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Weezer Celebrates Past, Present, Future At Black Album Release Party

Photo: Katherine Tyler

As Weezer creeps ever closer to eligibility for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the band has ensured one thing: it won't be soon forgotten.

Just like the band showed at its hit-packed iHeartRadio Album Release Party Thursday night, February 28, Weezer's catalog is among the deepest and most diverse of any act in music today.

And that catalog is only getting deeper, thanks to the band's recent Teal Album of covers and the brand new Black Album of original material, which includes hits like "Can't Knock the Hustle" and "Living in L.A."

The past several years have been among the busiest in Weezer's career. The release of Weezer (Black Album), marks the band's fifth album in four-and-a-half years, and its 13th overall. Front man Rivers Cuomo is the first to point out that the band had a few lucky breaks over the past 12 months, but then again, none of those breaks would have been possible if the band wasn't in the midst of such a creative Renaissance.

Photo: Rachel Kaplan

"We'd gone five years without doing sh—anything," Cuomo tells iHeartRadio's Abby Krizner, referring to multi-year lull prior to 2014. "I don't know. It's just kind of random."

"Making up for lost time, maybe," suggests guitarist Brian Bell.

Weezer may not have a definitive answer for why it has been working so much recently, but experimenting with new instruments has only helped the new songs come together.

While keyboards have long been an essential part of Weezer's songs arrangements, the band's music has historically been conceived on guitar. Black Album is unique in that Cuomo wrote much of the music on piano. He tells Krizner he's "slowly getting better at piano" and enjoys how the instrument draws music out of him that he wouldn't otherwise find.

"It just yields a very different type of song, so I wanted to do a whole album [on piano]," he explains. "Next album also is going to be all piano. Of course then when we go to record it turns into a lot of guitars."

On the eve of Weezer's Black Album, Cuomo revealed there is no hiatus in the band's future. Weezer has two more albums planned — one is a symphonic, piano-driven record called Ok Human and another is a riff rock record called Van Weezer.

"It's very beautiful and melodic," Cuomo explains of Ok Human. "And then we found out we're doing — not supposed to say it yet — but like this big stadium/arena rock tour. So we're like, 'All right, we need to come with some rock riffs, so we decided to make a super heavy riff record."

Photo: Rachel Kaplan

The band's previous release was the Teal Album, a covers record dropped by surprise in January. Teal wouldn't have happened were it not for the runaway success of Weezer's cover of Toto's "Africa." The cover became a viral hit and then a No. 1 song within 24 hours of its release.

The band members are still scratching their heads about the whole thing.

"It's this weird, random, life-changing event, thanks to a fan on Twitter," Cuomo says.

Another far less random but equally life-changing event the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Weezer will become eligible in May when its debut, the Blue Album, turns 25 years old. While being "Hall of Famers" was never a career goal, Cuomo acknowledges that it's a big deal.

"That would be amazing. Weezer's never been the perfect fit for 'rock,' 'rock and roll,' you know? There's always been something kind of rock and at the same time anti-rock about us. So, who knows? A lot of great bands didn't get in — haven't gotten in yet. I'd vote for us."

Get all Weezer's tour dates here.

Photos: Rachel Kaplan, Katherine Tyler for iHeartRadio


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