Good morning! Overslept and woken up by a loud crash from neighbors upstairs and then horrific jazz guitar playing. Why me, oh Lord, my me????? Retaliation: a little Slipknot, shuts them up, ALWAYS! 😉 ……Now then, today I will be on the hotLine with Sully Erna! He’s out in LA getting ready to put final touches on their new album, (not sure if the title is 1000 HP or What’s Next,) which is due later this summer. I will squeeze all the info I can out of him about Godsmack‘s tour plans, too! Last time I spoke with him was on Shiprocked in 2012! Listen for “1000 HP,” the first single, week of Jun 9th here on hardDrive XL with Lou Brutus!…. Heard songs off the new Rise Against album yesterday, including the single, “I Don’t Want To Be Here Anymore.” Be listening for that on hardDrive weekend Jun 14/15 and on the XL week of Jun 9th. Hoping to get some time on the hotLine with Tim McIlrath! So happy to have those guys back again. Solid band for sure. The first track off the record is my favorite so far….Congrats to Pop Evil! They’ve had their third number 1 single off their Onyx album, which is an amazing feat! This marks one of the few times in chart history that an artist on an independent record label has landed three number one singles off the same album. “Torn To Pieces” hit the top spot on the Rock Radio charts yesterday, following “Trenches” and “Deal With The Devil” which also made it to that hallowed number 1 slot. Pop Evil frontman Leigh Kakaty told us the song’s success has touched him on a very personal level: “If you don’t know, the song was part of my healing process when I lost my father back in 2011, and I was so hesitant to release the song — I didn’t know if I could emotionally play the song every night. I didn’t know if that’s what I wanted to do. But the band was very supportive and, you know, how well the fans have received the song has been rewardingly refreshing and it’s helped heal, man. It’s closed a lot of wounds for me. So thank you ‘Evils’ out there for supporting the song. It means a lot.”….Hellyeah posted a new song from their forthcoming Blood For Blood album called “Demons In The Dirt.” Check it out here. The album drops Jun 10th. Tip: There’s a song on the album called “Moth”- mark my words, it’s gonna be HUGE!….Totally forgot to mention yesterday that Powerman 5000 released its seventh studio album, Builders Of The Future, the band’s first set of all-new material in five years. Frontman and sole original member Spider One told Lou on the hotLine he and the current lineup of the group had a simple goal when making the new record: “We were so happy with the last record that we wanted to sort of continue — you know, we didn’t want to shake it up quite as much as we usually do every time we make a record. We really felt like we nailed it. So the same thing happened with this record. It’s sort of like taking off where the last record ended, but better songs and bigger and louder and weirder and everything in between. It was a blast to make.”….And speaking of Slipknot earlier, I close today with this item from Blabbermouth: The band’s currently working on its first album since 2008’s “All Hope Is Gone” and the first since the 2010 death of bassist Paul Gray and December 2013 departure of drummer Joey Jordison, one of the band’s founding members and key songwriters. Asked by Ultimate-Guitar.com if it feels entirely different without Paul there, singer Corey Taylor said: “I mean, it’s always gonna be different and nothing’s ever gonna be the same. It’s a better way to say it, to be honest. But all we can do is what we do. The way I’ve had to look at it is that not every great football team stays together and not every great band can keep doing it with the same people. It’s the nice way of me saying that I can’t just look at him as dead, which breaks my heart. I have to look at as, ‘One of our most important pieces is gone — how do we make up for that?’ So it’s basically us pooling our talents to fill in this vacuum that has been left.” Jim Root has taken on the lion’s share of the songwriting and has been in LA for several months, working on the new material for the next Slipknot album. Apparently the band has been in more than one studio out there, with their “cover” blown already more than once. Corey has also been tight lipped on who is replacing Jordison and who is producing (I asked if the rumored names were true; got nothing!) Unsurprisingly, Taylor was less willing to discuss the exit of Jordison, who issued a statement in January saying that he did not quit the band. “That’s something that’s a little harder to talk about,” Corey said. “I can’t honestly legally talk about it. That’s all I can really say about that.” So there you have it. But Corey DID say the record is sounding amazing and they have a few more songs to do and should wrap things up in about 6 weeks. There are dates to be announced soon. “Rocktober” is gonna be very special this year……Gotta dash. Have a great day!