus Games closing ceremonies on 14 September.
Sonic Highways track list:
1. Something From Nothing
2. The Feast and The Famine
3. Congregation
4. What Did I Do?/God As My Witness
5. Outside
6. In The Clear
7. Subterranean
8. I Am A River
