We’ll soon discover the new label of Forbidden

In an interview with Shawn Ratches of Laughingmonkeymusic, guitarist Craig Locicero of the reactivated San Francisco Bay Area metal band Forbidden discussed the status of the recording sessions for their highly anticipated new studio album, as per Blabbermouth.

The album, a follow-up to 2010’s “Omega Wave,” is being recorded at Sharkbite Studios in Oakland, California, with engineer and co-producer Zack Ohren.

In the next week or so, the announcement’s gonna come out where our home is, what the [record] label is that we signed to. That all happened over the holidays, which neverfucking happens. But that’s how seriously people were taking this. But I will say we just finished drums [for the album] this week. The next two weeks are tracking guitars, vocals, solos, all that bullshit. We have this [tour with Vio-Lence and Venom Inc.] we’re doing [in early February] in South America. We’re gonna take a couple of weeks break, rehearse, go down there, then we immediately head back, probably hit up a couple of more solos, couple of more vocals, and we’ll start mixing as that period goes on.

When can we expect the new album?

[It will be] second quarter [of 2026], for sure. Because what I’ve learned — at one point I was signed by American. I did [a Manmade God] album with [executive producer] Rick Rubin, and it took forever to come out. But there was a big upheaval in labels. And they offered us a chance to push the album back to do proper promotion. We were, like, ‘No. We want it out when you said it was gonna come out.’ And that fucked us as fucking bad as anything I’ve ever done in my life. And I know now that you need to listen to your people that are working the record. As long as they need, as much work as they need to do, as much press as we need to do, we’ll let ’em do their jobs, ’cause there’s a lot riding on this for a lot of people and not just us.

During the latest sessions at Sharkbite, drummer Chris Kontos recorded his parts for eight original compositions.

Additionally, the band recorded a cover song that remains undisclosed and kept secret.

In November, Forbidden announced the departure of guitarist Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain from Voivod and revealed that Jeremy Von Epp had been recruited as his replacement.