Oh look! A new Foo Fighters album is coming! Concrete and Gold, the band’s 9th studio album due Sep 15th on Roswell/RCA, was written and performed by Foo Fighters, produced by Greg Kurstin and Foo Fighters, and mixed by Darrell Thorp.
Frontman Dave Grohl commented: “I wanted it to be the biggest sounding Foo Fighters record ever. To make a gigantic rock record but with Greg Kurstin’s sense of melody and arrangement… Motorhead’s version of ‘Sgt. Pepper’… or something like that.”
This unlikely alliance came about through a bizarre sequence of surprise musical obsessions and chance encounters: Listening to the radio during a drive roughly four years ago, Grohl first heard “Again and Again” by Kurstin’s band The Bird & The Bee—“It blew my mind… it was so much more sophisticated than anything I’d ever heard and I became obsessed.”
Some months later, Grohl would randomly spot and fanboy out over “the guy from The Bird & The Bee!” a/k/a Greg Kurstin. The two became fast friends over common musical loves with Grohl learning that his new favorite band had been on hiatus due to Kurstin’s workload as a producer.
While Foo Fighters recorded and released Sonic Highways, broke some bones and packed stadiums and arenas on one of the top five grossing tours of 2015, and gifted fans with the St. Cecilia EP, “Greg was becoming one of the biggest producers in the world,” Grohl recalls.
With the writing and recording of the next Foo Fighters album on the horizon, Grohl was eager as always to find fresh challenges for the band: “So I think maybe Greg is the guy that we ask to be our producer because he’s never made a heavy rock record before and we’ve never worked with a pop producer.” Darrel Thorp (Beck, Radiohead) was soon enlisted to mix and engineer. This collective conceived a blueprint of the new record as “Motorhead’s version of Sgt. Pepper… or something like that,” secretly booking into Hollywood’s esteemed EastWest studios to consummate this marriage of extremes… or as Grohl puts it: “Our noise and Greg’s big brain and all of his sophisticated arrangements and composition.”
Months, sounds and stories (more on those soon, promise) and so many guitars later, the 11-Grammy-winning, 25+ million-record-selling, last great American stadium rock band had completed its most ambitious album ever—which naturally begat another insane challenge: How to celebrate music & throw the ultimate “backyard party for 50,000 people”…
Track listing:
1. T-Shirt
2. Run
3. Make It Right
4. The Sky Is A Neighborhood
5. La Dee Da
6. Dirty Water
7. Arrows
8. Happy Ever After (Zero Hour)
9. Sunday Rain
10. The Line
11. Concrete and Gold
But wait! There’s more! What came to Grohl in that vision will become reality Oct 7 when Foo Fighters’ CAL JAM 17 takes over Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino, CA. In addition to being Foo Fighters’ biggest ever one-day U.S. headline, in the spirit of the original California Jam, this daylong marathon of eating, drinking and rocking features an absolutely unfuckwithable lineup: Queens of the Stone Age, Cage The Elephant, Liam Gallagher, The Kills, Royal Blood, Japandroids, Wolf Alice, Bob Mould, The Struts, Bully, Circa Waves, Babes in Toyland, Adia Victoria, Fireball Ministry, The Obsessed, Pinky Pinky, Starcrawler, White Reaper… And in addition to 12 hours of rock and roll good times, Cal Jam 17 offers camping, carnival rides, a water park, attractions, a mobile recording studio & so much more. On Friday night, Oct 6, campers will also experience the world’s best Go-Go band Big Tony & Trouble Funk, an outdoor movie theater and many other surprises. Camping space is limited, so act fast. For More Information Visit Caljamfest.com. As a sponsor of Cal Jam 17 and the 2017 Concrete and Gold Tour, Capital One cardholders will have early access to tickets. The Capital One presale starts Monday, Jun 26 at 9am local time. To find out more, visit foofighters.com/capitalone.
Meanwhile, Foo FIghters has also announced a huge string of tour dates, which you can find in Road Rage. Those tickets are on sale Thursday, Jun 29th at 10am local time.
Now WAIT A MINUTE!!! The Pulse Of Radio & Blabbermouth reporting this morning Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger has slammed Stone Sour and its singer, Corey Taylor, in a new interview, calling the latter group “Nickelback Lite” and challenging Taylor to “write a hit song.” Speaking with Sweden’s Metal Covenant, Kroeger started out by telling the site, “I can’t think of another band that’s as diverse as we are. I can’t. And I don’t think that’s me talking from pride or ego. I mean, you’re sitting across the table. You know what you’re talking about.”
