Body Count Are Already Plotting Their Next Album, And Ice-T Says America’s ‘Sh*t Show’ Is Too Obvious To Write About

Body Count are beginning to map out their next album, with Ice-T revealing the working title ‘Death Wish’ while offering a fairly grim assessment of the current political climate in the United States.

Speaking alongside guitarist Ernie C Cunnigan in a new interview with Czech Republic’s Metalshop TV, Ice-T confirmed the band are preparing to start work on the follow-up to 2024’s ‘Merciless’ (per Blabbermouth).

‘We got a title [for the next BODY COUNT album],’ Ice-T said. ‘And I just finished my rap album, which is called ‘Criminal Migraine’, that is coming out this month, on the 17th.’

With that record finished, his attention is turning back towards Body Count.

‘So the fact that I finished that, we’re getting ready to start the new BODY COUNT album. So we have a working title. It’s gonna be called ‘Death Wish’.’

Don’t expect it immediately. Ice-T estimates the record could still be ‘at least a year off’, with the band effectively beginning from zero as they build riffs into finished songs.

The benchmark is also brutally simple: if Body Count can’t top ‘Merciless’, there’s little point doing it.

‘I told them together, I said, if we can’t make an album better than ‘Merciless’, we shouldn’t make another record. So the object is always to outdo our last album.’

10 questions with Body Count

Ice-T Isn’t Interested In Writing The Obvious

Considering Body Count’s history, there’s an obvious question hanging over ‘Death Wish’: how much will America’s current political landscape bleed into it?

Apparently, not as much as you might expect.

‘It’s so obvious that the United States is having a shit show right now, to the world,’ Ice-T said. ‘So to almost sing about it is redundant. It’s, like, we all know it. It’s obvious.’

Rather than spending an album unloading directly on US President Donald Trump, Ice-T said he is more interested in finding less predictable subjects.

‘You could come out and just talk shit about [U.S. president Donald] Trump forever, but it’s just, like, the world knows.’

That doesn’t mean Body Count have suddenly gone apolitical. ‘Merciless’ already contained ‘F**k What You Heard’, which attacked partisan politics with the line ‘both wings are on the same bird’.

For a band that has spent decades putting social tension, violence and institutional failure under a microscope, ‘Death Wish’ won’t need to manufacture much hostility. The challenge appears to be finding something sharper to say about a reality Ice-T believes is already screaming loudly enough.