Big day today! I start it out with my annual physical. Always fun!
Fieldy, JD, Head, Ray and Munky
But I end it with an in-studio appearance from Jonathan Davis and Fieldy from KoЯn! My favs! Oh yeah! Spent part of the weekend listening to their new album, The Serenity of Suffering, and man, KoЯn fans are going to be so freaking happy with this Nick Raskulinecz produced 12th record. More on that tomorrow!
Meanwhile, according to The Pulse Of Radio, guitarists Head and Munky spoke with Alternative Press, saying they are interested in touring with some of the younger, up-and-coming bands on the heavy rock scene. Welch said, “I would love like to do something next year . . . in the next couple years, doing tours just that we haven’t done. Maybe with some of these other younger bands, like A Day To Remember or something like that, you know? Of Mice & Men . . . I would love to just bring the generations together.”
Shaffer added, “I love almost every record from Bring Me The Horizon and to see their evolution and how they — their early stuff is so heavy but where they’re headed is just so fresh and new, I’m a big fan of that band.”
Welch agreed with Shaffer, saying, “When we get all gray-haired and stuff and we just kind of play less or whatever or hang it up one day, when I think of a band or bands that can take that slot and headline, Bring Me The Horizon is Number One for me.”
We asked Welch a while back to tell us the most important thing he would advise young musicians about being in a rock band: “You’ve got to get it in your head and your heart right now that you being this musician, it’s not for you. It’s for the fans. If you want to go out there and play onstage for a living, you are giving your life for your fans. And it’s not about them worshiping you, it’s about you giving a gift to them that they can appreciate. And once you make it about you, you’re gonna start to shake and you’re gonna break down and fall.”
Korn’s new album, The Serenity Of Suffering, is set to arrive on Oct 21st. The first single, “Rotting In Vain,” has just cracked the Top 10 at rock radio. The follow-up to 2013’s The Paradigm Shift features a guest appearance by Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor on the song “A Different World.” Korn’s current co-headlining tour with Rob Zombie winds down on Sep 3rd in Bristow, VA. Korn will then hit the road with Breaking Benjamin, starting Sep 24th in Fargo, ND.
News from The Pulse Of Radio! Well, last week we told you about this idea from Corey Taylor about the band performing ONE of it’s albums in its entirety in the near future and now it’s revealed! Slipknot will perform its 2001 album Iowa in its entirety at Ozzfest Meets Knotfest on Sunday, Sep 25th at San Manuel Amphitheater in San Bernardino, CA. The band said in a statement, “15 years ago, something quite extraordinary happened. Nine men from Iowa went in to a studio in California and created one of the most chaotic and destructive albums ever made. It was, and still is, a shockingly physical and ferocious recording. To this day, it has never been performed in its entirety. That is about to change.”
The statement added that on Sep 25th, “30,000 people will experience an event that has NEVER been done before. It will be a dense and serious spectacle, both visually and sonically. But you’ll be able to say ‘you were there.’ So… Will you be there?”
Iowa came out in August 2001 and followed up Slipknot’s double-platinum 1999 major label debut.
Still considered their heaviest and darkest effort to date, the disc was made during a difficult period in the band’s career. Percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan told us the chaos surrounding Iowa is what made it so intense: “The whole thing, from the beginning — it wasn’t a disaster, it was exactly what we wanted to do. It’s where we all wanted to be. We all made a conscious decision to dive headfirst into this thought process known as Iowa, and it was a very painful, disgusting, evil, angry, hateful, self-indulgent monster.“
Iowa has sold more than one million copies and featured the songs “Left Behind,” “The Heretic Anthem,” “My Plague,” “Disasterpiece” and others. Singer Corey Taylor told Metal Hammer about the album, “Our whole goal was to go in and make this dense, destructive album. We had no idea how destructive it was going to be. You can hear the bile in it, you can hear the frenetic passion for what we were trying to do.”
Ozzfest Meets Knotfest is a combination of the two heavy rock events that will take place on Saturday, Sep 24th and Sunday, Sep 25th. Black Sabbath will top the Ozzfest bill on the 24th, while Slipknot will lead the Knotfest lineup the next day. Other bands appearing over the weekend include Disturbed, Trivium, Slayer, Anthrax, Suicide Silence and many more.
Other things to know about this album:
Iowa was named after Slipknot’s home state. Two songs from Iowa, “Left Behind” and “My Plague,” were nominated for Grammy Awards. The album was the first to extensively feature guitarist Jim Root, who joined very late in the recording of the band’s 1999 debut. Corey Taylor told FHM in Dec 2001 that while recording the vocals for the title track, he was naked, vomiting on himself and cutting himself with broken glass. (Yeck! Those were the dark times of his life. Thankfully, he is well over those days!)
Kirk, Lars, Robert, James Sharped Dressed Men
The Pulse Of Radio reporting Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said in a new interview with StarTribune.com the songs on the band’s upcoming album, Hardwired…To Self-Destruct, are “a little leaner and shorter than the last go-round.” Ulrich explained, “I don’t know if I have enough distance from it yet to really describe or explain it . .. I’m pretty f**king sure it sounds like Metallica. The songs are probably a little leaner and shorter than the last go-around, and slightly less progressive. They’re more one-dimensional, meaning each song really just has one individual mood instead of having many moods within one song. And I can tell you, it feels pretty damn good to have this new music and to be getting it out there.”
Frontman James Hetfield told us the band strives to have a mix of material on every album, including this one: “Making any record, you’re trying to get a broad paintstroke of everything that the band is capable of and loves to do. So between the ballady stuff, the extremely fast and extreme stuff, and super-heavy…there’s a bit of everything on this record.”
Hardwired…To Self-Destruct will be released on Nov 18th. The first single from Hardwired…, simply titled “Hardwired,” is out now. The album will be issued on double CD, vinyl and digital download. A deluxe version will feature a bonus disc containing the riffs that formed the origins of the album along with “The Lords Of Summer,” which the band debuted on tour a couple of years ago.
Metallica has one upcoming show on its calendar: the band will perform at Neil Young‘s 30th anniversary Bridge School Benefit concert, set to take place on Oct 22nd and 23rd at at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA, but will make an appearance at the Global Citizen festival here in NYC’s Central Park on Sep 24th.
OK, gotta go. Much more tomorrow!