When Stone Sour was cited as an example of a musically diverse act, Kroeger shot back, “Yeah, ’cause they’re trying to be Nickelback. Corey Taylor has said some really nasty things about me before in the press. He talks about how easy it is to write a hit song. Well, show me. Show me. Write one. I have yet to hear one. They’re okay. But they’re not as good as Nickelback. They sound like ‘Nickelback Lite.‘”
Kroeger told us a while back that Nickelback wrote songs that appealed to everyone: “We don’t write music for one kind of person or one age group or just males or just females or whatever it might be. You know, I’ve got older friends, I’ve got younger friends, I’ve got friends that, career-wise, do absolutely everything, you know, such a rainbow grab bag of friends that I have. And so I find the same thing with the music, you know — why just make one kind of music for one kind of taste? Why not make music for everybody?“
Kroeger also took a dig at Taylor’s other band, Slipknot, saying, “They had to put on masks and jump around . . . music shouldn’t come with a gimmick; music should just be music. None of my favorite music comes with a gimmick.”
Nickelback and Slipknot launched their respective careers on the same label, Roadrunner Records, with Taylor saying in a 2002 interview that he thought the company had invested more resources into Nickelback. He argued at the time, “I’m glad they could use our money to make f**king Nickelback happy . . . (Roadrunner will) go to bat for f**king Nickelback, but when it comes to us, it’s f**king shutdown.” Taylor also said that Kroeger resembled “Shaggy from Scooby Doo.”
Nickelback’s ninth album, Feed The Machine, came out last Friday (Jun 16th). Stone Sour’s new album, Hydrograd, will be released on Jun 30th. Let the love fest continue.
Speaking of Corey Taylor, according to Lubbock, TX radio station and hardDrive affliliate KFMX, Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch celebrated his 47th birthday onstage Sunday night (Jun 18) during the group’s concert the Isleta Amphi in Albuquerque, NM. And even though Monday (Jun 19) was officially Head’s birthday, Korn had the day off, so Welch‘s bandmates sang him a birthday song Sunday night instead. Bringing out the cake on stage was singer Corey Taylor from the support act Stone Sour. Check out video footage above. (credit: Lubbock photographer Ruben Saldana).
Korn and Stone Sour kicked off their joint summer tour on Jun 16 at the USANA Amphi in Salt Lake City, UT. The trek will continue through early Aug. Corey makes an appearance on “A Different World” on Korn’s latest album, The Serenity Of Suffering.
Volbeat frontman Michael Poulsen told HardDriveRadio host Lou Brutus in a recent interview that leading the Danish-American band is probably the last thing he’ll ever do in the music business. Poulsen explained his outlook: “I’m not going to play in Volbeat forever, but it is the last thing I’m gonna do. I had different kind of work before I could make a living playing in Volbeat. You know, I was a support teacher in a school. I also had been working with a handicapped kid, which was really good. The day we decide that this is enough, I’m probably gonna retire from everything that’s anything to do with music and just figure out what I’m gonna do then.”
Poulsen added that he feels a lot of today’s bands have a lack of “mystery” due to social media, explaining, “These days, there’s just too much with all the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and all the crap. It is a promotional tool, but honestly, I’m not into it. It kind of takes away from everything that has a soul. As you said, it moves away the mystery around the bands. We all need our heroes. I don’t need to see my heroes 24/7 on the net. I get bored by that. You’re not my hero anymore. It’s too much.”
Volbeat’s latest single, “Black Rose,” recently landed at Number One on the rock airplay chart. It is the second track from last year’s Seal The Deal & Let’s Boogie album to top the list, following “The Devil’s Bleeding Crown.” Volbeat is currently on a break from its North American stadium tour with Metallica and Avenged Sevenfold which resumes on Jul 5th in Orlando, FL.
Blabbermouth reporting Halestorm has announced their Halloween Scream Tour. See the Road Rage page of all the info. The tour begins Sep 22nd at Denver, CO’s High Elevation Rock festival. Support throughout the trek comes from special guests Starset and New Year’s Day. The tour will include stops at a number of upcoming festivals and state fairs, including Louisville, KY’s Louder Than Life (Sep 30), Madison, WI’s JJO Sonic Boom (Oct 01), Camden, NJ’s Rock Allegiance (Oct 7), Houston, TX’s Houston Open Air (Oct 14), and Sacramento, CA’s Aftershock (Oct 22).
“We are so excited to announce our fall tour,” says Halestorm’s and Ask Lzzy’s Lzzy Hale. “‘Halestorm’s Halloween Scream’ will be a night for all the Freaks with our friends Starset and New Year’s Day, plus special surprises and collaborations for your entertainment! We can’t wait to see you all!”
A Perfect Circle have announced their new tour for the fall with The Beta Machine. Tickets go on sale Friday, Jun 23 at 10 AM local time. See Road Rage for all the info! It kicks off on Oct 21st and ends Dec 04th,
Happy 44th today to Chino Moreno of Deftones, Crosses, Team Sleep, Palms and other bands I can’t recall. And Happy 46th to Twiggy Ramirez aka Jeordie White of Marilyn Manson and ex-A Perfect Circle.