Robert Smith has announced that the Cure’s thirteenth, as-yet-untitled album will span two discs. Speaking to Billboard, he said, “Rather than cut it down, at the stage we’re at with the band, I’m making this record because I want to enjoy the process and be proud of the finished result.”

“What will probably happen is that a double album will come out like a limited edition, mixed by me,” he continues. “A single-disc version, which I assume will be primarily chosen by the label, might get mixed by someone else in order to have a different thing. There’s a concern Cure fans will feel like they have to get both, but the fact is, I’ve agreed to sell the double version at a single album price, because I feel that strongly about it. It is almost impossible to get a double album nowadays. I naively thought my standing as an artist would push aside all objections, but the world gets ever more commercial as it turns.”

The album, due out in October through Suretone/Geffen, will be the first since original guitarist Porl Thompson returned to the group in 2005, having jumped ship in 1993 to play with Page and Plant.

For the album, Smith, Thompson, along with bassist Simon Gallup and drummer Jason Cooper, sifted through hours of demos from throughout their career and managed to find three unreleased songs written in the 80’s, which have been dusted off and reworked for the new album. “They’ve changed quite a lot, but the basic melody and chord structure has remained,” says Smith. “They do have a certain old Cure-ness about them.”

Amongst the songs to make the final cut on the album are Lusting Here In Your Mind, which Smith says “sounds suspiciously like heavy rock,” The Hungry Ghost, The Perfect Boy, Christmas Without You (“That’s not a very happy song”) and Please Come Home.

“There are songs about relationships, the material world, politics and religion. They’re very upfront and dynamic,” says Smith of the new songs. “People will be surprised how stripped-down and in-your-face the record is.”