Blabbermouth and The Pulse Of Radio reporting Metallica kicked off the North American leg of its 2017 “WorldWired” tour on Wednesday night (May 10th) at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, marking the start of the band’s first full trek here in seven years. The 18-song setlist included five tracks from Metallica’s latest studio effort, Hardwired…To Self-Destruct, along with classics from throughout the group’s 35 years and nine previous albums.
Frontman James Hetfield told us a while back that he still recalls the group’s very first gig, with original lead guitarist Dave Mustaine: “First Metallica show was at Radio City in Anaheim. I remember the first song we played, Dave broke a string, and I was stranded up there. I was just singing, I wasn’t playing guitar back then, and I was so uncomfortable, I was like, ‘So, how’s it going…’ There were about 200 people. You know, your first gig, everyone shows up. Second gig, there’s about 20, you know (laughs).”
Metallica was joined in Baltimore, as they will be on most of the rest of the trek, by Volbeat and Avenged Sevenfold. The North American run will hit stadiums in 24 more cities before ending in mid-August. Drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone the band was genuinely surprised to learn they could still play stadiums, saying, “It was like, ‘Holy f**k, people really still care about this band in ways that you stopped taking for granted literally decades ago. It was very inspiring and kind of eye-opening.”
The next stop on the tour is Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Friday (May 12th). Read the full story at Blabbermouth.
SIDE NOTES: The set list for the opening night of Metallica’s tour was:
1. “Hardwired”
2. “Atlas, Rise!
3. “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
4. “Fuel”
5. “The Unforgiven”
6. “Now That We’re Dead”
7. “Moth Into Flame”
8. “Wherever I May Roam”
9. “Halo on Fire”
10. “Hit The Lights”
11. “Sad But True”
12. “One”
13. “Master Of Puppets”
14. “Fade to Black”
15. “Seek & Destroy”
Encore:
16. “Battery”
17. “Nothing Else Matters”
18. “Enter Sandman”
Lou Brutus and the hardDriveRadio team will be on hand with our contest winner Tressa from WIsconsin and her guest tomorrow night in Philadelphia! Lucky stiffs!
In related news, Lars Ulrich was interviewed by the morning show jocks from radio station 98 Rock in Baltimore. Check out the episodes here, here and here.
Blabbermouth and The Pulse Of Radio also reporting Alice In Chains is preparing to enter the studio to begin recording its new album for a tentative late 2017 or early 2018 release. Speaking at the 10th anniversary of the George Lopez Celebrity Golf Classic in Toluca Lake, CA on May 1st, guitarist Jerry Cantrell told Good Celebrity, “We are just gearing up to make a record. We’ll be moving up to Seattle in about a month and record the record over the summer out there in the same studio we recorded our third record in. So it’ll be kind of fun — go home, make a Seattle record. Hometown boys in a hometown studio.“
Asked if the new record will sound like the band’s previous efforts, Cantrell replied, “Hey, this is what we do. At this age, I can’t really do much else. So we do us, and we’re lucky enough to be able to have the opportunity to still be doing it and making good music and having a good time.”
Cantrell told us not long ago the band starts from scratch on every record: “You should start from a zero every time. You’ve got a blank canvas, and you and your band are in the room and there’s the canvas and there’s no other pictures of the old albums hanging up. You know, those are put away in a closet somewhere, so you’re not thinking about them or drawing from them or trying to repeat them or whatever. It’s impossible to do that. That is what it was, now what do we do?”
The new disc will be Alice In Chains’ sixth full-length studio album and will follow up 2013’s The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. That disc was the second with singer/guitarist William DuVall, who joined the band in 2006 following the death of Layne Staley four years earlier. The first two singles from The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, “Hollow” and “Stone”, both hit Number One on the rock radio airplay charts, while the album itself debuted on the Billboard album chart at Number Two.
