U2 guitarist The Edge hinted at new music from the band, telling Guitar Player magazine “we have a lot of great material in the pipeline.”

Following Songs of Surrender, U2’s acoustic, stripped down project released in March 2023, The Edge has professed an excitement to return to electric guitar. Speaking to Guitar Player on his perspective on electric guitar, he said, “I know the answer to that. I’ve been working a lot on new guitar music, and I’m very excited about it. It’s at that prototype stage where… who knows? But the answer to the question is ‘yes.’ I’m finding myself for the first time in a little while getting very excited about the electric guitar again.”

Aside from sharing an enthusiasm to return to electric guitar-based music, The Edge hasn’t given much away on what fans can expect from the U2’s new work yet. But, speaking on U2’s goal as a band, he shared, “Our challenge was always to get to that guy at the back of the room, somebody who isn’t really a fan or isn’t paying attention.”

Speaking on the thought process behind Songs of Surrender, The Edge said, “There was always an intense pitch to our music early on. So my thought here was, ‘Let’s take minimalism to the nth degree, if it’s appropriate.’ And on a lot of these songs, it worked. We left just the bare skeletons of the original arrangements in terms of themes and hooks, taking things down to a really light touch.”

Despite The Edge giving little away on the band’s musical plans moving forwards, frontman Bono has shared his thoughts on the direction that U2 had been moving in recently, and where they want to go from there.

Bono reflected, “We all make mistakes. The progressive-rock virus gets in, and we needed a vaccine. The discipline of our songwriting, the thing that made U2 — top-line melody, clear thoughts — had gone.”

He continued, “With the band, I was like, this is not what we do, and we can only do that experimental stuff if we have the songwriting chops. So we went to songwriting school, and we’re back and we’re good! Over those two albums, ‘Songs Of Innocence and Experience’, our songwriting returned. Now we need to put the firepower of rock ‘n’ roll back.”

Speaking on his plans for U2’s next rock project, Bono said, “I don’t know who is going to make our fuck-off rock ‘n’ roll album. You almost want an AC/DC, you want Mutt Lange. The approach. The discipline. The songwriting discipline. That’s what we want.”

U2 had been promoting the release of Songs of Ascent, an album that has been in the works since 2009. Bono shared in 2022 that this album is nearly complete, however its release has been put on hold in favour of releasing a “a noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable guitar album” first.

Stream U2’s newest album, Songs of Surrender, here: