During an appearance on "Put Up Your Dukes", the new podcast hosted by ex-EXODUS singer Rob Dukes, EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt was asked if original EXODUS guitarist Kirk Hammett, who has been a member of METALLICA for the past 39 years, was involved in the songwriting for any of the material that ended up on EXODUS's classic debut album, 1985's "Bonded By Blood". "There were riffs that I had written while Kirk was still in the band, and he tried to adapt them, tried to change 'em a little bit — the old, 'I changed it a little bit. I'm a co-writer on this riff,'" Holt recalled (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "And that was, like, two riffs, I think. And the rest of 'em were written after he left. We never used a Kirk Hammett riff, ever, until [2004's] 'Tempo Of The Damned' [album] when we recorded [the early EXODUS song] 'Impaler'."

Explaining that "the first two [EXODUS] songs finished post-Kirk Hammett were 'Strike Of The Beast' and 'No Love'," Holt continued: "The biggest talent I have, if you wanna call it a talent, is my fucking memory. I can remember fucking everything. I remember showing him… I can picture it as a film, showing Kirk the riff to 'Strike Of The Beast', and I can picture it as if I'm watching it on a film — in the jam room, me in my spot where I played him [the riff] and him wanting to change the higher note to a lower note; I remember it all as if I'm watching a movie of it. I remember all of it — every last minute of it. I remember details from fucking most meaningless shit."

The original lineup of EXODUS consisted of guitarists Hammett and Tim Agnello, drummer Tom Hunting and vocalist Keith Stewart. Holt joined the band in 1981, while Kirk left two years before "Bonded By Blood" saw the light of day.

Although EXODUS rarely gets mentioned alongside the so-called "Big Four" of 1980s thrash metal — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX — "Bonded By Blood" inspired the likes of TESTAMENT, DEATH ANGEL, VIO-LENCE and many others to launch their careers and is considered one of the most influential thrash metal albums of all time.

Back in 2018, Kirk spoke about the fact that riffs from songs by EXODUS, "Die By His Hand" and "Impaler", found their way into "Creeping Death" and "Trapped Under Ice", from METALLICA's "Ride The Lightning" album. "What I think happened was when Lars [, METALLICA drummer] and James [Hetfield, METALLICA frontman] were thinking about getting rid of Dave [Mustaine], our sound guy, Mark Whitaker — who was EXODUS' manager — gave them EXODUS' demos," Kirk said. "I think 'Die By His Hand' might have caught their ears. So when they were writing 'Creeping Death', they went, 'Great. 'Die By His Hand'. Put it right there.' It was definitely not me going, 'I have a riff here in this EXODUS song, and it needs to be here in this METALLICA song.' By the way, I wrote that 'Die By His Hand' riff when I was, like, 16 years old."

Eric Clapton has opened up about his decision to drop a politically charged song called "This Has Gotta Stop" as a way of addressing his stance against COVID-19 policies. The track, which was produced by his longtime producing partner Simon Climie, came several months after he released the anti-lockdown song "Stand And Deliver" with Van Morrison.

The 76-year-old legendary musician — who previously said he refuses to play live shows that require attendees to prove they've been vaccinated — spoke about the backlash he has faced as a result of his public opposition to lockdown restrictions and vaccinations during a new interview with Dave Spuria of The Real Music Observer.

The iconic guitarist, who previously said he feared he would "never play again" following health issues after both doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, stated about his current health situation (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I'm feeling pretty good. I think it's been about nine months since I got sick from the thing," apparently referring the getting vaccinated, "and for a couple of months I wasn't sure if it was gonna go away, if it's gonna get worse. I couldn't play — I really couldn't play — and I wasn't sure… I had a lot of work to do, whether I was gonna get fit for that or whether it was gonna have to be canceled. Two years of work [had] already [been] canceled. And I came to the States. And that was like a trial; that was in September of last year. And I was really pushing to see if I had recovered enough to be able to stand alongside the guys I play with and hold up my hand. And I had a great time. I still have some stuff going on, which is affected by the cold or the weather or stress to, sometimes. But on the whole, I think I'm pretty much the way I was — thank God — before I walked into that."

