Love starting the day off with this news! Seether have announced the fifth annual Rise Above Fest, with some exciting new developments. Due to popular demand, the multi-stage music festival has expanded to two days for the first time in its history.
Rise Above Fest, which supports suicide prevention and mental illness, is the largest suicide awareness music event in the world and has established itself as a “can’t miss” destination festival of the summer for hard rock fans.
This year’s Rise Above Fest is set for Saturday, July 22 and Sunday, July 23. The event returns to Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion in Bangor, Maine.
The 2017 Rise Above fest lineup is a veritable “Who’s Who” of rock music, with Korn set to headline Saturday night, alongside sets from Seether, Stone Sour, Skillet, Falling in Reverse, and more. Shinedown will close Sunday night’s festivities, along with performances from Halestorm, Theory of a Deadman, Hellyeah, and All That Remains, among others.
In addition to giving rock fans a must-see lineup of bands, the event, which borrows its name from the Seether song “Rise Above This,” brings awareness to suicide as an epidemic and destigmatizes depression and other mental illnesses.
As fans are well aware, Seether frontman Shaun Morgan lost his brother to suicide nearly a decade ago and penned the song as an ode to him. The singer’s personal experience with suicide lead to the creation of Rise Above Fest. Additionally, Morgan was honored last year with the “Artistic Expression” Award from the National Council for Behavioral Health at the Awards of Excellence in Las Vegas for his tireless work as an advocate of suicide prevention.
All proceeds from Rise Above Fest benefit SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education), which is one of the leading national not-for-profit organizations dedicated to raising awareness and educating the public about mental health and suicide prevention in order to SAVE lives.
“It’s unbelievable we’re in our fifth year of Rise Above Fest,” Morgan said. “We started this out as a way to give back and raise awareness. To have created something that our friends and fans believe in is really humbling. Every year it’s grown and it’s an honor to bring you a two-day experience. Can’t wait to see you there.”
Tickets for the Rise Above Fest go on sale on Friday, Feb. 24 at 10am ET at this location. (NOTE: Link is not live until then.)
The Pulse Of Radio says just a week and a half after Metallica and Lady Gaga performed together at the Grammy Awards, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich is still talking about the event as if it is just the beginning. In a new interview with The A.V. Club, Ulrich explained, “Obviously, we’re not sitting in a recording studio today writing songs for a record or anything. I think that our weekend together was so seamless and so authentic and such a natural fit that the idea of revisiting this at some point down the road . . . As we were walking off one of the soundchecks, she said to me, ‘We gotta do something again together. This is just too good to leave.’ And I said, ‘I agree with you. It’s just too real.’”
Despite the technical snafus with the actual televised performance that left Metallica frontman James Hetfield without a mic for most of the song, Ulrich said, “I knew ths was going to work.”
He continued, “We did one run-through. The way her and James’s voices worked, it jelled so well together we all kind of stood there like, ‘Huh?’ It was really f**king next-level . . . There was no sort of, ‘Oh, my god, what are we doing here?’ This was as natural and organic as you could imagine this type of stuff being.”
The drummer reiterated, “If there was ever an opportunity to revisit something like this, this is about as pure as it could get. So we’ll see.”
Metallica recently announced the details of the North American leg of the band’s “WorldWired” 2017 tour in support of its new album, Hardwired…To Self-Destruct. The trek kicks off on May 10th in Baltimore and will hit stadiums in 25 cities before winding down in mid-August. Support will come from Avenged Sevenfold, Volbeat and, in the latter portion of the schedule, Gojira.
Corey Taylor….Making America Read Again!
The Pulse Of Radio also says Slipknot and Stone Sour singer Corey Taylor has set Aug 15th as the release date of his next book, titled America 51: A Probe Into The Realities That Are Hiding Inside The Greatest Country In The World. The book’s title is a play on Area 51, the famously secret Air Force base in Nevada that doesn’t officially exist and which has been the center of UFO lore for decades.
Taylor told the Guardian the book is “going to deal with everything from politics to social commentary. It’s going to piss off a lot of people in my country, but everyone else will love it.”
Taylor told us he tries to make his books sound like he’s having a discussion with the reader: “People who know me, they call me and it’s like, ‘Dude, I can’t get your voice out of my head when I’m reading this book. It’s like I’m talking to you!’ And that, that’s the best compliment I could ever get, you know, because that’s really what it’s supposed to be, is a conversation.”
The official description reads, “Balancing humor, outrage, and disbelief, Taylor examines the rotting core of America, evaluating everything from politics and race relations to family and ‘man buns.’ By continuing the wave of moral outrage begun in You’re Making Me Hate You, Taylor skewers contemporary America in his own signature style.”
