The Flaming Lips Ready 'The Terror' For An April Release

Always merry pranksters, the Flaming Lips claim that their upcoming album The Terror won't be that cheerful. Frontman Wayne Coyne calls the album, due out on April 1 via Warner Brothers and Bella Union, a "bleak, disturbing record." The album art, below, seems to vaguely indicate a nuclear type blast or a tsunami.

In a press release, Coyne writes: "Why would we make this music that is The Terror – this bleak, disturbing record…?? I don't really want to know the answer that I think is coming: that WE were hopeless, WE were disturbed and, I think, accepting that some things are hopeless... or letting hope in one area die so that hope can start to live in another?? Maybe this is the beginning of the answer.

“We want, or wanted, to believe that without love we would disappear, that love, somehow, would save us that, yeah, if we have love, give love and know love, we are truly alive and if there is no love, there would be no life. The Terror is, we know now, that even without love, life goes on... we just go on… there is no mercy killing.”

Then again, the album is being released on April Fool's Day, not the most somber of dates.

The Terror, produced by Dave Fridmann and the band, is the first Flaming Lips album released since 2009's Embryonic. A non-album track, called "Sun Blows Up Today" — definitely not the merriest of titles — will come out on February 3.

The Flaming Lips have already laid out some tour dates, including a handful in the States this spring with the Black Keys.