FOZZY, the band featuring wrestling superstar Chris Jericho and STUCK MOJO mastermind Rich “The Duke” Ward, has released a music video for its latest single, “I Know Evil”. The clip was filmed on the road by James Davies and Todd Crawford, and was edited by Keaton Landis.
Released in April, “I Know Evil” was the follow-up to “Fall In Line”, which was made available in April 2025 via Madison Records. Prior to “Fall In Line”‘s arrival, FOZZY released another standalone single, “Spotlight”, which was made available in October 2023. All three tracks were helmed by FOZZY‘s longtime producer Johnny Andrews (THREE DAYS GRACE, ALL THAT REMAINS, HALESTORM).
In a recent interview with U.K.’s MetalTalk, Ward was asked if FOZZY fans can expect to see a follow-up to the band’s 2022 album “Boombox” in the not-too-distant future, Rich said: “I think we’re gonna stick with just releasing singles for a while. And I think part of the reason for that is on the last album, ‘Boombox’, we spent so much time on it. And every song is very important to us. And then two or three songs get released to singles and then the rest of them kind of go in the bin, so to speak. And Chris Jericho, the singer in FOZZY, just so for context, he was really hurt by it, because he realizes that now because we’re not in the age of albums anymore where people go and buy physical albums — we’re in the days of playlists and singles and streaming — and [he] felt like we should spend our time really focused on a song at a time and release them like that. And it’s helped us in a lot of ways because the pressure of making a 12- or 14-song album, especially when Chris has two or three other careers that take up a lot of time. So it allows us to not water down the process by focusing on this, this, this and this and this. And making an album, to do it properly, if you were all in a room together as a band, about a month to write and a month to record. And FOZZY can’t do that, just because of, like I said, just the way that we are as a band, the way that it came up.”
Rich continued: “We started as kind of a covers project. Our first two albums were covers albums because Jericho was wrestling full-time with the WWF, I was in a band called STUCK MOJO, and FOZZY was our love-affair band. It was our side project that we put all of our passion into. And then when it became our priority, and you know that it’s Chris‘s priority because his handle says Chris Jericho FOZZY on social media, not Chris Jericho wrestler. He is a passionate lover of music and a performer and songwriter. So the goal moving forward is just to put everything we have into every song… We work with a producer named Johnny Andrews. He produces a million big bands himself, so it’s all down to scheduling.”
Ward also talked in more detail about the FOZZY songwriting process, explaining: ”Now that we are in this mode where we’re working on a song at a time, we realize that it’s important to be as perfect as we can make it. Because it’s like a small-bite dinner, if you’re creating as a chef, so we know you have one chance to make a perfect meal for this customer. And our fans are loyal, and because we’ve been around a long time, we’ve built this incredible bond with our fanbase, and they deserve the best, especially when we’re only, like I said, releasing one song a year. And there may come a point where’re releasing two or three songs a year. It really just kind of comes down to, how is the material? We’ve got three or four songs that we’ve already gotten rough skeleton demos in the works. So I think ‘Fall In Line’ is about as good a song as we’ve ever written, and it energized us that this late in our career, that we’re still capable of writing interesting songs and yet songs that aren’t self-indulgent. Because I don’t wanna get into that phase where you’re writing for yourself. And they get so pointed inward that they’re not going to reach out and speak to anyone else. I do think that there are artists that get into those phases of their life where their songs meander and [they aren’t] focused, and I think working with a great producer helps.”
Ward continued: “I’m 57. When I was writing albums in STUCK MOJO when I was in my early twenties, it was a much different process. It was much more guttural. It was much more reactionary. It was based on emotions that I was having. And now writing songs is more of an intellectual process. And we listen to other albums. I’ll listen to a QUEEN album, I’ll listen to a PINK FLOYD album and an AC/DC record, and we’ll write about things that we really loved about those albums. What was it that inspired us when we were kids from those? So we’re going through a lot of this kind of exploration of what it was that made us such big music fans ourselves when we were younger.”
Last September FOZZY surprise released its cover version of the OZZY OSBOURNE classic “Crazy Train”. The track arrived two months after FOZZY released the official Lawrence Hinson-directed music video for “Fall In Line”. The clip was filmed at HM Studios in Las Vegas, Nevada, based on a video concept by Hinson and Mark Willis.
“Boombox” came out in May 2022 and featured “I Still Burn”, which has more than three million views on YouTube. It also included the Top 10 singles “Nowhere To Run” and “Sane”.
In January 2022, FOZZY parted ways with longtime drummer Frank Fontsere and replaced him with Grant Brooks (THROUGH FIRE).
Fontsere was a founding member of FOZZY, having formed the group in 1999 with Jericho and Ward.
When FOZZY announced Fontsere‘s departure, the band said that he was “stepping down to focus on his family and other projects.”
FOZZY is Jericho, Ward, Brooks, Billy Grey (guitar) and P.J. Farley (bass).
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source blabbermouth.net ’