Regarding how "Stand And Deliver" and "This Has Gotta Stop" came about, Clapton said: "My career had almost gone anyway. At the point where I spoke up, it had been almost 18 months since I had kind of been forcibly retired. And I joined forces with Van. I got the tip that Van was standing up to the measures. And I thought, 'Why isn't anybody else doing this?' And we go back; I've known him since we were kids. And I contacted him. I said, 'What do you think? What's going on?' And he said, 'I'm just objecting, really. But it seems like we're not even allowed to do that. And nobody else is doing it.' And I said, 'You're kidding. Nobody else?' And he said, 'Nobody else.' And I said, 'I'm with you. Is there anything I can do to help? Have you got any songs?' And of course, it was a silly, stupid question 'cause he writes two songs a day or something like that. And he sent me 'Stand And Deliver', which he had already… I didn't know he had already recorded it. So I thought, 'Oh, man. I'm getting an unreleased Van Morrison song.' I was over the moon anyway. And it was during the process of talking about that to another musician, and then getting me excited, and then sharing that news, and I found that nobody wanted to hear that. And I was kind of mystified because I seemed to be the only person that thought that was an exciting or even appropriate idea with what was going on. And that challenged me even more. 'Cause I'm a bit like him maybe — I'm cut from the cloth where if you tell me I can't do something, I really wanna know why I can't do it. And it seemed like I'd had a wall built around me. But I thought, 'I'm gonna do this.' But I did make concessions — I did take out lines or change lines a little bit just to pacify those that I really didn't wanna hurt, people I didn't wanna hurt or scare. And needless to say, my family and friends, they got scared, and I think they were scared on my behalf."

Eric continued: "[I thought], 'What's going on here?' I didn't get the memo. Whatever the memo was, it hadn't reached me. Then I started to realize there was really a memo, and a guy, [clinical psychology professor] Mattias Desmet, talked about it. And it's great — the theory of mass formation hypnosis," he said, referring to the idea that promoting messages encouraging people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, among other scientifically validated pandemic communications, is an attempt to hypnotize groups of people to follow these messages against their will. "And I could see it then — once I kind of started to look for it, I saw it everywhere. And then I remembered seeing little things on YouTube which were like subliminal advertising; it had been going on for a long time — that thing about 'you will own nothing and you will be happy.' And I thought, 'What's that mean?' And bit by bit, I put a rough kind of jiggle puzzle together. And that made me even more resolute. And so I went from that to looking at the news stuff that was coming out in England. In the U.K., we have BBC, and it used to be an impartial commentary on world affairs and state affairs. And suddenly it was completely one-way traffic about following orders and obedience. And I felt really motivated, musically. It instigated something which really was laying dormant. I was just playing live gigs up until the lockdown without really being socially involved in any way. … I have a tool, I have a calling, and I can make use of that. So I set about it and started writing."

Clapton made his proclamation against vaccine mandates in July 2021, shortly after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that vaccine passes would be required to enter nightclubs and venues in the U.K.

"Following the PM's announcement on Monday the 19th of July 2021 I feel honor-bound to make an announcement of my own, I wish to say that I will not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present," he said in a statement. "Unless there is provision made for all people to attend, I reserve the right to cancel the show."

Last November, Clapton admitted that he had lost friends and music associates due to his anti-vaccine stance. He said at the time: "My family and friends think I am a crackpot anyway.

"Over the last year, there's been a lot of disappearing — a lot of dust around, with people moving away quite quickly," he continued. "It has, for me, refined the kind of friendship I have. And it's dwindled down to the people that I obviously really need and love. Inside my family, that became quite pivotal ... I've got teenage girls, and an older girl who's in her 30s — and they've all had to kind of give me leeway because I haven't been able to convince any of them."

He added: "I would try to reach out to fellow musicians and sometimes I just don't hear from them. My phone doesn't ring very often. I don't get that many texts and emails anymore."

The clip below features Nightwish vocalist Floor Jansen performing at her solo show at AFAS Live in Amsterdam, Netherlands on September 1st, 2021.


