Foo Fighters have recently been gearing-up for the band’s first live dates since the passing of drummer, Taylor Hawkins, and now the band has shared a brief clip of what appears to be a new song.
The clip follows comments made in February by UK radio presenter, Chris Moyles, who claimed live on air that Foo Fighters had a new album coming “in March”.
Posted to the band’s social media channels on 12 April, the 13-second, un-named clip is accompanied by the caption “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
The clip, featuring a syncopated, octave-guitar riff, harks back to a blend of the band’s sound on In Your Honour and There Is Nothing Left to Lose backed by some dreamy chords while the drums play flams on the backbeat, interspersed with flowing tom fills.
It might be short, but the clip is just long enough to have set the comments section alight with questions and speculation over who is drumming on the recording and who will be filling the drum stool for the band’s packed summer schedule.
Many fans are convinced that the drummer on the recording is Dave Grohl, and while there’s not much to go on, there’s enough to lend that theory weight: the huge snare backbeat and pounding toms for a start, coupled with the fact that Grohl is the most obvious candidate to play drums on a Foo Fighters recording in Hawkins’ absence. However, both stylistically and logistically this could quite easily be a Taylor Hawkins drum track recorded prior to his death.
Which leaves the big question: who will be drumming for Foo Fighters’ upcoming live shows? Comments from fans are still centred around three main candidates: Pearl Jam’s Matt Cameron, The Darkness’ Rufus Taylor and session drummer Josh Freese who’s played with, well…pretty much everyone.
Matt Cameron is seemingly out of the running, having said pretty clearly that “The internet rumours are false, I haven’t joined the Foos”.
Rufus Taylor has been another strongly-rumoured replacement for his “hero, mentor and big brother”, however following The Darkness’ recent announcement of an anniversary tour marking 20 years since the band released debut album Permission to Land (and the fact both bands have clashing live dates), we think this is also unlikely.
A quick look at Devo’s calendar shows that frontrunner Josh Freese will either be in Europe and the US at the same time in August, or depping-out Devo’s European dates in order for it to be him. But that’s not out of the question, given that former Devo drummer Dave Kendrick, former Offspring drummer Pete Parada and drummer/comedian Fred Armisen have all filled-in for Freese with Devo at times.
Another name that has been mentioned in relation to Foo Fighters recently is ex-Angels and Airwaves drummer, Atom Willard. Back in March, The Sun named Willard and Matt Cameron as likely replacements (possibly even sharing the live schedule) for Hawkins after the former posted footage of himself at Foo Fighters’ Studio 606, adding that he was using some of Taylor Hawkins' drum shells.
However, while there’s no denying that Atom Willard would do an incredible job, the tabloid overlooked the fact that Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba — who Atom has previously played with — was also present in the video, making it likely that the two are working on new material.
That’s before we even consider other heavyweight drummers including Rage Against The Machine’s Brad Wilk, who appears to have a clear schedule following Tom Morello’s recent response to when RATM could play live again.
So, we’re none the wiser beyond the fact that, whatever it is and whoever will be drumming, there appears to be new Foo Fighters music coming very soon.
Foo Fighters are currently scheduled to make their live return on 24 May in New Hampshire. For a full list of tour dates, click here.
