Radio Metal has issued an interview with MARILLION singer Steve Hogarth in which he discusses his new solo project and the future of Marillion. An excerpt follows:

Q: Do you think that you have more freedom to write personal lyrics than with Marillion since it’s kind of a solo project?

A: "No, it’s exactly the same. I have total freedom within Marillion to write whatever I choose to, and I have had ever since I joined the band in 1989. They just let me do what I feel like doing. And you know, the five of us then become a judge of what is and isn’t working, so that’s slightly more… The quality control for us in Marillion is quite involved and sometimes it’s a bit frustrating. Whereas the process with Richard (Barbieri) was very different. He would send me an instrumental piece of music just by email and I would live with that for a while, then in August last year I would settle in my room on my own with a microphone and just experiment with words and approaches. Sometimes I’d just be talking or whispering or screaming or singing, and in some songs all of those things at once! So it was great fun just to be completely alone. I suppose that’s a kind of freedom that you have when you’re alone, that you don’t have if even one another person in the room, no matter who it is, because as soon as there’s another human being in the room, you will be conscious of them hearing and making a judgement, maybe hearing something that isn’t right yet, or isn’t finished yet, as well as when you’re on your own, you don’t show anything to anyone until you feel you’ve arrived at the vision. So that was very liberating, and I’d like to work like that again, I might even work like that in the future with Marillion. Why should I stand in a studio with a producer and sing the vocals? Why not take it all home and do it on my own? I think I’ll definitely do that."

Q: By the way, can you update us on Marillion’s future? The latest Marillion album was an acoustic record, Less Is More, and was released three years ago. The last real studio album was released four years ago, so… Why such a long time?

A: "Well there’re probably two reasons: first of all, the way everything worked out over the last two or three years… We’ve been touring when perhaps at one time we wouldn’t have toured. We were offered the tour in Germany with DEEP PURPLE the November before last one, and we decided we would take a break from writing to do that tour. Then we had a convention, we decided to take a break from writing to do our convention in Holland and so… We kept being dragged out onto the road where maybe in the past we’d said 'no, we’re not coming up, we’re not doing anything, we’re making a record'. So that dragged the whole thing out a bit. Also, I think back in 2009 when we first started jamming for the next studio album, we weren’t really ready, but we’ve been working in between the touring. We’ve been jamming, working and arranging, and we had a meeting in December and had a listen through what we’ve got so far. We have some really strong things, I’m excited about what’s gonna happen now. We’re actually going down to real work to studio, to Gabriel’s place on January the 30st to live and work together for a while, to pull all of these songs together a bit. Then we’ll go back to our own studio and I’m pretty confident that by the summer, we’ll have an album recorded and ready for release in the autumn. So it’s going well, it’s sounding great."

Read the complete interview at this location.