I recall when I first met the band, it was in 1992. In those days, I was living in LA and produced music videos. But I also was a volunteer for the T.J. Martell Foundation, a music-industry based charity that raises money for cancer, AIDS and leukemia research. We put together the annual Rockers Vs Rollers Celebrity All Star softball game, held at USC’s baseball field in Los Angeles. Alice In Chains was in town making their Dirt album, and I got in touch with their manager and worked it out for Layne, Jerry and Mike to play on a team. I remember Layne and Jerry hitting the ball out of the park. RINGERS! Mike hit a few base hits and I remember his hair flying in the wind as he rain. Layne had dyed his beard blue I think, and Jerry’s was green. It was the wild and early 90’s…grunge era was on the rise. Fun times. Wish I could relive that day. I think that was the year we had Roseanne Barr sing the national anthem, poorly I might add.
Blabbermouth also reports Marilyn Manson has announced a revised title for his new album, tentatively due later in the year.
Although Manson said in a 2016 interview that his follow-up to 2015’s The Pale Emperor would be called SAY10, he told Fabulous TV (see video above) at this past Monday’s (May 8) premiere of the “King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword” film his new disc is finished and is named Heaven Upside Down.
Manson in April released several cryptic videos on his Instagram account which were thought at the time to be related to the release of his next album.
In November last year, Manson issued a brief teaser video for the track “SAY10” which saw him tear pages from the bible and focus on the bloodied body of a man in a suit — believed to represent then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Manson revealed last September that his new album — which was originally expected in February — would be “”the last thing people would expect after hearing The Pale Emperor.” He explained: “Coming from the people who I’ve played it to, it’s a combination of Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals in feeling.” It has been reported the new music was again produced by Tyler Bates, who also did The Pale Emperor.
Manson added: “It wasn’t my intent to go backwards. Everything goes in a full circle and it just becomes, without cannibalizing work from the past, the same thing, which is ultimately you. I’m a little over-anxious to release it, so it was done very quickly, but it’s by far the most thematic and over-complicated thing that I’ve done. In a way, it’s deceptively delightful to strangers. It’s like the old saying that the devil’s greatest secret is that people don’t believe he exists.”
Manson will begin touring again this summer, with a three-week European tour scheduled to kick off on Jul 20 in Budapest, Hungary.
Earlier this week, Ryan Daniels of Kilpop conducted an interview with Slipknot and Stone Sour singer Corey Taylor. You can now listen to the chat above.
Asked what he thinks will be the “next step for rock music,” Taylor said: “I think there’s gonna be a renaissance for big frontmen coming back. Like big showmen — kind of turning up the personality, but not in a douchey way. It can get kind of weird when you have too much personality. I think it’ll be kind of a marriage between the two, where when you’re onstage and you’re doing the show, it’s all about that big show and making sure that everybody’s having a great time. Then offstage, you kind of have that self-effacing… you take less credit, you give more credit to the people in the band and the people who help you. That’s what I think will be the marriage of… Like, more realistic when it comes to… Instead of putting on a persona to go onstage, you’re just going out and you’re being a bigger part of your personality. And then when you come offstage, you calm down a little bit. I think that might be the next evolution of the modern rock frontmen.”
When pressed if he thinks someone like Mick Jagger (The Rolling Stones) is a good example of the kind of frontman that he is talking about, Taylor said: “Well, I’ve never met Mick, so I don’t know how he is behind the scenes or whatnot. But maybe. I mean, he seems like he’d be a really nice dude. But then again, sometimes those egos, they go unchecked and it gets a little crazy. And like I said, I don’t know Mick from anybody. He could be really, really cool behind the scenes or whatever. So I would say yeah, absolutely — a little more in the Mick Jagger kind of mold.”
Stone Sour‘s new album, Hydrograd, will be released on June 30 via Roadrunner. Taylor recently said about the full-length follow-up to House Of Gold & Bones: “It is the best stuff that we’ve ever written. It’s got a lot of different directions, but at its core it’s very hard rock, almost in a modern/classic sense. There are some hints of punk in there. There’s some cool hard rock/heavy metal. There’s just all of these really cool elements that we’ve never maybe allowed ourselves to kind of go to.”
Stone Sour will play the Rock On The Range Kick-Off Party on Thursday, May 18 at Express Live! in Columbus, OH. The event will start the Rock On The Range weekend, with Metallica, Soundgarden and Korn headlining this year’s festival. Stone Sour will also be special guests of Korn on the latter act’s “Serenity Of Summer” trek, which starts on June 16 in Salt Lake City and wraps on August 2 in Cleveland.
Happy 39th to Perttu Kivilaasko of Apocalyptica.