Weezer have confirmed their next release, The Black Album, will arrive on May 25. It’s the follow-up to last year’s Pacific Daydream, although it had been started before the October 2017 title. Instead, The Black Album had been designed to follow 2016’s The White Album.

“This other album kind of materialized,” frontman Rivers Cuomo told Australian radio station Double J. “I had two folders on my Dropbox: one was The Black Album, and it didn’t get filled as quickly as the other folder, which I temporarily titled New Folder. That one filled up with 10 songs that were definitely different, but not quite as different as The Black Album. So we put a name on it – Pacific Daydream – and put that one out first.”

He admitted the upcoming release had been a challenge to write because he doesn’t “gravitate towards super-dark music,” adding, “There’s always got to be something triumphant about it in the end. So I’ve been struggling, trying to figure out how I can do a black album as a writer. When I was writing Pinkerton, at the same time I couldn’t help but write these really sunshiny country-pop songs. It’s kind of like this waste product on the side while I’m trying to purify some kind of metal in my shop.”

Describing the unheard material as “10 steps in some other direction,” Cuomo said that, despite fans’ varying reaction to their recorded output, Weezer makes music that pleases themselves first, but go in a different direction for their concerts. “We’re gonna do what we’re gonna do," he said. "When it comes to the show, you just want to create as much joy as you can in the room. So the set list is basically, ‘What’s gonna make this place go off?’ At the point, the ball is in the court of the audience.”

 

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