Mark Lanegan Will Sing on New Mad Season Record

Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready has announced that Screaming Trees front man Mark Lanegan will serve as a vocalist for the newly-reformed Mad Season, Bloody Disgusting reports. It is not known if he will be the band’s only singer, or merely contribute on a few songs.

Mad Season began in the mid-’90s as a side project  between McCready and Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley, joined by bassist John Baker Saunders and then-Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin. The group released ‘Above’ in 1995 (featuring a guest turn from Lanegan), highlighted by the single ‘River of Deceit.’ The album went gold, but Staley left in 1997, and Saunders died of a heroin overdose in 1999. An overdose also took Staley in 2002, and the band was considered dead along with them.

McCready recently revealed that he was searching for a singer to fill Staley’s shoes so he could bring Mad Season back to life. “We’re looking into re-releasing some Mad Season music that I did with Layne Staley before he died and John Baker Saunders,” the guitarist told WFPK. “We’re gonna re-release ‘Above’, hopefully by the end of the year and put a live concert out — and also we have 13 unreleased songs we never did.”

The unreleased tracks are holdovers from a second Mad Season record that never came to fruition. McCready has also revealed that he’s trying to get the rights to re-release ‘Above,’ and hopes to release a live album. ”There’s some cool stuff, and people will be excited when it happens; we’re gonna make it really nice for people.”