While they may be known for painting the musical equivalent to neon-and-glitter rainbows, The Flaming Lips are eager to share their darker side with the world. Their anticipated 13th studio album, now definitively entitled The Terror, will dive into the bleak corners of topics like depression and drug abuse.
Purportedly inspired by Steven Drozd's recurring struggle with substance abuse, The Terror has also been described by Wayne Coyne as "possibly the best Flaming Lips record ever made". The record will see a release via Bella Union on April 1, 2013.
Coyne also said of the record:
“Why would we make this music that is The Terror – this bleak, disturbing record…?? I don’t really want to know the answer that I think is coming: that WE were hopeless, WE were disturbed and, I think, accepting that some things are hopeless… or letting hope in one area die so that hope can start to live in another?? Maybe this is the beginning of the answer.
“We want, or wanted, to believe that without love we would disappear, that love, somehow, would save us that, yeah, if we have love, give love and know love, we are truly alive and if there is no love, there would be no life. The Terror is, we know now, that even without love, life goes on… we just go on… there is no mercy killing.”