Floor: "Performing the Eurovision Song Contest winning song of 2021, Loreen's ' Euphoria'! I was supposed to perform this song on the Beste Zangers Eurovision Song Contest special of 2021. However, around the time of recording I had to be operated on in Finland, which kept me from joining in. So instead I recorded it at home and it had great success on YouTube when it went live. It was so much fun to finally play it live with The Marcel Fisser Band!"


 




The setlist was as follows:


Set 1:


"Ever Dream" (Nightwish)
"Storm In A Glass" (Northward) 
"Nemo" (Nightwish) 
"Mama" (Samantha Steenwijk cover) 
"Sweet Curse" (ReVamp song - with Henk Poort) 
"Dangerous Game" (from Jekyll & Hyde - with Henk Poort) 
"Euphoria" (Loreen)
"Face Your Demons" (After Forever) 
"Winner" (Tim Akkerman cover)


Set 2:


"Slow, Love, Slow" (Nightwish)
"Shallow" (Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper cover)
"Strong" (After Forever) 
"Élan" (Nightwish) 
"Energize Me" (After Forever) 
"Qué Se Siente" (Rolf Sanchez)
"Bridle Passion" (Northward) 
"Our Decades In The Sun" (Nightwish)
"Wolf And Dog" (ReVamp) 
"The Phantom Of The Opera" (Andrew Lloyd Webber cover - with Henk Poort)


"Ever Dream"





"Storm In A Glass"





"Dangerous Game"

John Cooper, the frontman for the Grammy-nominated Christian rock band SKILLET, spoke to "Washington Watch With Tony Perkins" about how music and his band's music in particular affects the way people think about the world. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Music is a fantastic vehicle. Music kind of — what's the right word to say this? Music kind of softens you up to hear what someone thinks about something that maybe you wouldn't normally want to listen to. Now, what we have to realize, of course, is that that can be used for bad — that can be used for really evil things or it can be used for really good things. What our young people are going through now is that they're constantly hearing this pop music… The popular music or the culture is so godless. It is lawless. It celebrates just absolute sexual revolution, I guess you would say — an abandonment, a liberation from Christianity, a specific liberation from Jesus Christ himself. It is a celebration of sin.

"A lot of people say, 'I don't really listen to the lyrics,' but the truth is that these lyrics, they get into you," he continued. "So we wanna do something that is the opposite, you see, because I don't believe that music is owned by the Devil. The Devil doesn't create music; he does not own music. Music belongs to the Creator, and so we aim to go into the culture, and through music, we bring music and art and rock music, specifically for me, back under the subjection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We bring it back under His feet where it belongs as we give glory to Him."

John added: "So I do think that there's a great place for music to change people's hearts 'cause they listen to the beat, they listen to the tune, and they go, 'I kind of dig that.' And then they turn on an interview with you and they get to hear me say what the song is about. And you never, ever know how God may use that. God does incredible things through interviews — these little seeds of truth. That's what we're praying for."

In various interviews over the years, John has said that he "always had faith in God" and that his mother was a "Jesus fanatic." He also claimed that he was willing to put his career on the line to take a stand for Christ.

SKILLET's latest album, "Dominion", was released on January 14 via Atlantic. Produced by Kevin Churko (PAPA ROACH, DISTURBED, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH) with songs written by John Cooper, Korey Cooper, Kevin Churko and Kane Churko, the LP was created 100% remotely between the band's tour dates, home studio in Wisconsin, and the Churkos' studio in Las Vegas.

Fan-filmed video of TWISTED SISTER singer Dee Snider's solo performance on Sunday, January 16 at RokIsland Fest in Key West, Florida can be seen below.

According to Setlist.fm, the setlist was as follows:

01. I Gotta Rock (Again)

02. The Kids Are Back (TWISTED SISTER song)

03. You Can't Stop Rock 'N' Roll (TWISTED SISTER song)

04. Stay Hungry (TWISTED SISTER song)

05. Burn In Hell (TWISTED SISTER song)

06. The Beast (TWISTED SISTER song)

07. We're Not Gonna Take It (TWISTED SISTER song)

08. Become The Storm

09. The Price (TWISTED SISTER song)

10. I Wanna Rock (TWISTED SISTER song)

11. Stand

12. Real Wild Child (Wild One) / Rock and Roll

13. White Christmas (Irving Berlin cover)

14. Highway To Hell (AC/DC cover)

Dee's fifth solo album, "Leave A Scar", was released last July via Napalm Records. Once again produced by HATEBREED frontman Jamey Jasta with co-production, mixing and mastering by drummer Nick Bellmore, "Leave A Scar" sees Dee continuing in the invigorated, modern direction of his previous release, "For The Love Of Metal", infusing a dose of classic heavy metal flavor that longtime fans have rushed to embrace.

