Anticipation is slowly building for the follow up to 2011 album Wasting Light, the seventh studio album from the Foo Fighters and an international smash hit going number one in over 12 countries around the world, including here in Australia where the album was certified double platinum.

Foos frontman Dave Grohl has already revealed he has “a crazy idea of what I want to do with the next record and how we record it. It’s not conventional. It won’t be a conventional record,” following on from previous comments about the album, with Grohl remarking: “We know exactly what’s coming next. We have really awesome, big plans for the next album… I have the music for the next record and we’re going to start working on it once we finish doing all this stuff.”

Now drummer Taylor Hawkins has revealed a few more juicy details, and that the process has indeed begun on the record. “We’re getting started,” Hawkins tells Billboard about the follow-up. “We’re getting our ideas together. Dave (Grohl) has his brain working overtime, like usual, and he’s got a lot of great ideas, both musically and conceptually — none that I can speak of at this moment, but it’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be cool.”

News that work on the record has begun is sure to please fans, after rampant speculation the band were set to hang up their instruments for the final time following a series of comments and clues from the band, stating at Reading festival that it would be “the last show for a long time.”

When asked about the hiatus, Grohl replied, “like Pat Smear says… we’re not on hiatus.. we’re on “i hate us” and yes, we are already writing the new record.”

Hawkins says Grohl and the rest of the band are also feeling the pressure to create a record thats better than its predecessors, and that the group feel like they still haven’t written that trademark hit song that will live on in rock n roll history.

“You always want every one of them to be the best one you’ve ever done, and you always think you haven’t done your best one,” Hawkins acknowledges. “Although some people may feel we have, I still think we haven’t written our ‘Hotel California’ or our ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ or whatever. You should always be a little scared…Every time you start a record, you have to be, like, ready to fuckin’ kill yourself or it’s not gonna be any good.”

Of course it’s a wonder any of the members of the band have any energy left after their commitments promoting Grohl’s documentary Sound City: Real to Reel, which focuses on LA’s Sound City studio and the bands and artists who have recorded there over the years. Grohl also took many of the musicians featured in his all-star rockumentary on the road, as the Sound City Players, with the Foo Fighters as the backing band.

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