Hello from sunny Florida! Yours truly is now based in the Sunshine State and lovin’ it! Although oddly enough, I do miss the hussle and bustle of NYC. Sigh.
Anyhow, in the news today, THIS! Lollapalooza 2017…a whopping 4 day event that even has it’s on Kidzapalooza day for the offspring of the concert goers! Wow, how things have changed, eh? Does this mean we could someday see a kids’ stage at a hard rock festival? Hmmm. Doubtful! LOL
Happy to report our friends Beartooth have been invited to be on the stage at this summer’s Van’s Warped Tour! They are also releasing the Deluxe Edition of Aggressive, complete with six bonus tracks as well as documentary footage and a full 14-song-set from their recent hometown show in Columbus, OH. Bonus tracks include acoustic versions of ‘Sick of Me’ and ‘Hated,’ which is currently Top 5 at Active Rock Radio. Aggressive debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Alternative Chart and No. 3 on the Billboard Rock Chart upon release. The deluxe CD/DVD will be available for purchase on May 26th (and will be made available digitally, both as a bundle as well as a stand-alone documentary, Beartooth: Live in Columbus, on all digital retailers and streaming services) and in the meantime fans can pre-order here.
Beartooth are currently on the road with Bring Me The Horizon and Underoath on The American Nightmare Tour, which keeps them on the road in the states until April 8th. After a short break and trip across the pond as well as down-under, Beartooth head off on the Warped Tour! All dates can be found in Road Rage!
Jason Newsted….offers you peace and love
The Pulse Of Radio is reporting former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted has offered his opinion on the band’s latest album, Hardwired…To Self-Destruct, in a new interview with Ultimate-Guitar.com. Newsted said that the album “is a bit different than the other efforts that led up to it. Robert (Trujillo)’s a great f**kin’ bass player and he’s always been a great bass player. I’ve known him for 25 years at least . . . That guy has always got my respect. He got in there and he can hang with those guys and make it sound like it does? Peace, peace, power to you.“
Newsted added about the disc, “I feel they’ve kinda come back into stride and there’s something of substance here.” Newsted left Metallica back in 2001 but was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2009, along with drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett and Trujillo. Newsted became Metallica’s third bassist in 1986, following Ron McGovney and the late Cliff Burton. Robert Trujillo took over in 2003 after Newsted’s exit. Jason’s current endeavor is a pair of acoustic groups, including the Chophouse Band, which played several shows last Sep.
Speaking of Robert Trujillo, he talked with <a href="
Metallicas Robert Trujillo verrät uns im Interview, warum Metallica diesmal eine besondere Bühne mit im Gepäck haben… pic.twitter.com/7cg32xnPSs
— Live Nation GSA (@LiveNationGSA) March 22, 2017
” target=”_blank”>Live Nation about the stage setup for Metallica’s “WorldWired” tour, which will officially kick off on May 10th in Baltimore. Trujillo explained, “We’re in the round. It feels a little smaller and tighter. One of the things, when we played the clubs, we felt that we should have hopefully more interaction with each other. ‘Cause sometimes on the bigger stages, you don’t hang out that much with each other . . . And that’s one of the things that we missed that we did get out of the club shows with each other.”
Incubus has released a new lyric video for “Glitterbomb,” the second song to be issued from the band’s upcoming new album 8. Singer Brandon Boyd told Lou Brutus co-producer Dave Sardy made him and guitarist Mike Einziger approach their songwriting in a whole different way: “He wanted to shake up our process. He didn’t want us to write the way we’d ever written before. So he humbly requested that Michael and I find a neutral space — neither his house nor my house — and get together with very, very basic instruments like a simple piano, acoustic guitar, and just write for like six months. So that’s what we did. We rented this cool little, like, 1910 shack in Venice Beach and we just met five days a week.“
8 is the eighth studio effort from Incubus and is due out on April 21st. The first song issued from the set was “Nimble Bastard,” currently Number 13 on rock radio. The album was co-produced by Sardy and Skrillex, with Skrillex taking on the mixing duties as well and guesting on the track “Familiar Faces.”
Incubus will head out on a six-week summer headlining tour with Jimmy Eat World and Judah And The Lion to support the new CD, beginning on July 6th in West Palm Beach, FL.
Blabbermouth is reporting Rage Against The Machine and Prophets Of Rage guitarist Tom Morello makes a guest appearance on Chuck, the final studio album recorded by rock ‘n’ roll legend Chuck Berry before his death last weekend at the age of 90. Morello contributes to a song called “Big Boys” which has just been posted online. The album, due Jun 16th, is Berry’s first new collection of studio material since 1979 and features 10 tracks, eight of them written by Berry himself.
Chuck was recorded between 1991 and 2014, and in addition to new material features two callbacks to the past: “‘Lady B. Goode” is a sequel to “Johnny B. Goode,” and “Jamaica Moon” is a rewrite of “Havana Moon.” The disc was recorded and produced by Berry — who learned how to use Pro Tools to make it — in various studios around St. Louis. It features his longtime hometown backing group, which includes his children Charles Berry Jr. on guitar and Ingrid Berry on vocals and harmonica.
Chuck Berry’s passing on Mar 18th led to an outpouring of support and condolences from fans, fellow musicians, and world leaders, including members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, along with former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Morello is currently in the studio working on new music with Prophets Of Rage, the rap/rock supergroup consisting of the instrumental members of Rage Against The Machine, Public Enemy MC Chuck D and Cypress Hill MC B-Real. There have also been rumors about another Audioslave project in the future.
Blabbermouth also reporting on my friends Lacuna Coil. After returning from a triumphant tour of South America and right before hitting the road with their Century Media labelmates Arch Enemy and The Haunted, the Italian heavy rockers have released a new video for one of their crowd favorites, “Blood, Tears, Dust.” The clip was directed and edited by Cosimo Alemà and produced by the production company Borotalco.
Commented co-singer Cristina Scabbia: “Right now I can’t tell you everything about ‘Blood, Tears, Dust,’ as this video is part of something bigger… This is the core of who we are as a band: the sweat, the dirt, the raw energy. It’s our insanity and all of us feeling comfortable with it.
“I love how by Cosimo Alemà filmed this. The photography, the colors and the hints in the story are perfectly placed and it is the first time we are really ‘acting’. This video is only a part of a much bigger plan… stay tuned. Hope you enjoy this video as much as I do!”
“Blood, Tears, Dust” is taken from Lacuna Coil‘s latest album, Delirium, which was released last May. The CD was recorded at BRX Studio in Milan between Dec 2015 and Feb 2016. The effort was produced by LACUNA COIL bassist and main songwriter Marco “Maki” Coti-Zelati, with engineering by Marco Barusso and additional assistance from Dario Valentini. Coti-Zelati also created the artwork for Delirium, which is based on an atmospheric session captured by Italian photographer Alessandro Olgiati.
Lacuna has recruited Diego Cavallotti as a fill-in guitarist for the band following the departure of Marco “Maus” Biazzi. Biazzi left the band in January 2016, explaining in a statement: “I felt I couldn’t add more in this project any longer so I decided to leave my second family, Lacuna Coil, to take a different path for a new challenge in my life.”
In Feb 2014, the band parted ways with guitarist Cris “Pizza” Migliore and drummer Cristiano “Criz” Mozzati under mutual agreement. Both members wanted to spend more time with families and find new outlets.
Also from Blabbermouth, Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, commemorates the tenth anniversary of Record Store Day with an electrifying lineup of exclusive new and collectible 7″ and 12″ vinyl releases. Among these is Alice In Chains‘ “Get Born Again”/”What The Hell Have I,” two 7″ black vinyl singles in gatefold sleeve.
This special Alice In Chains’ 45 RPM double 7″ single collects four hard-hitting tracks remastered and available on vinyl for the first time. “What The Hell Have I” and “A Little Bitter,” released on the soundtrack to the Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Last Action Hero” in 1993, were the first to feature new bassist Mike Inez, who’d played with Ozzy Osbourne for five years. “Get Born Again” and “Died,” released on the box set Music Bank in 1999, were the band’s final recordings with original vocalist Layne Staley.
Now in its tenth year, Record Store Day is an annual day-long celebration of record store culture held on the third Saturday in April. Record Store Day has named St. Vincent as Record Store Day‘s Madame Ambassador 2017. Record Store Day 2017 will be celebrated at independent record stores worldwide on Saturday, Apr 22.
Finally today, my boy Brian Welch, aka Head from Korn was interviewed by Brazil’s Wikimetal podcast in a recent episode (as transcribed by Blabbermouth.) Here are some excerpts:
On whether Korn‘s latest album, 2016’s The Serenity Of Suffering, is a return to the band’s roots:
Brian: “I think in a lot of ways, it does feel like that. But, obviously, with the new technology and [producer] Nick Raskulinecz and then some of the extra people that we’ve brought in just for some ambient sounds and stuff makes it have a modern feel too. What it has is intensity, like the old records. It’s got real intensity, and so that is what Korn is, I think. It’s always been like that. There’s been albums where Korn has experimented with other sounds, and that’s good too — I love experimenting — but the best songs live always come from the intense songs, and they’re the funnest to play. Those are the ones that you can play year after year, decade after decade, because they just come across so energetic and fun live.”
On whether Korn‘s innovative musical style on the band’s debut album was created intentionally or if it came about naturally:
Brian: “I think it just happened natural, but I think it’s a little of both. Because we were just fans of that type of music. We listened to anything from N.W.A and Cypress Hill and hip-hop and stuff to Nine Inch Nails and that type of industrial stuff to Soundgarden and Faith No More and Metallica. We wanted to see people hop up and down and mosh. When we wrote the songs, we would think about that. And then Jonathan [Davis, vocals], he loved being weird and not sounding like your average singer. So he was just always a freak. I think album one he sounded like a freak, but at the same time, he was very real and honest and raw, and his emotions were… he would open his soul and just say, ‘Come and look inside.’ So I think all of that stuff mixed together. Sometimes it was intentional and other times it just happened, because all those sounds were just poured into us over the years, being fans of different kinds of music.”
Korn and Stone Sour will join forces for a summer tour, set to get underway June 16 at the USANA Amphitheatre in Salt Lake City, Utah and then continue through early August. Presented by Live Nation, The Serenity Of Summer tour will be rounded out by support from Japan’s female-fronted Babymetal, southern rapper Yelawolf and Islander (Jun 16-25), followed by a second leg (Jul 19 – Aug 02) which will see Korn joined by Skillet, Yelawolf and DED, creating a versatile bill reminiscent of Korn‘s famed Family Values tours in the past.
BTW: Korn’s new Serenity of Suffering deluxe box set is off the freakin’ hook awesome!