Ice-T discusses new Body Count record ‘Death Wish’ and current U.S. political climate

The working title for Body Count‘s planned ninth studio album is “Death Wish”, as per theprp. The GRAMMY Award-winning crossover group recently informed Metalshop that the album is still in the early stages and may not be available for streaming.

We got a title [for the next Body Count album]. And I just finished my rap album, which is called ‘Criminal Migraine‘, that is coming out this month, on the 17th. I’m not streaming the record. We’re going strictly through IceT.com. That’s how we’re getting ready to sell all our records. We’re stopping the streaming. So the fact that I finished that, we’re getting ready to start the new Body Count album. So we have a working title. It’s gonna be called ‘Death Wish‘.

He continued by discussing the band’s development with it.

It’s a process. We’re starting from scratch, so it starts off with the guys making riffs and coming up with all these different ideas and stuff, and then we gotta make them into songs. So it could be at least a year off.

He continued by discussing the band’s recent work, which has been continuously moving toward a heavier direction.

I think also, you’re out here [at various festivals] playing with harder bands, so you wanna compete. And you can see which way the music’s going. So everybody’s influenced by everything else. So you see the way it sounds. And I’ll listen to a band and I’ll say, ‘Man, I wish we had of made that song.’ You know what I’m saying? So now you go in the studio with those influences and it just keeps getting better. But we had a meeting today and I told them together, I said, if we can’t make an album better than ‘Merciless‘, we shouldn’t make another record. So the object is always to outdo our last album.

Ice-T responded as follows when asked if politics would continue to permeate this upcoming Body Count masterpiece.

I write the lyrics. I personally stayed away from politics. We did ‘Fuck What You Heard‘ [with lyrics like] ‘both wings are on the same bird’ on the last album, because at the end of the day, it’s government. Whether you’re what side, whatever, it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, it’s government.

It’s so obvious that the United States is having a shit show right now, to the world. So to almost sing about it is redundant. It’s, like, we all know it. It’s obvious. So I try to pick things that are a little bit more abstract. You could come out and just talk shit about Trump forever, but it’s just, like, the world knows.

One good thing about being black is we’re not held accountable for America’s deeds. People are, like, ‘Y’all black. We not mad at y’all.’ We ain’t in charge of shit. So we’re just going along for the ride. And when Obama was in, the world wasn’t in this much disarray.