Foo Fighters debuted a new song called “Sunday Rain” at a show in Riga, Latvia on Wednesday night (June 21st), making it the fourth new tune that the band has rolled out in concert from its upcoming album Concrete And Gold. The tune features lead vocals from drummer Taylor Hawkins, giving frontman Dave Grohl a rare break at the microphone.
Hawkins confided to us a while back that even though he’s spent years on the road, he still gets nervous before going on stage: “The drummer’s got the hardest job, man. If the drummer falls apart at any given moment, you’re done. The band, it’s over. It sounds awful, you have to start again. So I mean, I feel a lot more pressure behind the drums even though that’s all I’ve been doing my whole life is play drums. I still have massive stage fright every night.”
Hawkins has sang lead before in side bands like the Coattail Riders and the Birds Of Satan, as well as on his 2016 solo EP KOTA. Foo Fighters have already performed the songs “Run,” “The Sky Is A Neighborhood” and “La Dee Da” live on its current European festival run. Concrete And Gold arrives in stores on Sep 15th. Along with its ninth album, Foo Fighters have lined up a massive North American tour this fall as well as Cal Jam, a one-day festival featuring Queens Of The Stone Age, Cage The Elephant, Royal Blood and others. (Thanks Pulse of Radio)
This is interesting. A new Rolling Stone profile on Metallica and the band’s current North American tour sheds some light on the way the group’s members interact after more than three decades on the road. The four members of the group usually do not see each other during the day on tour until they meet up 20 minutes before showtime in their “tuning room,” where they get warmed up before going onstage. When they travel to venues, it’s in separate SUVs, and they keep to themselves unless they’re getting ready for the show, or doing a meet and greet.
The article cites one moment where frontman James Hetfield seems to be annoyed with the way drummer Lars Ulrich is playing his parts on the song “Wherever I May Roam”. Hetfield later says, “The band can still pretty much fall apart at any moment, but we don’t want that. We know too much now. It’s come with time and growing up together, going through tons of s**t together and possibly maturing. I know that’s a strange word in this business, but we care too much. We know where all the nuclear buttons are with each other, but we don’t push ’em. We love what we do, and we want to keep it going.”
Hetfield told us a while back what keeps him going after 35 years in the band: “Well, for me writing music is like breathing, and being able to create things in a band that has a huge family out there and a following around the world, and be able to get my confusion and questions and insanity into this music and put out to the rest of the world so people can relate…there’s no better thing.”
The article also recounts that after a recent show in Brooklyn, Ulrich immediately went to a party elsewhere in New York, while Hetfield took a trip to New Jersey the next day to let off steam at a firing range. Metallica is touring behind its 10th studio album and first in eight years, Hardwired…To Self-Destruct, which arrived last November. The band’s current North American stadium tour is on a break for a couple of weeks but resumes on Jul 5th in steamy Orlando, FL.
Oh this is classic! The PRP reports Mastodon put a fun spin on Pabst Blue Ribbon sponsoring the band’s tour in a new video. In the clip, the group is relentlessly pestered by a “sponsored tour guide” who attempts to teach the band how to “properly” partake in the product from a marketing standpoint. Mastodon is on the road in support of its latest LP, Emperor Of Sand.
This is also an interesting item. Radio.com found this item with Linkin Park singer Mike Shinoda and Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus, who wrote a song together, from scratch, while on stage at the 2017 MIDEM music conference keynote presentation in Cannes, France earlier this month. During the nearly 35-minute session, the duo took fans through each part of the song’s creation, note for note, in real time. Shinoda provided the beat and added layers of keyboards while Hoppus was responsible for lyrics and a guitar riff, completing the first verse and chorus.
The session was hosted by Variety (industry magazine focused on film, tv, music and entertainment) music editor Shirley Halperin. Good forum, congrats!
Blabbermouth reports Maria Brink of In This Moment spoke with WNOR radio in Norfolk, VA recently about their upcoming new album, Ritual. (See the lyric video for a new track called “Roots” above.)
On the theme of the band’s new album, Ritual:
Maria: “The new album is definitely dark. I’ve got a lot of darkness in me. Some people go to the gym and some people have different ways that they express themselves, and I do all mine through my music. Instead of yelling and screaming or losing myself all the time, I release everything in my music, and that’s kind of how I expel my demons, as you would say. So I think there’s definitely some dark colors, but it definitely has an inspirational overall energy to it. ‘Cause I think that’s always important to… even though, if there is darkness, to kind of have light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve always kind of been passionate about that for our fans.”
On guitarist Chris Howorth recent statement that Ritual is more “raw” and “stripped down” than some of the band’s previous records:
“I’m always striving to do something new, and I think I’m just maturing as a woman, and different points of view happen. You’re always evolving and changing, so I just don’t like to do the same album over and over. And I was going through this independent kind of spiritual journey, and I just figured I might as well bring everyone else on it with me on this album.”
On In This Moment‘s decision to cover the Phil Collins classic “In The Air Tonight” :
Maria: “Honestly, that’s one of my all-time favorite songs, since I was a little girl. It’s such a… Oh my God! It’s just so haunting and powerful and dark and captivating. And I’ve been trying to cover that song forever; we just couldn’t quite figure out where and when. So this time we just took a little attempt at it. It’s a hard song to even attempt to cover, ’cause all by itself, it’s so awesome and it’s scary to try to do something to a song that’s already perfect. So we just try to do our own individual expression of it, because I feel like you can’t make theirs better. [It’s] just a different version, a different take, our point of view, and I think it’s a real special song on the album. I can’t wait for everyone to hear it. It makes me feel all these different feelings.”
Ritual will be released on Friday, Jul 21. The group’s sixth studio effort will be released by Atlantic Records in partnership with Roadrunner Records and is available for pre-order now.
Produced by longtime collaborator — and multiple Grammy Award nominee — Kevin Churko (Five Finger Death Punch, Ozzy Osbourne), Ritual includes the song “Black Wedding,” which is described in a press release as “a walk down the aisle of musical madness” that sees lead Brink sharing the mic with legendary Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford.
Celebrating life this weekend:
Today: Glenn Danzig is 62. Saturday: Jeff Beck is 73 and Mick Fleetwood is 70 and Sunday, Mike Kroeger of Nickelback is 45.