In early 2016, Carmine Appice announced on his Twitter and Facebook pages that Cactus was coming out with a new album at the end of May that year, "Black Dawn". In early June, Jim McCarty was interviewed on a podcast show, and he said that due to some complications, the release date of "Black Dawn" had been held up and that it would definitely be out by September (which it was), when the band would be touring for the album, the first show of which would be called the Cactus CD Release Party. McCarty also revealed that the album contained eight brand new songs as well as two never before heard songs by the original band that had recently been unearthed by Carmine Appice.