Guitarist Jerry Cantrell expects Alice in Chains' sixth album, which is nearing completion, to be released sometime this summer.

The follow-up to 2013’s The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here should arrive while the band is on tour from April 28 to Sept. 15. “It’s not that we were keeping it a secret — we just didn’t want to say a whole lot about it until we had something to say,” Cantrell told Guitar World in a new interview. “And we certainly have something to say with this one. It’s a fucking strong record.”

Cantrell said the upcoming LP is a "record we haven’t done yet, I can tell you that. But it’s also a record that has all the elements of anything you would expect from us. It’s got our fingerprint. And we’re really proud of the material that we wrote and the performances we captured. There’s some really heavy shit, some really ugly stuff, some real beautiful stuff, some weirdo trippy shit. … It’s good!”

The sessions, which were produced by Nick Raskulinecz, are now being mixed by Joe Barresi. “I’m still in the last few weeks of anxiety about screwing up this record,” Cantrell admitted. “The nitpicky and manic part of me keeps saying, ‘We’re not done yet!’ But we’re almost there. The finish line’s in sight.”

Touching on the band’s relatively low recorded output – six albums in 33 years – Cantrell noted that "it’s a lot of work doing a record, and I think it gets harder the older we get. But we just wait until we’re ready and until we have enough material that’s up to the Alice in Chains standard, and then we do what we do. This is just the racket that we make when we get together.”

Meanwhile, Alice in Chains are preparing for their return to the road. “Touring is its own animal, and it’s really the best reward, because you get to stand in front of people that care about you and want to hear you play," Cantrell noted. "And to this day, it’s still amazing to me that people show up to see me play. But somehow it worked out where we were able to, through a lot of life, a lot of ups and downs and a lot of records, make some music that people gave a shit about. And the cool thing is we give a shit about it too.”

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