Happy 4-20, yo! Ire, mon!
Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor‘s side project, Arcadea, will release its self-titled debut album on Jun 16th. Described as “hailing from the fringes of the cosmos,” Arcadea was born when Dailor teamed up with guitarists and keyboardists Core Atoms and Raheem Amlani to create a progressive, heavily psychedelic act. The trio recorded their 10-song debut at Orange Peel Studios in Atlanta.
Atoms and Amlani play only keyboards and synthesizers in the group, while Dailor stays on his customary drums. The album takes place five billion years from now, when the impending collision of galaxies creates a new order of planets and war rages throughout the cosmos. It is in this universe that Arcadea reign supreme as the last surviving space wizards since the final extinction.
Meanwhile, “Show Yourself” from Dailor’s day job is currently Number Seven on the rock radio chart, the biggest single of Mastodon’s career! The track is taken from the group’s seventh studio album, Emperor Of Sand, which debuted at Number Seven on the Billboard 200 album chart last week, making it their third Top 10 album. Mastodon’s spring U.S. headlining tour brings the band to Los Angeles tonight. (Apr 20th). hardDrive will be the only interview Mastodon will do at Fort Rock. Oh yeah, we’re special! 😉
The most fun rock star we know, Mr Corey Taylor, is at it again. Posting on his Twitter a couple of shots from the Stone Sour music video shoot in L.A. (with a ton of fans in tow) for the tune “Fabuless,” which is the first new song they’ve revealed from the forthcoming Hydrograd album. Lou Brutus got an exclusive interview with Corey that will be heard on the weekend edition of hardDrive Apr 29-30 and Stone Sour is our Featured Artist of the Week on hardDrive XL May 01-05. Get ready, kids. You’re always in for a treat when Corey and Lou get together!
If you’ve been reading this column for a while, then you know that I have been a huge Korn fan since I first was introduced to them in 1994. I love that Ray Luzier is now the drummer for Korn, because since he has joined the band, I believe they are a tighter unit. Blabbermouth found this piece on Ray and I wanted to share it.
In a brand new interview with Antihero Magazine, Korn drummer Ray Luzier was asked what made him audition for the band ten years ago. He responded: “My last band, Army Of Anyone, you know, [which featured members of] the Stone Temple Pilots (Dean and Robert Deleo) and [the] Filter singer (Richard Patrick), had the same manager Korn did. And when I saw this band not doing so well, I called my manager: ‘Man, do you know any other gigs? And he’s, like, ‘What’s wrong with Korn?’ Their drummer left and now they have Joey [Jordison] filling in, and Terry Bozzio and Brooks Wackerman, who is now in Avenged Sevenfold, all these guys filling in. [And he was] like, ‘Yeah, they want someone permanent, they’re looking.’ And he said, ‘You should audition.’ I was, like, ‘Why? I don’t have tattoos.’ I had long blond hair at the time. He said David [Silveria, original Korn drummer] doesn’t either. David had a shaved head, he looked like a surfer guy, he doesn’t have dreadlocks. True. And I said, ‘Okay.’ So, I went to my drum space in Los Angeles and just playing all the songs that I knew and I knew more than I thought. It’s because I’m a fan; I was fan of all the old stuff. But I really wanted to learn the new record. Because I love ‘Untitled’, I love that record. And so that’s why, when I walked in there [for the audition], I knew so many [songs], because I just kind of prepared. And that’s it. I played six songs and they said,’Welcome to Korn. See you in Dublin.’ Then I didn’t hear anything for a month, two months. I called the manager: ‘What’s going on? Do I have the gig?’ He said, ‘Yes, of course. Why?’ ‘No one calls me. What are the songs we will play?’ He’s, like, ‘They don’t like to rehearse too much. You’ll probably just go to Dublin and rehearse there.’ ‘What the… what are you talking about?’ When I played with David Lee Roth, we rehearsed three or four weeks.”
