Far’s Shaun Lopez Says New Album Due Out in Early 2010

This week, Noisecreep lured Far guitarist Shaun Lopez from his own Airport Studio in Sacramento, Calif., where the reunited band has just finished mixing six new tracks, which will be on their as-yet-untitled record, to be released most likely in early 2010. So far, Lopez says the stuff is sounding great, but that it's not the sequel to 1998's 'Water & Solutions,' the band's seminal last studio recording before their acrimonious split.

"We've always been a band where, everything we've done, everything sounded different, in a way," Lopez says. "We've always gone in different directions. On records, we've gone to the metal side and the more ambient side, the more pop direction. This record, I think, goes in those directions but it goes in those directions further. I wanted to be more extreme about it, so some stuff is heavier than anything Far has ever done, and some stuff is more ambient and weird than anything we've done, and some of it is more pop...I'm playing stuff I've never played before, and Jonah is almost singing in ways he's never sung before. I don't want to steer you wrong. It still sounds like Far."

Lopez thinks some of the song arrangements are unconventional, explaining that one track "I just mixed yesterday, which is maybe even one of my favorite on the record, that only has one chorus, and it's six-and-a-half minutes long." While the album's official title is still up in the air, he did tease us with some song titles: "Give Me a Reason," "The Ghosts That Kept on Haunting," "At Night, We Live," and "Deafening."

Far's reunion has been a long time coming, and took over four years to make real. While frontman Jonah Matranga worked with Onelinedrawing and on his own solo material after the split, Lopez went on to form the Revolution Smile and build his resume as a producer, having tracked Chino Moreno's vocals for the Deftones' last studio offering, 2006's 'Saturday Night Wrist.' But for both Matranga and Lopez, something didn't feel right.

"It didn't end well," Lopez says. "I'm not one to sugarcoat anything. It didn't end well. There were people pissed off, and it wasn't good. That said, things are good now. When we got back together, there was definitely some shit to iron out, and there was definitely some old sort of baggage that was being carried and that took a while. But I think now, especially that the record's close to being finished and everybody is excited, its all good. Jonah and I, we have always had that classic guitar player-singer thing. But we both respect each other a lot as musicians and artists, and it all makes sense. Now, especially hearing the music, we both know that's why we do this. We're not here to be best friends, even though we are friends. What we do well together is create music. And that's that. We're getting along good. Everything's good."