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Jethro Tull will release its 22nd album, titled The Zealot Gene, in early-2022. The band posted about the new set while announcing they’ve signed a new contract with InsideOutMusic/Sony Music.

Leader Ian Anderson said of the new recording deal, “After 54 years in the world of music recording, it is with great pleasure that I now sign Jethro Tull to a record company which reminds me, in many ways, of the old Chrysalis label — both as an independent and in its later years in partnership with EMI. Here are real music guys with a passion for the best and most creative in rock music. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship and more releases to come.”

Although it’s nearly 55 years since Jethro Tull broke on the UK music scene and carved its own unique niche, Ian Anderson told us he still draws from the same folk and blues roots as the best of band’s music: “I think what changes when you get older is not the prime influences that move you to make music, but the way in which you develop those ideas and refine them and perhaps get a different. . . y’know, you’re working sometimes with a slightly different palette of colors, really, but the form and the line and the content doesn’t change substantially. It’s what you do with it that probably changes as you mature and develop more useful ways of dealing with ideas that you’ve probably had for a long time.”