Drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander is rejoining legendary thrash-funk rockers Primus after the recent departure of Jay Lane.

With Jay Lane ditching Primus for his project RatDog with Bob Weir, everything’s set for former drummer Tim Alexander to pick up his sticks and get behind the kit again. The last time Alexander played with the boys was for their set at 2008’s Outside Lands festival. His debut reunion performance with Primus will be their New Year’s Eve show at the Fox Theater in Oakland, CA. However, the band will be getting together a couple months prior to start working on their 8th studio album, a follow up to 2011’s Green Naughayde. Frontman Les Claypool had a bit to say about the development in a recent interview with Rolling Stone:

Sounds like a lot is going on in the Primus camp.
I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Whatever could that be? Yeah, a series of events has made the ever-elusive Viking known as Tim “Herb” Alexander come out of the forest, and he’s going to start beating drums again for us – starting next week. It should be an interesting experience.

What happened with Jay Lane and how did Tim come back?
It’s kind of odd – we love Jayski, he’s my buddy, and we very much enjoyed playing with him. But he has a relationship with Bob Weir that is very tight, and of course, they started RatDog together many years ago, and RatDog’s getting back together this next year. It was conflicting with some stuff that we were doing, and so he opted to go with Bob and RatDog over the Primus stuff. Just coincidentally, Herb had been peeking out of the woods and wanting to play again, so we thought, “Well, let’s talk to Tim about it.” So we’ve been talking, and it seems like he’s in a much better space now than he had been in the past. He’s got a little girl now and it just seems like he’s excited about playing drums again, which I hadn’t seen that from him in many years.

I think Primus with Tim is the quintessential Primus line-up.
There’s a lot of people that feel that way. We’re excited. It will be interesting to see what happens next week, when we get in a room together and start making racket. But you can feel the excitement from him and the enthusiasm, which is great, ’cause you just didn’t feel that before. And for me as well, reading through the [yet-to-be titled] book as I have been, you become a little nostalgic for what we were in the “heyday,” so to speak. And then I had dinner with Geddy [Lee] and Alex [Lifeson] a couple of months ago, and they’re big Primus fans, but they’re bigger fans of the Primus with Tim Alexander. I assume they’ll be excited about this. [Laughs]

Will this lead to a full-length Primus album with Tim and tour?
We’re talking about going into the studio in November. But it’s all a little premature – we’ll see what happens next week. If we get together and things are just flowing like crazy, then I’m sure we’re going to hop right in the studio. If not, then … we’ll be calling Alex Van Halen. [Laughs]