Five Finger Death Punch's latest album 'American Capitalist' is still going strong and the band is spending its summer months supporting the disc by heading up the 'Trespass America' tour. But guitarist Jason Hook knows the end of the album cycle will come at some point and he says the group is already making preparations for when that will happen.

Hook tells Billboard that the band has taken their own ProTools rig with them on the road this summer, and they already have "six to eight songs worked up" for their next release. He explains, "The idea behind that is just to keep the creative muscle worked out. It's just like going to the gym; if you stop for a year, you lose all your strength. It's easy to get lazy and get sort of soft. We're in the business of making music; touring is great, but we should always be prepared and always exercising that creative muscle -- in my opinion, anyway."

The guitarist says that he envisions a timeline in which the band will be working on new material for the rest of 2012, with the hopes of tracking the disc in January. He adds, "It's just like anything: if you come in unprepared you get what you get, but if you do a decent amount of preparation, then at least you have options. The records are the launch pad for everything else, and I want to make the records great. If we need 10 killer songs, I'd rather have 30 songs to pick from than have eight and need two desperately at the end. I don't want to make records in a panic."

So while the attention behind the scenes turns to preparing for their next album, in the public eye they keep chugging along with 'American Capitalist.' The disc is onto its fourth single, 'Coming Down,' and Hook admits he feared the song wouldn't make the record.

He recalls, "I wasn't sure anyone was going to go for it because it had acoustic guitar. It was kind of a different flavor, you know? I was almost positive that this one was going to go into the 'Save It for Your Soul' file, but everyone said, 'No, that's cool man,' so it shows what I know."

Five Finger Death Punch will continue their current tour through Aug. 28 in Los Angeles.

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