Former-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted is returning full throttle with some new metal music. Ultimate-Guitar.com reported he’s just wrapped production on his debut album from his longtime group, the Chophouse Band.

During a chat with Gator 98.7 FM’s Gator Garage, Newsted revealed, “Actually, I spent six months of last year putting together The Chophouse Band Volume 1 (album). The Chophouse Band has been together (and) making music since 1992. So it was our first album after 30 years. I spent a lot of time on that. And then, once I got that under my belt, I’m kind of stepping back into the heavy now.”

Newsted went on to say, “So the last couple of weeks I’ve been auditioning guitar players for a heavy project. I’m back on bass and singing with a metal drummer — double bass, y’know; gettin’ loud again. So I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire. I’m putting two new projects together right now — but loud.”

Jason Newsted chose to split with Metallica after leader James Hetfield gave him an ultimatum between playing with Metallica or spending his downtime with his own solo project, Echobrain. Newsted told us a while back that he never saw how Echobrain could have interfered with Metallica: “I never felt that it was going to affect Metallica in any way. There was no way that it could. The monster and the integrity and the legend that Metallica’s built, it would take a lot more than that to ever affect it.”