Happy New Year to my Jewish friends. Good health and happiness!….The news seems to be swirling around regarding the latest issue of Revolver regarding Slipknot. I think it’s funny since (1) this is old news and (2) everyone is ok with the outcome. So why all of a sudden are they making a mountain out of a molehill here? Guitarist Jim Root and singer Corey Taylor have both opened up in a new interview with Revolver about Root’s dismissal from Stone Sour earlier this year — even as he and Taylor were working together on a new Slipknot album. Root said, “It became apparent to me near the end of the album cycle for (Stone Sour’s) House Of Gold & Bones that it had basically run its course. But the band kept pushing for more dates, and I was just, like, ‘It’s time to stop!’” He continued, “Slipknot made it possible for Stone Sour to have everything that it has and there were people in Slipknot that have been sitting idly waiting to do a new album. And I had fans asking me every day, ‘When are you doing Slipknot?’” Root told Lou Brutus when he first revealed he was sitting out the last Stone Sour tour — before he was “let go”– that he was already dealing with a lot of stress juggling the two bands: “You know, unfortunately I’m only one person. I can’t really be in two places at one time and the amount of focus that I need to put into Slipknot makes it really difficult for me to be on tour with Stone Sour. It’s crushing and it’s heartbreaking and I really don’t like the idea of not being out there, but I don’t really see any other way to really do it.” But its the “let go” part that bothers me. I guess I am too close to the camp, but all this happened for good reason. And I think it will become apparently once the new album drops on Oct 21st. According to a conversation I had with Corey back in May in Columbus before his roast, he told me Jim really was the key in the studio to this new record and that he was doing an amazing job. Ya know, take it from one who knows, doing more than one job is taxing. Being a key member in two bands is hard if you AREN’T a workaholic by nature. Corey, on the other hand, can’t sit still! LOL Remember, everything happens for a good reason, even if you don’t see it at first…..Congrats to Slash! His third solo album, World On Fire, sold around 29,000 copies in its first week of release to debut at Number 10 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The CD arrived in stores on Tuesday, Sep 16th, and debuted in the Top 10 in a number of other countries, including Number One in Switzerland, Number Seven in the U.K., Number Two in Australia, Number Two in Germany and Number Three in Japan. Some fans have commented online the 17-track album is too long, but Slash told us why he’s okay with making a long record: “I don’t understand what the big deal is necessarily. For ages now, I’ve wanted to do a record that was just like an old AC/DC record with just eight or nine songs, or an old Stones record. And I just always come up with too much material, and the last two records that I did, we had so much material that we put out the deluxe records with the extra songs on them. So this time I just said, just put it all in there.”…And speaking of Billboard, congrats to Starset! Not since the rock singles chart debuted in 1981, has a new band stayed on the charts for a record 41 weeks! Starset’s “My Demons” did just that! It’s still hovering in the top 10 and that’s not bad for a new band! Their album, Transmission, debuted in the Top 200 Album charts at # 50, the highest for a new band this year. So to Dustin Batesand his band from Columbus, OH, right on!….Following the example of a successful crowdfunded Foo Fighters concert in Virginia, more than 600 people have already contributed to a similar campaign onKickstarter to bring the band to Birmingham, England in early 2015. Organizers hope to raise $245,000 by November 17th, one week after the November 10th arrival of the Foos’ new album, Sonic Highways. (Spin)…Nickelback has pushed back the release of its new album, No Fixed Address, two weeks from November 4th to November 18th. The band’s eighth full-length album features thesingles “Edge Of A Revolution” and “What Are You Waiting For?” with the former already a Top Five hit at rock radio….Excited about the new Papa Roach record! Blabbermouth posted this today and I wanted to share it! Bassist Tobin Esperance was interviewed at last month’s Leeds festival in England. Speaking about the band’s eighth studio album F.E.A.R. (Face Everything And Rise), which will come out in early 2015, Tobin said: “It’s a heavy record, but there’s something very spiritual about it too. It’s definitely that ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ kind of thing. It’s positive. It has some moments where it’s really heavy, but it’s a positive record. For the first time ever, we just walked into the studio with no songs written and we literally just started from scratch and wrote a song and then recorded it, and said, ‘That one’s done,’ and moved on to the next one. Which we’ve never really recorded a record like that before. But it really captured the energy, the spontaneity of all of our ideas, just right there on the spot. We weren’t forced to overthink anything; we just laid it down and moved on to the next one.” He continued: “We know what works for us. We’re the type of band that we recognize our strengths and our weaknesses and we still allow ourselves room to try new things. And I think one thing that’s definitely noticeable about this new record is, sonically, it just sounds fucking huge — it’s just monstrous. It’s the biggest-, heaviest-sounding record we’ve ever done.” The follow-up to 2012’s The Connection, F.E.A.R. was recorded in Las Vegas, with Esperance saying: “To be honest, we stayed away from the [Las Vegas] Strip. I’ve done it all, and I’ve seen it all, and I’ve taken full advantage of all the things that Las Vegas has to offer, but we were very much focused when we were writing this record. I think that’s why it came out so well and it worked. We all lived in a house together that was outside Las Vegas, and it was more about us just experiencing a different side to Las Vegas that most people don’t know about. Like going out in the desert and tripping out, and climbing around on rocks and shit. Just doing weird stuff like that. That’s more of a tip that we were on this time.” Frontman Jacoby Shaddix will co-direct the video for the band’s new single, the “F.E.A.R. (Face Everything And Rise)” title track. Speaking to DutchScene, Jacoby said: “Me and my partner from Luminous Pictures [Ezio Lucido, which] is another endeavor I’m involved in — it’s a filmmaking company, but also we do music videos — this will be the first music video that I co-direct. And so, from the creative side, I came up with the concept for the video and the artwork. It’s pretty cool, man, ’cause the band is trusting me to co-direct this music video, which is the first time we’ve done something like this. And I’ve been trying to encourage [Papa Roach guitarist] Jerry [Horton]… Jerry is going to shoot the photography for the album cover. And so, it’s, like, we just kind of wanna take everything back into our hands instead of going, ‘OK, cool. I wanna hear your interpretation.’ Well, no. I wanna visually let you see what’s in my heart when I’m creating this music.” Horton said in an interview conducted last month at England’s Reading festival that the band worked with two producers, Kevin Churko and Kevin‘s son Kane, saying, “We did the first five songs with Kevin, the dad, and then the last seven with the son, because [Kevin] had a prior engagement with In This Moment… It was a different sort of workflow, but we got into it and it was cool. And I think we came out with some really good stuff.” Shaddix told Kerrang! magazine that F.E.A.R. is “probably the most positive record we’ve written,” adding, “There’s obviously been an element of hope within the despair of the music that we write, and I think that that’s always key, and that’s very important to what we do, is to always have that element of hope, and that’s laced throughout the record.” It’s no secret, Shaddix, a recovering alcoholic and drug user, said he was nervous about camping out in Las Vegas during the recording sessions for the new album. He explained, “I‘ve been sober for a few years now, and it was just, like, ‘All right, how am I gonna go to Vegas and stay focused?’ And I just had to put my spiritual armor on and just go out there and do my best to be creative.” Can’t wait for the new stuff!…Have a great day!