Luzier also looked back on his ten years with Korn so far, saying: “I’m so glad that [guitarist] Head [Brian Welch] rejoined. I was in the band almost as long he has been out of the band, so when he rejoined, now it feels like a powerful force. He had reason for quitting. The original drummer just quit. He has just said, ‘My heart’s not in it anymore. I’m out. I gotta go.’ And he left everybody. Head kind of left because he had a reason to. There was more of drug problems, and his daughter, and a lot of things. And he became a big rock star when Korn blew up. They were unstoppable. It was like on top of everybody, you know? It does a lot to your mind when you’re in that game. I’ve joined a lot of bands, from David Lee Roth, and Army Of Anyone, and Jake E. Lee from Ozzy Osbourne‘s band. I have a lot of experience with big bands. But all my original bands in Los Angeles were not as successful. We’d get a little bit of success and then nothing. So yeah, it feels great, though. Just in the last few years I feel like, ‘Okay, now I’m even part of this band and everything feels great.’”
Korn and Stone Sour will join forces for a summer tour, set to get underway Jun 16 at the USANA Amphi in Salt Lake City, UT and then continue through early Aug.
I can tell you THIS video cost more than 10 or 20 K!
Blabbermouthalso reporting today in the days leading up to the November 18, 2016 release of Metallica‘s latest album, Hardwired… To Self-Destruct, the band posted videos for every song from the disc, beginning with “Dream No More” and dropping new visuals every two hours through 6 a.m. EST the day before the album’s arrival. The clips were shot all around the world and served as the sneak peek for fans to get a listen to every track days before the group’s two-disc tenth studio album officially went on sale.
Asked in a brand new interview with our friend Andy Hall of the Des Moines, IA radio station Lazer 103.3 if he was happy with how the Hardwired videos came out, Metallica’s guitarist Kirk Hammett said: “Oh, yeah. Some of the videos that we made, I think, are some of the best videos we’ve ever made. The video for ‘Dream No More’, I think, is just totally amazing and reminds me of a Kenneth Anger film that was filmed in maybe the ’50s or ’60s. From an artistic point of view, I think it’s really cool. And also, it really gives us an knee up on all the situations where a band puts out a new album and someone hears a track, a new track, and decides, ‘Oh, I’m gonna make a YouTube video around this track,’ and then, all of a sudden that becomes the predominant YouTube video for that song. That happens; that’s a pretty common thing that happens in the YouTube world, and we were aware of that. And so we wanted to take matters into our own hands and make sure that the video that we made for the song was the predominant video that everyone saw for that song, rather than someone else’s vision of the song itself.”
Hammett was also asked if there are any older Metallica songs that the band never made videos for that he thought would lend themselves well to strong visual interpretations. He responded: “It’s interesting that you say that, because it’s so much more inexpensive now, it’s so much cheaper now, to make videos. It’s crazy how much cheaper it is. Okay, I’ll go back to 1988. The ‘One’ video cost us a lot of money — six figures — and we were just blown away by the cost. You couldn’t figure it out, why it would cost so much. Okay, so you jump to 2016, 2017, a typical video that we made for ‘Hardwired’ nowadays cost between fifteen to twenty grand. It’s totally amazing how much cheaper it is. And a lot of that is because of digital technology, things are smaller, things are more lightweight, more stealth. You can even use your iPhone to make a video if you really wanted to. Which leads me to the fact that since videos are so inexpensive these days, it would be interesting for us if we just retroactively decided to make a video for a track that we never made a video for — say, ‘Carpe Diem Baby’ off Reload. It’s a possibility these days, because it’s so cheap to make videos. I don’t know if we would actually find the inspiration to do something like that, but who knows? Maybe people will start doing retroactive videos.”
Tim McIlrath on the hardDrive hotLine today! Wolves, the new album from Rise Against, will be released on Jun 9 via Virgin Records. Today, the band unveiled the first single, “The Violence.”
Per their press release:
WOLVES is available for pre-order in digital and physical formats HERE. Fans who pre-order the digital album will instantly receive “The Violence.”
Rise Against is partnering with Vans to give fans a preview of Wolves with performances at House of Vans Chicago (Apr 21) and House of Vans Brooklyn (Apr 24). The Rise Against performances at House of Vans Chicago and Brooklyn are free to the public and tickets can be claimed via ballot system at www.houseofvans.comnow. The band will also play the Troubadour in West Hollywood, CA on Apr 26. And Monday, the Brooklyn show will be live streamed on Rise Against and Vans Facebook channels starting at approximately 9P ET.
