Well, I’m not a baseball or football player, but it’s cool to know my industry peers think I am an MVP! Thanks to everyone in radio and records who voted for me. (I actually cried when I won this award. I didn’t think I would beat the competition, which was pretty stiff!) Thanks so much to #RadioContraband! I’ve been a 4 time winner of Non-Traditional Programmer of The Year (and can no longer be in that category!), I’ve won their Impact Award and now this? All I want to know is, “Where is my damn tiara?”
I love these guys! The Pulse Of Radio reporting for years it’s been rumored singer Serj Tankian has been the sole holdout when it came to plans for System Of A Down to make a new album. Although he’s toured sporadically with the band since it ended its four-year hiatus in 2010, there have been no signs of the quartet getting back into the studio for the first time in over a decade.
But speaking with Rolling Stone, Tankian was asked about the status of System and replied, “We’re communicating and trying to see if we can bring our material together. There’s definitely a lot of communication going on, a lot of back and forth. I can’t make a statement in terms of whether we’re going to have a record or not, because we haven’t gone into the studio and done it. But there’s definitely communication going on, songs being played to each other and all that stuff, so it’s good. We’ll see what happens.”
Tankian added, “I think it would be great to create something brand new in a new direction. It would be very exciting, but everyone’s got to be on board, on the same page, and it’s got to be done in a way so that everyone is happy. If we can do that, we’ll do it.”
The singer also hinted that he had recently written several new rock songs, but wasn’t sure where they would end up. He told us a while back that he has always preferred to work on new music alone: “Even with System, I always wrote the songs by myself in my own studio. I would write the songs, and have the vocals, have the whole arrangement done, then I’d take it to the band. But I’d still work the song from its inception to full form by myself. This is something I’d been doing for a very long time.”
Tankian has released a number of solo projects in the past nine years, including four albums on his own, one with the jazz ensemble Jazz-Iz-Christ and three soundtracks.
System Of A Down’s last studio album, Hypnotize, came out in November 2005. The group last toured in early 2015 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
Tankian has just posted a new song online called “Artsakh,” which he wrote in support of Armenian freedom fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan near Armenia.
AXL/DC
Pulse also says Axl Rose has made his first on-camera appearance with AC/DC in a new video promoting the band’s upcoming show in Lisbon, Portugal this Saturday (May 7th). The short clip features Axl, guitarist Angus Young and bassist Cliff Williams sitting in their rehearsal studio and inviting Portugese fans to the first rescheduled date of the band’s Rock Or Bust world tour. The Guns N’ Roses frontman was recruited for 12 European dates and 10 North American shows after AC/DC singer Brian Johnson was forced off tour by hearing loss.
Meanwhile, in his first interview in five years, Rose told BBC 6 Music that he was a huge fan of Johnson’s singing and “wants to do it justice.” He added, “I’m happy and excited in one sense, but I think it would be inappropriate to be celebrating, in a certain way, at someone else’s expense.That’s not what I’m here to do.”
Rose told NME about the prospect of joining AC/DC and what it means to him, “It’s a challenge, and I wanna do right by the band and the fans.”
As previously reported, approximately 7,000 AC/DC fans who bought tickets to see the band on May 16th in Werchter, Belgium have asked for refunds, although those tickets have apparently since been resold.
A spokesperson for AC/DC told Team Rock that the band was not obligated to offer refunds, explaining, “The band made a decision to offer this. As they care about their fans and wanted to do right by them, they instructed local promoters to offer refunds.”
Johnson was forced to stop touring for now or risk going deaf, with AC/DC immediately beginning a search for a vocalist to complete the European shows and the rescheduled North American dates later in the year.
Joey Jordison’s new band!
And Pulse also revealed former Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison has launched a new band called Vimic. Joining him in the group on vocals is Kalen Chase Musmecci,who toured previously with Korn as a backing vocalist and percussionist, along with Jed Simon on guitar, Matthew Tarach on keyboards and Kyle Konkiel on bass from Jordison’s previous project, Scar The Martyr. Vimic’s debut album, titled Open Your Omen, is finished and will come out later this year.
A new Vimic song called “Simple Skeletons” was streaming online. Jordison said in an interview with Sirius/XM that Vimic was built on the bones of Scar The Martyr, explaining, “I decided that I really wanted to start fresh . . . So I renamed the band and I got a new singer and I got a new keyboard player.”
Slipknot announced in December 2013 that it had parted ways with Jordison, one of the band’s founding members and key songwriters. Singer Corey Taylor told us at the time about the split: “I mean, the only way I can say it is that his life and our lives were going in two separate areas, and it was hard. You know, we were trying to put something together and it just seemed like he was going down a path that wasn’t the way we were going. And unfortunately we had to do what was best for the band.”
Slipknot has to this day never explained the full reasons for Jordison’s dismissal, possibly for legal reasons, although rumors about his drug use surfaced after he was let go. He was replaced in the band by Jay Weinberg, son of E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg.
Hellyeah have posted the music video for their single, “Human.” The band is currently on tour and Lou Brutus will see them at Rock on the Range in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!
Celebrating life are: Today, Chris “Shifty” Shiflett of Foo Fighters is 45. Bob Seger is 71! Saturday: Phil Campbell of Motorhead is 55 and Sunday, Alex Van Halen is 63.