Fairly recently, both members confirmed that a new record was in the works, with Tyler simply teasing, "I’m working on the album.”
In an interview with Zane Lowe last December as the band unveiled surprise festive single Christmas Saves The Year, the frontman admitted, "This new record I’m working on it’s some of the most taxing stuff I’ve ever dove into and it has a lot to do with the fact that I’m not bouncing it off of people. I’m not on tour as I’m writing it, I’m not thinking about how it might impact people live in that moment. I’m kind of really in a vacuum here writing songs and I think that there’s still an opportunity to create some awesome stuff in that environment but it’s scarier than ever at the same time because you don’t know, you haven’t bounced it off of anyone. You’re just going to show up one day and say here’s the album."
"It really is me and Tyler working on this,” Josh stated in a different interview. "I think it probably takes longer than some artists coming out with albums because we don’t have other people really helping us. And, also, logistically, we’re in different places. We both have our own studios, which is really nice, so he comes up with a lot of stuff at his studio, sends it over to me, and then I come up with some stuff here at my studio and then send it back.”
Tyler also told AltPress in early 2020 that there were "two very different records” that he could make, adding that he wasn’t "interested in reacting” to what’s going on in the world.
"There are two very different records, in my opinion, to be written,” he considered. "One being right now and the other one being after that. I don’t know which one I’m going to do first. I have an idea of what I think is next, sonically. It’s just whether or not it’s too big of a risk, I guess.”
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