American hard rock band, Winger, will release their seventh studio album via Frontiers Music Srl in late spring / early summer this year. Guitarist John Roth broke the news during an interview with Sam Wall (see video below). An excerpt from the chat follows:

John Roth: "Winger VII, it’ll be out on Frontiers in May or June, we don’t have a release date yet. 12 songs on the album, one song’s a pretty big surprise.

“There’s always a, to me at least, there’s always a song on a Winger album that comes at you from left field. Like on Karma we did a blues song, Kip and I co-wrote a song called 'After All This Time'. On Better Days Comin’, the title track 'Better Days Comin’' it’s kind of funky, and it’s fun, and it’s different from Winger. Winger’s a pretty heavy, darker band. So there’s a song on this album that’s very different for the band, which is cool.

“And it’s meticulously produced and recorded, tons of layers of background vocals. It’s heavier lyrically maybe. All of Winger’s records have a heavier overtone because the guitars are tuned low. It’s just more aggressive, and there’s a little bit of a progressive flair on one of the songs. But I think people are gonna really enjoy the album, I hope it’s well received.”

On the writing process John reveals: “Well Kip (Winger) and Reb (Beach) are the primary songwriters of the band, they are the nucleus. But I did co-write one song on this album with Kip.

"So with Winger, it normally starts as the musical idea. A lot of people write from lyrics and melodies, most of the songs I write I have a melody or a lyric which is like the nucleus or the starting point for a song. But with Winger it’s a riff, it’s a musical idea. I remember when I was first co-writing with Kip on some songs on Better Days Comin’, we’re not demoing the songs. Because we’re writing them, we’re recording the actual songs. You know I’m looking at him going ‘how do you know you want one more bar here?’ He’s like ‘I can just… I hear where I want to go with the lyrics' and I’m like ‘you’re making a lot of really big-time decisions for arrangement, and we’re recording final guitar parts’, and the lyrics have to revolve around it. So everything starts with the music with Winger. But as the songs are being written and the riffs are coming about, the melodies are in Kip’s head.

"Kip’s the maestro ya know? He’s the maestro of the band. So he’s thinking as we’re writing, what the melodies are gonna be, how they’re gonna work around the riffs, and inevitably making final judgment calls on the arrangement as we’re cutting the songs. Used to be you’d demo songs, and sometimes you couldn’t beat the demo, ya know? You’d be like ‘there’s a magic on the demo we cannot beat.’ So Winger really decided that… because as we’re writing the songs we’re cutting the final parts.”

Hear more below, and stay tuned for updates from Winger.