Vinnie Paul Discusses Next Hellyeah Album

BY Keith CarmanPublished Apr 27, 2009

Someone needs to come up with another term for "supergroup." One that denotes a band comprised of musicians known for other successes but not necessarily describing the current project as "super."

The reason?

Well, former Pantera drummer Vinne Paul Abbott's present outfit Hellyeah features a lot of talented dudes. Himself, Mudvayne's Chad Gray and Greg Tribbett, Nothingface's Tom Maxwell and Damageplan's Bob "Zilla" Kakaha. As a whole, however, Hellyeah, have yet to prove themselves as valuable as the sum of their parts.

Maybe that will happen when the band release the sophomore effort they're about to record. Abbott informed the Dallas Observer that they're slated to enter the studio on May 15, 2009 to nail the sucker down. No other details have been released and even Abbott himself is unsure of who will release the affair.

"We don't know. We're free agents right now," he relates. "We had a one-disc deal with Epic (which released their 2007 eponymous album) and they're practically begging us to come back. We sold nearly 500,000 records for them, which is practically unheard of these days. That's like going platinum 10 years ago."

Strange that while Epic's "practically begging," Abbott is still unsure of who's releasing the album. We digress. He's probably right - and surely not bending the truth - seeing as SoundScan reveals that their self-titled debut sold 45,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 chart, shifting 354,000 units since it came out in April 2007.

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