Cure Go Heavy on New Album

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The Cure are recording their twelfth album in London with producer Ross Robinson, best-known for his work with new-metal bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit and Slipknot.

"We are trying to get a heavier sound than we've been associated with in the past," Smith says. "We convinced him that the doom and gloom of London is more conducive to making our music than sunny California."

Smith said it was Robinson's more subtle work on albums by Vex Red and At the Drive-In that got his attention. "The reason I've developed a relationship with Ross has to do with his love of music and his love for the Cure," Smith says. "Some of the stuff he's worked on I don't like, but some is genius sonically."

The Cure have written and demoed twenty-seven songs, which Smith plans to cut down to fourteen.

"The heavier sound we're going for is more to do with the tempos and dynamics and the space were leaving," he says."The more space you leave, the heavier you get. It's actually the antithesis of the new-metal assault, which is all about piling things on. It's going back to the Faith period, but making the sounds themselves a lot heavier and more savage."

The album should be wrapped by February and released in the summer, after which the Cure plan to tour the U.S.

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Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

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