LAST IN LINE bassist Phil Soussan has confirmed to the “Iron City Rocks” podcast that he and his bandmates — frontman Andrew Freeman and original DIO members Vivian Campbell (DEF LEPPARD) and Vinny Appice (ex-BLACK SABBATH) — have commenced work on material for their fourth studio album. “We got together recently and started banging around new ideas,” he said. “And there’s a whole bunch of them. There’s about 22 or 23 possible little cool snippets of things that we need to work on, and about three or four which are in very fairly advanced stages of completion. So, yeah, we’re not wasting any time.”

Phil went on to say that the plan is to work on new music “over the summer. Now that we know we can do a lot of this stuff very remote,” he said. “There’s a book I have here, which is — I think it’s called ‘Two Rooms’, but it was the story and all of the lyrics that were written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. And they wrote everything — they never wrote anything together in the same room. And so you can do that. It worked for them. And we can certainly do that. I know that Vinny and myself, we can always get together. We don’t live too far from each other. We can get in (the studio) and start working. Even if Viv doesn’t happen to be around, we can always work that way. And with a goal late autumn or towards the end of the year of going back out on the road and starting to play live shows again during that time. So that’s the plan; what’s the master plan.”

LAST IN LINE‘s third album, “Jericho”, came out in March 2023 via earMUSIC. The LP was helmed by Chris Collier, who has previously worked with KORN and WHITESNAKE, among other bands. LAST IN LINE‘s first two albums were produced by former DOKKEN and current FOREIGNER bassist Jeff Pilson.

Last year, Vivian told Classic Rock magazine about the “Jericho” songwriting process: “One thing we insist on in LAST IN LINE is that we have to be in the room together when we cut the tracks, old school, because that’s how we did the early DIO records with Ronnie (James Dio). We started this record in January 2020 in L.A., intending to finish it that April, and then obviously COVID happened and things got… discombobulated. It wasn’t until February 2022 that we were able to get back into the studio, but that break only made the record stronger.”

In 2022, LAST IN LINE surprised fans by releasing a unique version of THE BEATLES classic “A Day In The Life”, which was made available on the limited 12-inch silver collector’s EP with the same name.

Formed in 2012 by Appice, Campbell and bassist Jimmy Bain — Ronnie James Dio‘s co-conspirators and co-writers on the “Holy Diver”, “Last In Line” and “Sacred Heart” albums — LAST IN LINE‘s initial intent was to celebrate Ronnie James Dio‘s early work by reuniting the members of the original DIO lineup. After playing shows that featured a setlist composed exclusively of material from the first three DIO albums, the band decided to move forward and create new music in a similar vein.

LAST IN LINE‘s debut album, “Heavy Crown”, was released in February 2016 via Frontiers Music Srl, landing at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Heatseekers chart. Initially, the release had been preceded by tragedy when Bain unexpectedly died at the age of 68 on January 23, 2016. LAST IN LINE, honoring what they knew would be Bain‘s wish to keep the band moving, brought in Soussan and committed to sustained touring in support of the album before beginning work on the follow-up release, 2019’s “II”, which was also made available through Frontiers Music Srl.