During an October 29 appearance on SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”, GUNS N’ ROSES bassist Duff McKagan confirmed that he and his bandmates have been working on fresh material. “There’s definitely a desire and a plan for new music,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “Yeah, for sure.”
Addressing the fact that GUNS N’ ROSES hasn’t performed live since completing a North American tour in November 2023 at the Hell & Heaven Metal Fest in Mexico, Duff said: “You can go on a tour and you can have peaks and valleys on the tour. And we never do. It’s always, like, every gig is super special. Even when we extended our tour — after touring for so much, extending it for another four weeks, that can destroy a band. I’ve seen it happen. That’s too long. You went too long. And everybody’s starting to snap at each other and the crew and all that stuff. But it doesn’t happen with our band or our crew. So we ended on this really highlight, which was Mexico City, this huge gig we did. And we played two nights at the Hollywood Bowl right before that. It was really special. We had THE BLACK KEYS opening at the Hollywood Bowl — a really cool, different sort of show. So I think we ended and were, like, ‘Oh, man. Let’s not end. Let’s get back to this soon.’ But I think for me, I know I had to rest — I had to rest my body. A lot of hours on stage. A lot of traveling. And I’ve gotta listen to my body these days. I’ve gotta listen. So I had to rest. I think we all need to rest. [GUNS N’ ROSES guitarist] Slash, he’ll go out and tour, like, four weeks later [with one of his projects] and do it all over again. I’m, like, ‘Okay, dude. More power to you. I’m gonna go to Hawaii. I’m going to Hawaii, man.'”
GUNS N’ ROSES released a four-song EP, “Hard Skool”, in February 2022. The effort, which was exclusive to the GUNS N’ ROSES‘ official store, contained the two new songs the band released in 2021 — the title track and “Absurd” — as well as live versions of “Don’t Cry” and “You’re Crazy”.