In 2016, TWISTED SISTER embarked on one final trek, titled "Forty And Fuck It", in celebration of its 40th anniversary. These shows featured the band's "core lineup" of Snider, guitarists Jay Jay French and Eddie Ojeda, and bassist Mark Mendoza, along with drummer Mike Portnoy. The band's last-ever concert took place in November of that year — 20 months after the passing of drummer A.J. Pero.

TWISTED SISTER's original run ended in the late '80s. After more than a decade, the band publicly reunited in November 2001 to top the bill of New York Steel, a hard-rock benefit concert to raise money for the New York Police And Fire Widows' And Children's Benefit Fund.

The surviving members of the classic lineup of TWISTED SISTER — Snider, French, Ojeda and Mendoza — reunited virtually on March 20, 2021 for a special episode of Mendoza's Internet TV show "22 Now". The hour-and-a-half-long program was a tribute to Pero, who died exactly six years earlier at the age of 55 while on tour with the band ADRENALINE MOB.

Prior to last March's virtual reunion, the four surviving members of TWISTED SISTER reunited for two days and nights in November 2019 to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the band's classic album "Stay Hungry".

Jeff Scott Soto appears to have reactivated his project with David Ellefson, three months after the singer said their collaboration was "on hold" while the former MEGADETH bassist was working through the fallout from his sex video scandal.

Last March, Soto and Ellefson announced that they had been collaborating on some new material under the moniker ELLEFSON-SOTO. The ELLEFSON-SOTO version of the RIOT classic "Swords & Tequila" was simultaneously released across all digital streaming outlets via Ellefson's Combat Records.

In October, Soto was asked in an interview with Dr. Music if the rest of the material he recorded with Ellefson will eventually see the light of day, Soto said: "I'm hoping it will at some point. I've given David, as many people have, the space and the time to kind of deal with his own things.

"We were full-on getting that thing ready to bounce and to drop, et cetera, and, obviously, things were put on hold for that reason," he explained. "And it's just better for things to just kind of go away and kind of calm down, because we don't need the kind of press that comes with it, especially the comments [from] the Internet cowboys out there. Let it go away, let it just kind of slip under the rug, and I'm sure that stuff is gonna resurface. And the idea of it will resurface and get us out there… I'm sure we'll revisit it when the time is right."

Earlier today (Tuesday, January 18), Soto shared an Instagram photo of him with Ellefson and he captioned it: "Something brewing in Los Angeles today....#davidellefson".

When Ellefson's collaboration with Soto was first announced, David said in a statement: "Jeff and I have been friends for so many years that it's great to finally collaborate on some material together. He has such a distinctive voice and perfect style for some new ideas my guitarist Andy Martongelli and I have been composing. We are excited about the progress of it all and thought this would be a perfect time to give a little sneak preview."

At the time, Jeff added: "As COVID-19 became a big negative around the globe, it actually offered many artists a chance to finally collaborate with one another that might have never happened otherwise… As I have known David for many years, I knew from our other efforts outside of our day jobs that we could come up with some badass jams…and here we are, letting you in on our cool little secret."

Ellefson was fired from MEGADETH last spring after sexually tinged messages and explicit video footage involving the bassist were posted on Twitter. At the time, Ellefson was accused of grooming an underage girl through videos and online messages. David has denied the allegation and has repeatedly said the woman in question had been a willing, consenting adult at the time of their virtual sexual encounter. Ellefson accompanied his denial with an alleged screenshot of a statement from the woman with whom he was supposedly involved at the time. In it, the woman admitted to recording the alleged intimate communications she had with Ellefson and called herself "naïve" for sharing them with a friend without the musician's permission.

David was in MEGADETH from the band's inception in 1983 to 2002, and again from 2010 until his latest exit.
























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