Taylor published his third book, You’re Making Me Hate You: A Cantankerous Look At The Common Misconception That Humans Have Any Common Sense Left, in July 2015. His previous books include 2011’s Seven Deadly Sins: Settling The Argument Between Born Bad And Damaged Good and 2013’s A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Heaven, both of which made the New York Times “Hardcover Non-Fiction” best sellers list. The singer is currently in the studio with Stone Sour, who are completing their sixth album, Hydrograd, for release later this year.
Frances Bean Cobain, the daughter of late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, posted an emotional tribute to her father online on Monday (Feb 20th), on what would have been his 50th birthday. According to Billboard, Frances wrote on Instagram, “Today would have been your 50th birthday. You are loved and you are missed. Thank you for giving me the gift of life. Forever your daughter, Frances Bean.”
Kurt Cobain was just 27 years old when he died in 1994 at from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Frances Bean, who is now 21, was only one year old when her father died.
Later in the day, Frances also posted a text exchange between herself and her grandmother — and Kurt’s mother — Wendy Cobain. Frances wrote, “I love you so much, thank you for being my one and only grams . . . I know he is thankful that you raised me to be as strong & compassionate as you are.” Wendy replied, “You were such a caring loving little girl and have turned into such a beautiful young woman, he would be so ‘smugly’ proud of you . . . Thank God you were here for me to love and care for.” Wendy Cobain cared for Frances during a period lasting several years in which Frances was estranged from her mother, Courtney Love.
I remember seeing Frances Bean when Courtney toured with Hole at the NY Academy of Music back in maybe 1993 or early ’94. She was so cute with her little sound-cancelling headphones as she was seen on the side of the stage watching Mom being held in the arms of Drew Barrymore, who was dating Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson at the time. Such a sweet moment. And I remember wondering how she would be when she grew up. Sigh.
Lou Brutus with Mike Mushok and Adam Gontier
Saint Asonia, the act featuring ex-Three Days Grace frontman Adam Gontier and Staind guitarist Mike Mushok, intends to release its sophomore album before the end of the year, according to Blabbermouth. Gontier told Detroit radio station WRIF, “I would say we’re about halfway done, meaning the writing process is pretty much done. Right now, we’re just in the stages of demoing what we, as a band, believe are four or five of the best tracks that will be on the record, that we feel are the best tracks, that we are most happy with.” Gontier said in the radio interview the music for the band’s second album was a “big evolution” for Saint Asonia, adding, “I believe it’s gonna be the record that will jumpstart — if we haven’t already — catapult what we’ve been trying to do so far.”
Gontier added that the band has not decided whether it will hire a producer for the record, saying, “Between myself, Mike Mushok and (bassist) Corey Lowery, we’ve all done some producing in our day, and at this point, a producer isn’t 100 percent necessary . . . But as for the songwriting, it’s pretty much done, and we’re having a really good time putting the finishing touches on the music we’ve got so far.”
Saint Asonia was unveiled in early 2015, with Mushok and Gontier joined in the band by Lowery and ex-Finger Eleven drummer Rich Beddoe.
Gontier told us a while back about the moment when they knew Saint Asonia was a band: “When we got into the studio to record a couple of songs, we recorded three songs, and when they were done, I think that was probably the moment where we were like, ‘Okay, so we’ve just recorded three songs, they turned out really good, we have another 10, let’s do this.’ Obviously Mike being basically on hiatus from Staind for who knows how long, it just seemed to make sense.”
Gontier had exited Three Days Grace two years earlier, while Staind’s semi-permanent hiatus left Mushok with a lot of free time on his hands. The group’s self-titled debut album — which came out in July of that same year — contained the Top 10 rock radio hit “Better Place.”
Blabbermouth reporting our friends, Kentucky rockers Black Stone Cherry will film a video for the song “Cheaper To Drink Alone” tonight (Feb 21) at Spillway Bar And Grill in Bowling Green, KY. Fans are invited to attend the shoot, which will commence at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free but restricted to those 21 years of age and older.
“Cheaper To Drink Alone” is taken from Black Stone Cherry’s fifth studio album, Kentucky, which was released in April 2016 via Mascot Label Group. The CD was recorded at Barrick Recording in Glasgow, KY. Taking a “back-to-the-roots” approach, the effort was produced in the same way and same place as Black Stone Cherry’s eponymous debut album, which broke the band out of the small southern backwater and onto the world stage.
Black Stone Cherry guitarist Ben Wells told Metal Hammer magazine about Kentucky: “This is the first time we [got] to self-produce. And most of the songs, with the exception of maybe two or three out of fifteen, are all written by us, the four of us. Which all of our songs always are — we might co-write with somebody — but this time, the majority of the songs are all written by us. So it feels really good to kind of have that creative freedom. It’s raw, it’s heavy. [We went] back to our hometown to record it, where we did our debut album. So we’re kind of revisiting some of that old mojo that we had, and I think our fans have been wanting that from us for a long time now. These are probably some of the coolest songs we’ve written as far as the music and the melodies.”