U2 released No Line On The Horizon, their last album, more than four years ago, and then they spent the ensuing years touring and making unfathomable sums of money. And now they’re back in the studio, possibly planning to release a new album early next year. As the fan site @U2 reports, bassist Adam Clayton recently told the Irish radio station 98FM that they’ve got 12 songs near completion and that they’re hoping to finish them up by the end of November: “I think it’s a bit of a return to U2 of old, but with the maturity, if you like, of the U2 of the last 10 years. It’s a combination of those two things and it’s a really interesting hybrid.” Meanwhile, they’ve contributed a new song called “Ordinary Love” to the soundtrack of the forthcoming Nelson Mandela biopic Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom. You can hear about a minute of the song in the trailer below; it starts at about the 1:25 mark.

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom opens 11/29, and who knows, maybe we’ll get to see Stringer Bell win an Oscar.