This summer, Rise Against will join Deftones on an extensive co-headline tour, which will kick off on Jun 9 and feature special guest Thrice. Tickets go on sale tomorrow, Apr 21, for Rise Against’s Jul 13 headline showat the historic Shrine Exposition Hall in Los Angeles. See below for itinerary.
Throughout its career, Rise Against has kept its moral compass steady, using its international punk platform to speak out for social justice. With Wolves, the band challenges fans to join them in creating a bold new identity together. The album is about recognizing the power within; it’s a primal call for the prey to become the hunters.
“In many ways, a Rise Against show is a safe space for our fans,” lead singer Tim McIlrath says. “But I realized that I don’t only want to create safe spaces, I want to create dangerous spaces where misogyny can’t exist, where xenophobia can’t exist. I want to create spaces where those sentiments don’t have any air, and they suffocate: where those ideas die. WOLVES isn’t about creating a safe space, it’s about creating a space that’s dangerous for injustice.“
Rise Against chose to record its eighth studio album, WOLVES, with GRAMMY®-winning producer Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains, Deftones). Recording with Raskulinecz meant moving to Nashville, TN – far from the band’s familiar worlds of Chicago and Los Angeles, and a state where Rise Against has rarely played. The setting had a clear impact on the album.
“Living in Nashville drove home that we can’t just focus on our differences,” McIlrath says. “If we can stop and talk to each other, face to face, we might realize our common ground. We are all wolves in the same pack, circling at the gates.”
WOLVES is the follow up to 2014’s The Black Market, which hit No. 1 on the Alternative, Top Rock and Hard Rock albums charts in the U.S. and topped album charts in Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Germany. Alternative Press said, “Whatever meaning you take from them [the songs]…one thing remains solid-the sheer heart with which they were forged and the very visceral emotion they contain” and Kerrang praised the album as “a magnificent wake-up call.” Rise Against is Tim McIlrath (lead vocals/rhythm guitar), Zach Blair (lead guitar), Joe Principe (bass) and Brandon Barnes (drums).
Track Listing – WOLVES
1. Wolves
2. House On Fire
3. The Violence
4. Welcome To The Breakdown
5. Far From Perfect
6. Bulls***
7. Politics of Love
8. Parts Per Million
9. Mourning in Amerika
10. How Many Walls
11. Miracle
Rise Against – Spring Headline Shows
4/21 – Chicago, IL – House of Vans
4/24 – Brooklyn, NY – House of Vans
4/26 – Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
Rise Against & Deftones Co-Headline Summer Tour with Special Guest Thrice
6/9 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
6/10 – Sterling Heights, MI @ Michigan Lottery Theater at Freedom Hill
6/11 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage
6/13 – Wantagh, NY @ Nikon at Jones Beach Theater
6/16 – Boston, MA @ Blue Hills Bank Pavilion
6/17 – Philadelphia, PA @ Festival Pier at Penn’s Landing
6/18 – Raleigh, NC @ Red Hat Amphitheater
6/20 – Charlotte, NC @ Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre
6/22 – Tampa, FL @ MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre
6/23 – Miami, FL @ Bayfront Park Amphitheater
6/24 – Jacksonville, FL @ Daily’s Place Amphitheater
6/26 – The Woodlands, TX @ The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
6/27 – Dallas, TX @ Starplex Pavilion
6/28 – Austin, TX @ Austin360 Amphitheater
6/30 – Denver, CO @ Pepsi Center
7/1 – Salt Lake City, UT @ USANA Amphitheater
7/3 – Seattle, WA @ White River Amphitheatre
7/6 – Concord, CA @ Concord Pavilion
7/7 – Chula Vista, CA @ Mattress Firm Amphitheatre
7/8 – Las Vegas, NV @ Downtown Las Vegas Events Center
7/9 – Phoenix, AZ @ Ak-Chin Pavilion
Rise Against – Summer Headline Show
7/13 – Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine Exposition Hall
Have a great day!