After focusing on their past, U2 is making ‘the sound of the future’

It’s been eight years since the last U2 album, but Bono and the boys are back.

The BBC reports that backstage at The Ivors ceremony in London on Thursday, where the band was given a prestigious fellowship of The Ivors Academy, they said they were in the studio making new music, complete with drummer Larry Mullen Jr. He’d been sidelined due to a neck surgery and was absent from U2’s residency shows at Sphere Las Vegas.

“It was difficult being away because of injury,” Mullen said. “So I’m thrilled to be back in a creative environment, even if I’m not 100% there and I’ve got some bits falling off.”

He added, “When I was away from the band, I missed it, but I didn’t realize how much I missed it.”

The band’s most recent projects have looked to their back catalog — playing Achtung Baby at the Sphere, rerecording their catalog acoustically on the Songs of Surrender album and reimagining How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. But as Bono said Thursday, “You do that because you need to understand where that desire to be heard came from.”

Now, however, “The sound of the future is what we’re most interested in. It doesn’t exist yet. It’s ours to make, and that’s what we have the chance to do.”

According to the BBC, Bono said U2’s latest songwriting sessions consisted of “just the four of us in a room, trying a new song and going, ‘What’s that feeling? Oh right, that’s chemistry.'”

“We’ve had it over the years but you lose it sometimes,” he added. “But isn’t it strange that it’s just got to the moment when just bass, drums, guitar and a loudmouth singer sounds like an original idea? That’s where we’re at in 2025.”