AEROSMITH entered guitarist Joe Perry's home studio (The Boneyard) in suburban Boston and the Pandora's Box (the band's main studio) in early July with producer Jack Douglas to begin recording its long-awaited 14th studio album. The CD will be AEROSMITH's first set of original material since 2001's "Just Push Play" and first studio offering since 2004's covers CD, "Honkin' On Bobo".

In a brand new online posting, Douglas stated about AEROSMITH's new CD, "The new album should be out around May 2012. I know that's a long wait, but after the South American tour and Japan in October, November and December, we will just get back to work on it in mid-January."

He added, "For those who are asking, this album will be raw, nasty, tough rock with a good deal of the old AEROSMITH 'tongue in cheek.'"

In a videotaped message that was released via AEROSMITH's official web site, bassist Tom Hamilton stated about re-teaming with Douglas, "For those of you who don't know who Jack is, he's the guy who we worked with, producing our best albums of the '70s — 'Get Your Wings', 'Toys In The Attic' and 'Rocks'. And it's really gonna be cool, because there's no one that knows more about the soul of this band and the creative part of this band [than] Jack. We worked with him on [2004's covers CD] 'Honkin' On Bobo', but that wasn't all original material — most of that was not original material. This time it's gonna be all-new AEROSMITH songs."

He continued, "When people say, 'What was it like to work with Jack back then?' all I can say is we just laughed the whole time; there was always laughter going on, and fun, but at the same time really digging deep to get performances that were even better than we thought we could do."

The plan to resume work on a new disc follows the completion of singer Steven Tyler's first season as a judge on "American Idol". The band, minus Perry, did get together for a week earlier this year in Los Angeles to work on new material.

AEROSMITH and Tyler almost went their separate ways in late 2009, but reunited and toured last year. However, Tyler then stunned his bandmates by taking the "Idol" job, which pushed back work on the already-delayed new record.