Photo by Clara Balzary

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have announced that on April 1 they’ll return with their 12th studio album,  Unlimited Love. The LP will feature 17 tracks and serves as the first offering from the band since 2016’s The Getaway.

Unlimited Love will feature the return of Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante, who hasn’t had a recording credit with the band since 2006s Stadium Arcadium. Frusciante has helped craft iconic Red Hot Chili Peppers songs including “Snow,” “By the Way,” “Scar Tissue,” “Otherside,” “Under the Bridge,” “Californication” and more. The upcoming album will be produced by Rick Rubin who was notably absent on The Getaway.

“Our only goal is to get lost in the music. We spent thousands of hours, collectively and individually, honing our craft and showing up for one another, to make the best album we could,” the Red Hot Chili Peppers said in a statement about the album. “Our antennae attuned to the divine cosmos, we were just so damn grateful for the opportunity to be in a room together, and, once again, try to get better. Days, weeks and months spent listening to each other, composing, jamming freely, and arranging the fruit of those jams with great care and purpose. The sounds, rhythms, vibrations, words and melodies had us enrapt.

In conjunction with the announcement, the band released the lead single “Black Summer” with an accompanying video. The track contains a steady backbeat from Chad Smith, Anthony Kiedis’ recognizable vocal tone and Frusciante’s guitar playing. Frusciante’s stamp on the song gives a je ne sais quoi that makes immediately establishes the track a pure Red Hot Chili Peppers single.

“When we got together to start writing material, we began by playing old songs by people like Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, The Kinks, The New York Dolls, Richard Barrett, and others,” Frusciante said in a statement. “Ever so gradually, we started bringing in new ideas, and turning jams into songs, and after a couple of months the new stuff was all we were playing. The feeling of effortless fun we had when we were playing songs by other people, stayed with us the whole time we were writing. For me, this record represents our love for and faith in each other.”

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are set to take off on a world tour starting in Europe in June, and hit the U.S. on July 23 in Denver. Find tickets for the tour here.

Click here to pre-order Unlimited Love.

Watch the video for “Black Summer” below: