Napalm Records is thrilled to announce the signing of ice cold Finnish modern metal band, Arctis. Drawing inspiration from the mythical winters and mystical summers of the North, the Finnish metal minds of the talented misfits known as Arctis fearlessly navigate their futuristic battleship through a treacherous ocean where ferocious waves of metal clash against reefs of rock and pop, birthing a sonic assault of epic proportions. The band offers a multi-dimensional experience for fans, with a rich backstory and deep lore that can be expanded outside the realm of music.


Arctis is led by the enigmatic Alva, the eternal Ice Queen Rebel Leader, whose mesmerizing voice and shining white battle suit give her an ethereal, almost otherworldly presence that captures the imagination of fans. The dark-clad, valiant men who move beside Alva include the formidable Björn the Captain, whose unwavering leadership skills inspire the band to greatness, Michael the Magician, whose mystical abilities and lightning-fast fingers leave audiences spellbound, Mats the Rambler, whose wild and untamed spirit infuses the band's music with a sense of reckless abandon, and Mika the Sage, whose deep wisdom and profound insights elevate Arctis' message to new heights. Together, these legendary figures create a dynamic and captivating energy that defines Arctis' unique brand of metal and makes them exceptional.


Armed with their talent, the band soon will head out on a tour with Finnish symphonic metal masters Apocalyptica, and the band's self-titled debut album will be released this fall. It was produced by Jimmy Westerlund (Sturm und Drang), mixed by Stefan Glaumann (Rammstein) and mastered by Svante Forsbäck (Rammstein). Join Arctis on a thrilling journey that combines elements of both nature and technology, and stay tuned for their very first single coming soon!




Arctis states: “Get ready to experience the next chapter of modern metal! We are Arctis, a new force rising from the heart of Finland, and we are beyond thrilled to announce that we will be joining the legendary Apocalyptica on their fall tour! Our debut album is dropping this fall, with singles set to blow your minds before then. Prepare for an onslaught of powerful riffs, epic melodies, and the raw energy you've been craving. Follow us on this journey as we bring the storm. Are you ready? Stay tuned for more updates and tour dates. This is just the beginning.”





Arctis are:


Alva Sandström - Vocals
Michael Mikander - Guitar
Björn Johansson - Guitar
Mats Ödahl - Bass
Mika Paananen - Drums


(Photo - Harri Luostarinen)

In a new interview with Japan's Young Guitar, Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro, who is best known for his work with MEGADETH and ANGRA, was asked about the possibility of a future guest appearance with the latter outfit. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "In the last two albums from ANGRA, not being in the band, I did record a guest solo. I was touring a lot and I have small kids, so I didn't wanna travel more to do a guest appearance. It might be in the future. I'm friends of everybody. I have a great history with ANGRA. Same goes with MEGADETH. I'm still friends of everybody, and I don't wanna burn bridges."

He continued: "I'm proud of all the albums I recorded with ANGRA. I'm proud of the albums that I recorded with MEGADETH, the two albums I recorded with MEGADETH, all the concerts and tours we did together. So, guest appearances, recording a solo, helping somehow or just hanging, I'm happy to do it, because I like all those people as friends and family, because I shared so many great moments of my life with the guys from ANGRA, of course, many, many years, and also almost nine years in MEGADETH as well."

In November 2023, Kiko announced his decision to "extend" his absence from MEGADETH's touring activities, explaining that he didn't want to "hinder any of the band's plans or the hard work of all the incredible people involved in the tour."

Kiko revealed in September 2023 that he would sit out the next leg of MEGADETH's "Crush The World" tour in order to stay home with his children back in Finland.

One day after Kiko's announcement that he was "extending" his absence from MEGADETH's touring activities, band leader Dave Mustaine released a statement in which he said that he loves Loureiro and respects and fully supports Kiko's decision. He described Kiko as "a top-notch professional, a maestro" and thanked the guitarist "for his dedication and hard work these past nine years, helping us to achieve a Grammy on 'Dystopia' and the additional awards we have received on this latest record 'The Sick... The Dying...And The Dead'." Mustaine added: "I could not have done this without Kiko Loureiro."

MEGADETH played its first concert with Kiko's replacement, Teemu Mäntysaari on September 6, 2023 at Revel in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The 37-year-old Mäntysaari was born in Tampere, Finland and began playing guitar at the age of 12. In 2004, he joined the band WINTERSUN. He has also been a member of SMACKBOUND since 2015.

Loureiro officially joined MEGADETH in April 2015, about five months after Chris Broderick's exit from the group.

Sammy Hagar kicked off his summer 2024 tour Saturday night (July 13) at the 20,000-capacity iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida.

For "The Best Of All Worlds" tour, Hagar and his bandmates in THE CIRCLE — ex-VAN HALEN bassist Michael Anthony and drummer Jason Bonham — are being joined by guitarist virtuoso Joe Satriani, who has recorded and performed with Hagar and Anthony in the band CHICKENFOOT, and multi-instrumentalist Rai Thistlethwayte.

The 21-song set in West Palm Beach consisted largely of VAN HALEN material, including the opening track "Good Enough", from 1986's "5150" album, as well as two songs from 1991's "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", "Poundcake" and "Runaround", and a pair of David Lee Roth-era VAN HALEN classics, "Panama" and "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", as well as a section of "Jump".

The rest of the set included Satriani's "Satch Boogie", the rousing rock-swing guitar instrumental that put him on the map in 1987 and helped propel his second album, "Surfing With The Alien", to platinum status. and several of Hagar's solo classics, such as "There's Only One Way To Rock", "Eagles Fly", "Heavy Metal" and "I Can't Drive 55".

The full setlist was as follows:

01. Good Enough (VAN HALEN song)
02. Poundcake (VAN HALEN song)
03. Runaround (VAN HALEN song)
04. There's Only One Way To Rock
05. Judgement Day (VAN HALEN song)
06. Panama (VAN HALEN song)
07. 5150 (VAN HALEN song)
08. Summer Nights (VAN HALEN song)
09. Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love (VAN HALEN song)
10. Top Of The World (VAN HALEN song)
11. Best Of Both Worlds (VAN HALEN song)
12. Satch Boogie (Joe Satriani song)
13. The Seventh Seal (VAN HALEN song)
14. Right Now (VAN HALEN song)
15. Why Can't This Be Love (VAN HALEN song)
16. Eagles Fly
17. Mas Tequila (SAMMY HAGAR AND THE WABOS song)
18. Heavy Metal
19. I Can't Drive 55
20. Space Station #5 / Oh Yeah / Jump
21. When It's Love (VAN HALEN song)

Produced by Live Nation, the 28-date "The Best Of All Worlds" tour will conclude on August 31 in St. Louis, Missouri.

This past January, Satriani spoke to Australian Musician about how he plans to play Eddie Van Halen's parts on the tour that will focus largely on the music of VAN HALEN. Asked about how he plans to approach the concerts from a "tonal" standpoint, Joe said: "Yeah, there's a couple of things that you can zero in on. This is one of the guitars I used during 'The Howard Stern Show' [when Joe, Sammy, Michael and Jason first announced the tour and performed on the early-morning program]. It's tuned to a D standard, which is really low, and the strings were 11. That was my first two big mistakes. [Laughs] 'Cause I can't play 11s. And tuned down to D, I just wasn't used to it. Sammy and the guys, they've been doing it for years, but it was foreign to me. So a lot of things don't happen.

"Eddie played at 440 and then E flat, and he played light strings. He played nines and even sometimes the lower strings were lighter," Joe explained. "Every time I talk about Eddie, I finish it by saying 'besides the fact that he was a genius.' You always have to add that in, 'cause he was just amazing — period. 'Cause every time he picked up a guitar, no matter what it was, it was amazing. He had the hands and the heart, everything. I'm just catching up.

"What I learned from 'The Howard Stern Show', besides it's still important to rehearse and you can't do gigs without rehearsals… But what, what it confirmed was a couple of things I was thinking about, which was that Eddie had specific gear — he really did," Satriani continued. "He didn't play with the gear I used or Steve Vai or Slash or Tom Morello or any of his contemporaries. He actually had a very specific setup. And you ask yourself, 'Well, why?' Well, it's because, besides he was a genius, as we know, he knew that in order for him to play those parts, he had to have his gear tweaked a certain way; otherwise it wouldn't work. So, like when you go to play the beginning of 'Mean Street', if your setup is not allowing those harmonics to jump out, it's gonna sound like you're not hitting them. You've gotta get the setup right.

"If you refer to the first… Let's say, if you go to [VAN HALEN's 1986 concert video] 'Live Without A Net' or any of those things, even the early period, '5150' period, from [David Lee] Roth to the early Hagar period where he's still using Marshalls, when he goes to do things like that, it's a success. Every time he goes to hit a harmonic, boom, there it is. And it's low noise, big round fidelity, still sounds organic. You fast forward to live at the Tokyo Dome [2015's 'Tokyo Dome Live in Concert'], it's a totally different thing. He's playing an entirely different amp. When he goes to do those things, he's getting an overt amount of harmonic information, but he's also getting a ton of noise and none of the body that was part of the earlier sound.

"Now I learned that because of those two [EVH] amps right there. I got those back when Alex [Van Halen] and Dave called and asked me to do the [seemingly abandoned] Eddie tribute tour, and I thought, 'Well, I've gotta figure this out.' So the first thing I did was I got a couple of those and I thought, 'Well, this is great. You get all the harmonics, but, man, this is really small sounding. This is like for modern…' If I was 20 years old and I was playing modern rock, those would be the best amps ever. But I'm not, and I still wanna hear sort of the body of the guitar and I wanna hear a more dynamic mix. So I started to think, 'Well, what's my favorite VAN HALEN section?' And I did find that period in '86. I talked to Sam quite a bit about it and he said, yeah, that first 5150, he was still using Marshalls. In Sammy's view, his favorite sound that Eddie ever made. It wasn't small and then stereoized. So I reached out to Dylana Scott at 3rd Power amplifiers, and she is building me what we believe is going to be the amp that does it…"

Joe added: "This goes back to what I said earlier about how the gear is so important for the performer. I know that when we step out on stage and whether I'm playing 'Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love' or '5150', I'm gonna need to feel and hear that sound to convince myself to keep going. And if it's not working, then I'm just gonna say, 'Well, let me just have my solo rig.' But my solo rig is designed — it probably has a little too much gain, and is designed to make the high strings really fat sounding, because I play all the melodies. I play very little rhythm guitar all night long. It's just solo melody, solo melody. And I can't play the Hagar set like that. It's just the wrong sound. CHICKENFOOT, it kind of worked. But for the for the VAN HALEN stuff to really pop, and then we're doing MONTROSE, we're doing Sammy Hagar solo stuff, we're doing my stuff, we're doing CHICKENFOOT. It's a really fun setlist. Great setlist. But I know, in my heart, that I wanna hear that sound in my head, that mythical Eddie Van Halen sound that we all sort of hear in our mind, and I wanna be able to feel it. And so I've been getting these clips from Dylana every week, and the stuff that she's building is really amazing."

Last December, Satriani spoke to Ultimate Guitar's Justin Beckner about how he plans to play Eddie Van Halen's parts on the upcoming tour. Asked if there are some VAN HALEN songs that he found most challenging to perform, Joe replied: "The main thing is that for the last five decades I've tried so hard to be myself and to be me and not copy anybody. I've been lucky, since the late '80s, to have a solo career, so I really had a job that forced me to be myself as much as possible. So I made a point not to play like anybody. But it happens eventually when you're having fun, you're at a party and someone says, 'Oh, can you play this song?' and you realize, 'I have no idea how to play that song. I love that song. I've listened to it a million times. I don't know what the guy's doing.' And then you go to learn it and you go, 'Wow, that's really weird. It feels so awkward for me to be like this.' And it's not the parts, 'cause I can hear the chords and I know what everything is when I hear it. It's just the sensibility of timing, vibrato, picking. If you're so deep into your own thing, it's really hard to get out of it and try to properly emulate somebody else's playing. It would almost be like if you gave a guitar to Eddie and you said, 'Okay, Eddie, we want you to play 'Summer Song' note for note.' He'd be, like, 'What? I don't play like that. I don't do that. I just kind of do this, this and this.' Of course we'd love it no matter how he did it — it would be fun — but it wouldn't be exactly the same."

Joe continued: "When I was young and I was in cover bands, I knew what it was like to try to get as close as possible when you were playing — for me, it was [LED] ZEPPELIN and [BLACK] SABBATH and THE [ROLLING] STONES and stuff like that; that's what we played. But eventually, you'd have to go, 'I don't play like that. That's not my vibrato.' If I go to play AC/DC, there's no way I can do Angus's [Young] vibrato. He just has his own vibrato. If you're gonna try to play like Jeff Beck — he's so personal. You can play the notes and remind people of this part he did and that part, but it's not gonna sound quite the same.

"If we heard Eric Clapton trying to play 'Since I've Been Loving You' by LED ZEPPELIN, there's no way it would sound the same. It would be great, but it wouldn't sound the same. So, what I noticed right away, when I realized, 'I really have to figure out these songs,' [I asked myself] what is Eddie — what's he operating on?

"So here are a couple of things I've noticed," Satriani added. "Number one, he plays so on the beat and makes it feel like he's pushing the beat, but he's actually not. It's really amazing how he does it. And I realized, when I went back and I listened to my stuff back to back, I thought, 'Oh, that's me, sitting on the backbeat as much as I can,' because I'm playing the melody. When you play the melody, you don't wanna be on top. Actually, you want the band to be pushing, and you're sitting back here, like a singer, playing. I like the way Robert Plant sings in 'Since I've Been Loving You'. He's so behind. Or listen to any hip-hop song — the vocals are way in the pocket; they're just late on purpose. So that's something I've worked on my whole life is 'sit back, sit back, sot back,' and all of a sudden you go to play a song like 'I'm The One', and it's like, 'No, you have to be the guy way in front.' And Alex [Van Halen] is gonna be going, 'No, no. Sit back here.' And that's a difficult sensibility when every nerve ending in your body is saying, 'Sit back.' But to make the song work, you've gotta sit forward. That's the first thing I noticed, like the difference between Eddie's sensibility in timing and mine in terms of timing.

"Our vibratos aren't that different," Joe said. "He holds hick pick [with his thumb and middle finger], so he's always got [his index] finger for tapping, and I don't. So I always have to do something. And what I started to do early on was to use my pick for a lot of hammer-ons because I just wanted to be different, and I thought I'd get a better sound, I'd be able to do some different things that other players weren't doing. And I saw guys using their fingers back in the early '70s, when Eddie was my age, just a young teenager. There were other guys doing tapping for decades before, but as my generation started to figure out how to do tapping, I saw the thing was a split. There's tapping for effect, tapping for riff, and then there's tapping to create an entire musical piece. And Eddie did all of it. The way that he would do the tapping, when he would use it, [was] totally opposite of the way that I had forced myself to go with it.

"The third thing is… Again, we're talking about someone who was just an incredible virtuoso in several areas. One of the things that Eddie had was this super-tight swing that was ultrafast with his right hand. And that is something, again, that once… I remember hearing for the first time and thinking, 'Well, I'm gonna have to work on that.' That's gonna take me, I thought, I bet, three months of 45 minutes a day just working with a metronome to work that into my bag of tricks.' 'Cause that's kind of like what it is."

Satriani went on to say: "I think when you're getting ready for a tour and you're gonna play a song that you haven't played in 20 years, you remember it but you go, 'Ah, I don't do that anymore,' and it physically feels odd. So you say, 'Okay, I've got six weeks before the tour. I'm gonna play this thing ten times a day and I'm just gonna keep working, and start slow and figure out all the different ways of doing it so that when I hit the stage, I can relax and play it the way it should be played.'"

Hagar and Anthony previously worked with Satriani in the supergroup CHICKENFOOT. They recorded two albums between 2009 and 2011 and toured across America but never performed any VAN HALEN material. More recently, Hagar and Anthony have played some of the VAN HALEN catalog with guitarist Vic Johnson and Bonham in SAMMY HAGAR AND THE CIRCLE.

Hagar mended his relationship with Eddie Van Halen months prior to the legendary VAN HALEN guitarist's October 2020 passing.

Sammy, Eddie, Alex Van Halen and Michael last teamed up in 2004 for a U.S. summer tour. In exchange for taking part in the tour, Anthony reportedly had to agree to take a pay cut and sign away his rights to the band name and logo.

Although Hagar and Anthony normally play five or six VAN HALEN songs" on the road with THE CIRCLE, Sammy told Stern they were planning to only play "five or six of my songs" alongside VAN HALEN classics and deep cuts.

"When we go out next year in July, it will be almost exactly 20 years since Mike and I did a reunion with Ed and Al in '04," Hagar said. "Mike and I just said, 'We can't wait another 20 years. How long can I even sing these songs? How long can I do this stuff? I just thought it's time to serve the fans."

"There's stuff we're going to do on this next tour that we haven't played since that tour in 2004," Anthony added.

Regarding the challenge of learning legendary VAN HALEN guitarist Eddie Van Halen's parts, Satriani said: "There are things that are so iconic, you have to nail it. But if you go deep with what he did live, he never played the same thing twice. He kept evolving; he kept pushing. He'd do the recorded version a little bit, but then he moved on.

"It's a daunting task when you do the deep dive into what he did," he continued. "But it's good to start at the beginning, and then you just learn all his little improvs and you get the idea of what he was trying to do. It's thrilling; it's fun."

Eddie died in October 2020 at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. The iconic VAN HALEN axeman passed away from complications due to cancer, his son confirmed.

NWOBHM legends Satan have announced their seventh full-length album Songs In Crimson will be released September 13 via Metal Blade Records. 


Artwork by Eliran Kantor:







More information will be available soon.


Satan have additionally announced a fall 2024 run through the UK and Europe with support from Haunt, Hell Fire, and Seven Sisters.





Dates:


September
4 – Manchester, UK – The Bred Shed
5 – Newcastle, UK – The Cluny
6 – Glasgow, Scotland – The Flying Duck
7 – Belfast, Ireland – Voodoo
8 – Dublin, Ireland – Grand Social
11 – London, England – Boston Music Room
12 – Brighton, England – Daltons
14 – Torreilles, France – Pyrenean Warriors Open Air


Tour with Haunt and Hell Fire
September
15 – Milan, Italy – Metalitalia Festival
16 – Munchen, Germany – Backstage
17 – Zagreb, Croatia – Klub Mocvara
18 – Wien, Austria – Escape
19 – Linz, Austria – Steel City Sorcery
20 – Selb, Germany – Rockclub Nordbayern
21 – Warsaw, Poland – Odessa
22 – Ostrava, Czech Republic – Barrak
23 – Nurnberg, Germany – Der Hirsch 
24 – Bochum, Germany – Trompete
25 – Oldenburg, Germany – MTS
26 – Copenhagen, Denmark – Beta
27 – Hamburg, Germany – Bambi Galore
28 – Bielefeld, Germany – JZ Stricker
29 – Gent, Belgium – Asgaard
30 – Tilburg, Netherlands – Little Devil


(Photo – Stefan Rosic)

In a new interview with Ernest Skinner of Canada's Border City Rock Talk, SLAYER guitarist Kerry King spoke about his surprise guest appearances on the BEASTIE BOYS' 1987 track "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" and SUM 41's pop-punk hit "What We're All About". Regarding the former, King said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "The simplicity of it is what's funny about it. We [SLAYER] were doing what became the 'Reign In Blood' album and the [BEASTIE BOYS] were doing 'Licensed To Ill' in the same studio, like down the hall from each other. And [producer] Rick Rubin was doing both projects. So they needed a lead on that particular song, 'No Sleep Till Brooklyn'. So I thought about it, and I went, 'Yeah, why not? I can use a couple hundred bucks.' I certainly wasn't well to do back then. So, that's what I did. I went in there and I did it. And in hindsight, I wish I didn't get paid. I wish I took a quarter point or something, 'cause now I would be a rich man. [Laughs]"

Regarding his contribution to "What We're All About", Kerry said: "It's funny. I just ran into [SUM 41] in Europe a couple of times. They were on the same festivals with us, and I hadn't seen them in a long, long time. So they made a way to come out and say 'hey', which I was happy about, 'cause I hadn't seen them forever.

"How that one happened — I remember I turned it down for months and months and months," he explained. "I'm, like, 'My fans won't get it. My fans won't get it. My fans won't get it.' Then the guy from the record label — here's another funny story, kind of full circle of what we were talking about — he comes up to me and he says, 'Well, you did the BEASTIE BOYS.' And I went, 'Motherfucker!' [Laughs] So I'm, like, 'You're right.' So I did it."

Last year, King told Metal Hammer that his guest appearances with the BEASTIE BOYS and SUM 41 were "career choices," not creative ones.

"Well…there's a whole lot to say there," King said when the interviewer brought up his collab with SUM 41. "It was my record label that wanted me to do it. I turned it down 10 times.

"A friend of mine at the label came to me at an angle that I just couldn't argue with. He was, like, 'Well, you know you played on the BEASTIE BOYS record. Fuck! [Laughs] He's got a point. That was my epiphany."

"That was before we put ourselves back on the map," King continued, referencing SLAYER's transitional period after releasing a couple of albums on Metal Blade Records and eventually signing with Rubin's Def Jam Recordings. "[SUM 41] were fun and they were popping. So, yeah, I played on the BEASTIE BOYS record and I played on the SUM 41 record. I mean, those weren't choices for me, those were just career choices I made. Some people may agree with them and some people may not."

King's debut solo album, "From Hell I Rise", came out on May 17 via Reigning Phoenix Music. All material for the LP was written by the 60-year-old SLAYER guitarist, who was accompanied during the recording sessions by the rest of his solo band, consisting of drummer Paul Bostaph (SLAYER),bassist Kyle Sanders (HELLYEAH),guitarist Phil Demmel (formerly of MACHINE HEAD) and Mark Osegueda (DEATH ANGEL) on vocals. Helming the sessions at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles last year was producer Josh Wilbur, who has previously worked with KORN, LAMB OF GOD, AVENGED SEVENFOLD and BAD RELIGION, among others.

Kerry King will be special guest on the upcoming LAMB OF GOD/MASTODON North American "Ashes Of Leviathan" co-headline tour. The six-week run will launch on July 19 in Grand Prairie, Texas and will wrap on August 31 in Omaha, Nebraska.

A KILLER'S CONFESSION, the band led by former MUSHROOMHEAD vocalist Waylon Reavis, will release a new album of melodic hard rock dosed with pummeling metal and industrial stylings, "Victim 1", on September 13 via MNRK Heavy.

The official lyric video for the song "Filth" can be seen below.

"'Filth' is a personal favorite," states Reavis. "It's another chapter in the lore of 'Victim 1'. I personally love the upbeat feel of this song, especially when playing it live. If you have caught an AKC show in the last few months, you have been lucky enough to hear it already. I feel our production team of Dusty Boles and Evan McKeever really helped me knock this one out of the park. The song takes you on a journey through the killer's eyes."

The singer also pulled back the curtain on the album as a whole, saying: "'Victim 1' might possibly be my favorite album I've ever been a part of. AKC stepped completely out of the box to write 'Victim 1'. I brought in new producers [Dusty Boles and Evan McKeever] to help rebrand the sound of the band. I took most of last year off and did not tour in order to write this album."

He continues, "The focus I found during this time really helped me flesh out the new sound and the direction in which I wanted to go. Personally, I feel that this is the true sound of A KILLER'S CONFESSION, and in my honest opinion, I feel like this is the first true AKC album. Every time I listen to the album, I sit back and smile, because I've never had that feeling before with AKC. The tone and atmosphere is completely different from anything we've ever done."

"Victim 1" track listing:

01. Tongue
02. Sun
03. Greed
04. Voices (feat. Aaron Nordstrom)
05. Purpose
06. Martyr
07. Kill Or Be Killed
08. Filth
09. Rain
10. Wasteland

"Victim 1" is AKC's their fourth full-length offering and MNRK Music Group debut.

"A year ago, I was like, 'What if we have a character who is fed up with the world?,'" recalls Reavis, offering in glimpse in the album's darkest recesses. "In his heart, he knows what's going on isn't right, so he does something about it. On each song, he addresses a sin — whether in himself or against some horrible person. The conversations are either in his head or with the victim. You think, 'If I was a guy who had the ability to find these people, how would I react?' He's got to do this, yet it's destroying him since he's truly a kind spirit. He has no regrets though."

After releasing three seminal albums as a member of MUSHROOMHEAD, Reavis retreated from music, only for it to draw him back in 2016. He resurfaced at the helm of A KILLER'S CONFESSION, delivering three cult favorite albums — "Unbroken" (2017),"The Indifference Of Good Men" (2019) and "Remember" (2021). Along the way, the band tallied tens of millions of streams in addition to collaborating with everyone from Brian "Head" Welch of KORN and LOVE AND DEATH to Chad Gray of MUDVAYNE and HELLYEAH. Joined by bassist JP Cross, guitarist James Skritch, and drummer Kegan King, they also captivated crowds on tour.

During 2022, Reavis experienced an epiphany. "I had never thought about following a concept like this before," he said. "However, I decided to focus, live up to the name, and be A KILLER'S CONFESSION." He hit the studio with collaborators and producers Dusty Boles (MAKE ME FAMOUS) and Evan Mckeever (NINE SHRINES). Shocking this vision to life, he emerged with the 10-track equivalent of "falling down a YouTube rabbit hole of unsolved mysteries."

A KILLER'S CONFESSION tell a story you won't be able to look away from... or forget — both lyrically and sonically. "A KILLER'S CONFESSION is all of us," Reavis shares. "It's not just the band. It's the people who listen, dive in, and learn from it. It's each and every one of us deep inside. We all have killed off something in our lives. I hope you find some solace in the record. We don't have to be so divided. We're more alike than we think we are."

Photo credit: Matthew Taylor Photography

The cover for former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman's upcoming autobiography, "Dreaming Japanese", which will arrive on December 3 via Permuted Press, can be seen below.

In a recent interview with George Dionne of KNAC.COM, Friedman was asked if he is "putting it all out there" with the book. The 61-year-old musician, who has lived in Japan since 2003, said: "Yeah. The entire criteria of the book was things that I've never said in the media, things that I couldn't say in the media, private things and all of the inner interpersonal relationships in all of the bands that I've been in, all of the projects I've worked on. And it's almost like a spy-like double-agent look into the Japanese music business and the Japanese entertainment industry, because I came in completely as a foreigner, but I'm working within that industry as someone who is in Japan, lives in Japan, speaks Japanese, works on the Japanese projects. So I can kind of report to the rest of the world what it's really like from an American's perspective, which I think the publishers of the book found quite fascinating and I really drew that to a complete conclusion. But it's basically everything that no one knows about me. So if you're slightly interested, hopefully you will get a lot of very unexpected information out of it."

In May, Friedman was asked by "THAT Rocks!", the YouTube series hosted by Eddie Trunk, Jim Florentine and Don Jamieson, why now is the right time for him to release his book. He responded: "I've always kept my private life completely out of media. Even in the Japan media, where I'm much more visible than in America, I've kept private things to myself and kept everything always about the topic at hand, whatever that be, whatever the program is about or whatever I'm releasing or whatever. So it's never really been terribly personal. But at the same time, every person has a deep personal story behind everything, and I've been working on an autobiography for years. And when it started to take shape and become something real, I started to look for publishers who were interested. And I found an absolutely excellent, excellent publisher that got excited about it. And when we started working on it, it, it just became this monster of a project, way beyond anything I'd imagined it being. And I think a lot of your fans are going to enjoy it because it's got so much deep details about the metal life that I've lived before I went over to Japan and the metal life now, but the real deep private relationship details between myself and all the other bandmembers from all my bands and all of the management things and life things that people don't see when they just see you on stage or they hear the records or they read the interviews. There's serious life stuff that you would only be comfortable talking about in a complete tell-all autobiography. And even then, I'm not even sure if I'm comfortable saying it, but I said, if I'm gonna do this, the main criteria is going to be all of this stuff is not stuff from interviews. And all of this stuff is gonna be stuff that's very private and very true."

He continued: "Of course I have no agenda at this age. The only thing I'm promoting is [my new solo album] 'Drama', which takes up about maybe four sentences of the autobiography. So the whole thing is just very deep and detailed into things that I think that no one really knows, because maybe I haven't really been that vocal about in the past."

After Florentine suggested that he could do the audiobook in English and Japanese all on his own, Marty said: "I could. I'm just so not into the idea of doing that. I dread the day when they say, 'Okay, we want you to do the audiobook.' 'Cause I listen to these books, and it just seems like a ton of work. I've done voiceover stuff for a lot of TV shows in Japan, and just one half-hour show takes friggin' forever. So, I'm just thinking, an entire book of, I think it's like 150,000 words, just dreading that. So I'm hoping that like A.I. can clone my voice and do it for me, 'cause I'm not looking forward to doing that work."

When Marty first announced his autobiography on May 13, he wrote in a social media post: "After an exhaustive and seemingly endless process, I'm beyond excited to let you know that I've just turned in the final manuscript for my autobiography, 'Dreaming Japanese'.

"I've always kept my private life completely out of the media, so with nervous excitement, I am thrilled to share the story about my upbringing, home life and career for the first time. You will enjoy the deepest dive into never before revealed details about my life in MEGADETH and the personal relationships within the band written with alarming clarity. Same goes for all of my other bands, from the very beginning.

"I outline the entire story why — and exactly how — I dropped living the high life in a multi-platinum band to start from scratch in Japan dreaming to play J-Pop, and how that spiraled into eventually exceeding even my loftiest goals, even becoming a government appointed Ambassador. It`s a complete immersion into my daily Japanese life as I guide you through the inner workings of the Japanese television industry and music scene, from my my unique and unprecedented perspective."

Friedman spoke about his autobiography in a recent interview with BLABBERMOUTH.NET. He said: "We're in the last editing stages. All the content is done. It's extremely long. The point that we're at is that 'You got to cut out a lot of this.' We're cutting out things. It's hard because it is extremely long. It's too long. We're cutting out certain things, but what I can say about it is it is by far the most detailed account of anything I've participated in in my life. Any little subject has the deepest details about it. There are little details and very personal details. Of course, a lot of people want to know about MEGADETH. I made it very sure to give the most complete and honest account of all things that were never in any interviews. Interviews are usually where you're talking about a topic and in 'impress mode.' But I wanted to get personal and talk about how things affected me in every little situation. All that is in great detail, as well as the transition into Japanese television and being the only foreigner in a world of completely Japanese people, as well as the pros and cons of that. It has all of the very important details that you can't say in interviews, like private and personal things that don't usually come out. I tried to keep that as the criteria: Did I talk about this in an interview? If so, it got cut. It's all new stuff."

Official "Dreaming Japanese" description: The rollicking autobiography of the iconic guitarist who took thrash metal behemoths MEGADETH from the edge of collapse to their highest peak before departing to Japan for the joy of J-Pop.

Marty Friedman's upbringing was as atypical as his career. Growing up in a Jewish household in Maryland, the son of an NSA executive, he lacked motivation until he accidentally discovered the guitar and immediately found his calling. Enjoying a hazy adolescence overflowing with partying, music, and teen antics, he achieved local stardom in DEUCE, then burst on to the national scene by pioneering a radically new style of playing, bringing attention to the guitar aficionado label, Shrapnel Records. Acclaim didn't breed success or money, but undeterred, Friedman moved to California, and after attempts to join Madonna, KISS, and Ozzy Osbourne, finally scored a gig in MEGADETH at a time when the band members were just recovering from the verge of self-destruction, and Marty was in and out of homelessness.

Friedman is the most revered guitarist to play in any MEGADETH lineup. During his ten years, his exotic, innovating style helped define the sound of their biggest albums, and while it elevated him to guitar hero status with all the accompanying perks, it came at a significant cost. As the only clean and sober member, Friedman vividly recalls the triumphs and trials of each album cycle and more, bringing to light previously undisclosed personal feelings surrounding the circumstances that forced the band into hiding in the midst of the "Countdown To Extinction" tour and the brutal effort it took to get the band back up and running. His profound and complicated relationship with frontman Dave Mustaine was symbolic of the band's insane dynamic, and Marty poignantly and generously shares his experiences within the band's inner sanctum during the highs, lows, and daily routines.

But "Dreaming Japanese" is far more than a memoir about Friedman's multi-platinum years in MEGADETH. The riveting narrative captures his relentless perseverance as he struggles to start again from nothing. Spontaneously leaving his home in the U.S. and feeling lost in the middle of Tokyo, with few connections or concrete plans, the story traces his journey to acclimate and assimilate into the inner core of an alien society, language and culture, almost like a double agent spy. In fascinating detail and clarity, Marty shares how he gradually made inroads into the Japanese entertainment industry, becoming a household name and fixture on mainstream television and earning respect as a highly influential solo artist. "Dreaming Japanese" follows the wildly entertaining, inspiring, and above all, unprecedented path of a rock and roll guitar player who took the biggest risk, leaving worldwide success to start over from scratch in a country, culture and society far from his own, ultimately becoming an official ambassador of Japan.

Video of Slash's exclusive performance of "Papa Was A Rolling Stone", off his new blues album, "Orgy Of The Damned", at the Gibson Garage in Nashville, Tennessee can be seen below. This private event marked the beginning of the "S.E.R.P.E.N.T." festival, a blues tour showcasing the GUNS N' ROSES guitarist's latest solo work.

S.E.R.P.E.N.T. is an anagram and stands for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N' Tolerance. The festival is a celebration of the blues, featuring an all-star lineup varies.

Slash formed the "S.E.R.P.E.N.T." festival to bring fans together to celebrate the spirit of the blues, and to perform with other blues artists he admires who share his love of the genre. Slash also has a strong desire to give back to charities that he has supported over the years, as well as to help lift marginalized communities that share his restorative focus of elevating lives for the benefit of all. A portion of the proceeds from each VIP package and "S.E.R.P.E.N.T." festival ticket sold will directly benefit the following charities that Slash has selected: The Equal Justice Initiative, Know Your Rights Camp, The Greenlining Institute and War Child. "S.E.R.P.E.N.T." festival has partnered with Plus1.org to support these charitable endeavors.

Joining Slash at various stops on the tour are WARREN HAYNES BAND, Keb' Mo', Larkin Poe, Christone "Kingfish" Ingram, Samantha Fish, ZZ Ward, Robert Randolph, Eric Gales and Jackie Venson.

The trek kicked off on July 5 in Bonner, Montana and will wrap up on August 17 in Grand Prairie, Texas.

"Orgy Of The Damned" came out on May 17 via Gibson Records. The LP features guest appearances by AC/DC's Brian Johnson, AEROSMITH's Steven Tyler, Iggy Pop, Chris Stapleton, THE BLACK CROWES' Chris Robinson, ZZ TOP's Billy F. Gibbons, BAD COMPANY's Paul Rodgers, Demi Lovato and Gary Clark Jr.Slash is backed on the album by prior collaborators Johnny Griparic (bass) and Teddy Andreadis (keyboards),as well as drummer Michael Jerome and singer/guitarist Tash Neal.

Regarding the inspiration for the "Orgy Of The Damned" album title, Slash told Germany's Rock Antenne: "It's the only title I came up with. It was just because blues and rock and roll have always been considered taboo and devil's music and all that kind of stuff. And it's 'hide your kids from that.' And I wasn't raised to think that, but I know society at large has always had that kind of attitude towards it, but of blues especially. And so when I thought about having a collaborative thing with all these different artists doing a blues record — 'Orgy Of The Damned', right? It seems so obvious to me, and I actually Googled it to see if somebody else had already used it, but they hadn't."

When the interviewer suggested that it must have been a "logistical nightmare" getting all those guest musicians to appear on the LP, Slash said: "It's difficult. I mean, you basically just have to get on the phone, and if they say 'yes', then okay. So that's really the hardest part, is calling people up and asking the question and seeing if they'll do it. And I was fortunate doing this, because I picked songs that… What I would do is I'd have the song and then go, 'Okay, who should sing this?' And whoever came to mind as being the appropriate singer, I would call them up. But, fortunately, I picked the right song for them to sing and so they would identify with it automatically. And so then that would make them feel more obligated to get involved and sing it properly or whatever goes through one's mind. But it was great because all the different artists were so open to the material and it really meant something to them. So, what happened was the vocal delivery really came from the heart; they were really singing from a place of connecting with the material."

Asked if there was anybody he wanted to get to appear on the album but couldn't, Slash said: "Well, the biggest one, really, the one that bums me out was [late MOTÖRHEAD leader] Lemmy. That was because there was a moment there where [I thought], 'Fuck, man, Lemmy would be great.' And I still haven't gotten used to the fact that he's not here, 'cause I'm so used to him being there. So that was the big one. I try not to make a big deal out of it. There's some people that I couldn't contact until after the record was done. And then they showed up, and [I would tell them] the record's done already. But other than that, everybody that I thought of were there."

Although he grew up in England, Slash's American grandmother turned him on to the blues early on and he was immediately taken with B.B. King. At the same time, his parents raised him on a healthy diet of '60s British rock 'n' roll, from THE WHO to THE KINKS. Once he moved to Laurel Canyon, Slash found himself surrounded by rock and folk singers like Joni Mitchell, CROSBY, STILLS & NASH and Neil Young — all of whom eventually inspired his playing and songwriting. It wasn't until he began playing guitar himself that Slash realized all of his favorite musicians had been influenced by the same B.B. King blues records he'd listened to as a young kid.

"Orgy Of The Damned" encompasses a broad range of styles within the blues genre, veering from an upbeat, rowdy take on Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" to a plaintive, twanging rendition of T. Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday". Some of the songs, like STEPPENWOLF's "The Pusher", Charlie Segar's "Key To The Highway" and Albert King's "Born Under A Bad Sign", had been performed by SLASH'S BLUES BALL while others, like Stevie Wonder's "Living For The City", were longtime favorites for Slash. "Hoochie Coochie Man", written by Willie Dixon and made famous by Muddy Waters in 1954, showcases the in-the-moment nature and unrestrained energy of "Orgy Of The Damned", with ZZ TOP's Billy F. Gibbons stepping in on guitar and vocals. The group went into a rehearsal room in North Hollywood and began hashing out soulful, rollicking takes on the classic songs. Everything was played live in the room, with an emphasis on improvisation which resulted in a collection of dynamic, energized songs that are immediate, raw, and distinctly familiar.

As Slash was considering vocalists, he approached his old friend and collaborator Iggy Pop, who had long wanted to record a blues song. Pop suggested Lightnin' Hopkins's 1962 track "Awful Dream", a sparse, drawling number originally laid down on acoustic guitar. The duo decided to recreate that stripped back vibe and recorded their own languid, emotionally-resonate version sitting on two stools in Slash's studio.

Elsewhere on "Orgy Of The Damned", Demi Lovato lends her powerhouse voice to "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone", a fervent, soulful version of the 1972 single by THE TEMPTATIONS that Slash admired as a kid. Although the song veers more towards R&B, the guitarist wanted to give it his own impassioned spin. The album concludes with a soaring original instrumental number, "Metal Chestnut", penned specifically for "Orgy Of The Damned" by Slash.

The first single, "Killing Floor", features Johnson on vocals and Tyler on harmonica.

Slash will take the stage at The Mission Ballroom in Denver, Colorado for a one-night-only performance with his blues band on Wednesday, July 17. This special event is part of his nationwide "S.E.R.P.E.N.T." blues festival, and will be streamed live globally on Veeps, offering fans a unique opportunity to experience the magic of Slash's blues revival.

The Veeps livestream will showcase a set by Slash and his blues band, featuring Johnny Griparic (bass),Teddy "ZigZag" Andreadis (keyboards),Michael Jerome (drums) and Tash Neal (vocals/guitar).

"Slash: Live from The Mission Ballroom" will air globally on July 17, 2024. The stream will begin at 9:30 p.m. MDT and will be available on Veeps for one year following the original air date. The show is free for Veeps All Access subscribers in the U.S.; for fans outside the U.S., tickets are on sale for $14.99 at this location with a three-day rewatch window.

For more information and tickets to the in-person festival, visit www.serpentfestival.com.

In a new interview with Kiki Classic Rock, former FOREIGNER singer Lou Gramm was asked if he has ever considered selling the rights to his back catalog and recordings. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It's crossed my mind. And I've had companies and people calling me, asking me if I wanted to sell my portion of the [FOREIGNER] songs. And I hadn't really thought about it that much, but I have been thinking about it. I don't know if songs won't be worth that much in the future — maybe now's the time to do it if you're gonna do it; I'm not sure — but I wanna leave that creativity and any funds that it generates to my children… And that's something that forever in their lives and their children's lives that they can remember their dad."

Gramm also talked about his recent announcement that 2024 will be his last year as a touring performer. He said: "I still enjoy performing, but being that I'm not the kid I once was, it's more difficult, more exerting. And a lot of it also has to do with the way travel has become. It is ridiculous. It used to be so easy to fly from one city to another. Now flights are canceled for no reason at all and people are left stranded. I've had flights where I booked a first-class seat and ended up on the last aisle of the plane next to the back bathrooms, just because as they give me my boarding pass, it's not the one that I booked. But it's either take that seat or miss your flight and maybe miss a show. So I get on very begrudgingly, and the whole flight I just sit there at the seat, because the airlines used to be very professional and very good at what they do and things seem to be upside down and there's no reason for what's going on that I can see. And I just prefer not to travel."

Asked what he will do with all his free time, Lou said: "I have a small home in Florida that I get out of the Rochester winters and I go there for three or four months. I enjoy that. I fly there, but I'll grin and bear it. And it's not every flight; it's just every so often that that kind of thing happens. But it's very upsetting to me when that does. I'm a classic car collector. I don't have a big collection — I have three or four cars — but I've had them for 25 or 30 years now. I go to cruise nights and car shows and stuff. That's my outlet. And I'm sure I'm still gonna be writing songs and maybe recording, but I think I've just had enough of touring. I've been doing this for almost 50 years now. And that's a long time."

Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks and Neil Young are some of the iconic musicians who have recently sold off substantial rights to their music, whether it's just for publishing or the original recordings, known as masters. Investors, major music companies and private equity firms have poured billions of dollars into buying song catalogs, believing that the rise of streaming and growing music revenues will make song rights acquisitions highly lucrative in the long term as they can be exploited for up to 70 years after a musician's death.

This past April, it was revealed that FOREIGNER is among the 2024 inductees into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

The induction ceremony will be held on October 19 at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio. It will air live on Disney+. An edited version will run on ABC at a later date, and will be available on Hulu the day after.

To be eligible for this year's ballot, each nominee's first single or album had to have been released in 1999 or earlier.

Eligible since 2002, FOREIGNER has had a huge number of rock hits, including "Cold As Ice", "Double Vision", "Hot Blooded", "I Want To Know What Love Is", "Juke Box Hero" and "Urgent", and has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, with no wins.

According to the Hall Of Fame, the FOREIGNER members that will get inducted include only the classic-era musicians Gramm, Mick Jones, Dennis Elliott, Ed Gagliardi, Al Greenwood, Ian McDonald and Rick Wills. McDonald and Gagliardi died in 2022 and 2014, respectively.

UNEARTH has released a new digital EP, "Bask In The Blood Of Our Demons". Featuring a potent mix of unreleased tracks and blistering live performances, this EP showcases UNEARTH's signature blend of ferocious instrumentation and thought-provoking lyricism. Included are two brand-new cuts from the recording process of "The Wretched; The Ruinous", "Sea Of The Lost" and "Warrior Souls", with "Warrior Souls" in particular continuing the narrative explored in the album.

"It's a pit starter from the opening seconds and is heavy and uncompromising throughout," explains the band. "Lyrically it imagines a desolate time when future generations take vengeance on their living predecessors for not doing more to save our environment from becoming uninhabitable and our species being on the brink of extinction. The more unlivable our world becomes, the fewer political, religious and cultural divides will exist. There will be only two missions remaining for the human race; survival and retribution."

Adding to the EP's dynamic energy are live recordings of "The Wretched; The Ruinous (Live In Texas, 2023)" and "Dawn Of The Militant (Live In Texas, 2023)", providing fans with a visceral taste of UNEARTH's commanding stage presence.

Accompanying the EP's release is the visualizer for "Warrior Souls", now available below, offering a visceral visual complement to the track's intensity.

Catch UNEARTH live on their upcoming tour dates, including performances across Europe, Japan and the United States.

"Bask In The Blood Of Our Demons" track listing:

01. Sea Of The Lost
02. Warrior Souls
03. The Wretched; The Ruinous (Live in Texas, 2023)
04. Dawn Of The Militant (Live in Texas, 2023)

UNEARTH, who celebrated their 25th anniversary in 2023, are nothing short of standard-bearers and keepers of the faith for American metalcore. They were the band born in the breakdown who never wavered from their love for European death metal melodicism, supercharged by American thrash and hardcore. Now, more than a quarter century into a career that's seen the Massachusetts mob play innumerable gigs and massive festivals on six continents, sell hundreds of thousands of records, and inspire some of the most important bands in extreme metal today, they remain a force to contend with.

It's a daunting thought that UNEARTH has been a part of the metal landscape since making their recorded debut with 1999's "Above The Fall Of Man" EP. At that point, UNEARTH was one of the key bands in an-about-to-detonate New Wave Of American Heavy Metal (NWOAHM) scene that included nascent lineups of KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, LAMB OF GOD, SHADOWS FALL, DARKEST HOUR, BLEEDING THROUGH and GOD FORBID.

The release of 2001's "The Stings Of Conscience" album (Eulogy) and its landmark follow-up "Endless" EP ignited excitement about UNEARTH, who in 2003 joined KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, SHADOWS FALL and LAMB OF GOD on the inaugural MTV Headbangers Ball tour. Inking with Metal Blade that year for the album "The Oncoming Storm", UNEARTH took their spot as one of American metal's most explosive live acts.

"Those early years of full-time touring were really impactful for us," says UNEARTH vocalist Trevor Phipps. "We were hitting milestone after milestone, year in year out."

Endless road work followed including countless tours, massive European, Japanese, and Australian festivals, and rite-of-passage American road-jaunts, including the Ozzfest and Mayhem festival tours, cemented the Mass quintet as a force in the world of metal. That unassuaged work ethic drives the band to this day.

On album number eight, "The Wretched; The Ruinous", UNEARTH not merely continued to amp up their metal meets hardcore intensities, but they also exceed themselves with a record that incorporated elements of classic UNEARTH offerings dating back to 2004's "breakthrough" "The Oncoming Storm", while exploring beyond the recent back-to-basics promise of 2018's "Extinction(s)" . For UNEARTH's founding mainstays, Phipps and guitarist Buz McGrath, it feels like the beginning of a new chapter.

"The Wretched; The Ruinous" was a turning point moment for UNEARTH. It was the first album in their canon recorded without guitarist Ken Susi, who exited the band in 2022.

Pioneering Christian metal band STRYPER will release a new studio album, "When We Were Kings", on September 13.

The LP's first single, "End Of Days", arrived in late June. A follow-up single, "Loves Symphony", will be made available on July 18.

"When We Were Kings" track listing:

01. End Of Days
02. Unforgivable
03. When We Were Kings
04. Betrayed By Love
05. Loves Symphony
06. Trinity
07. Rhyme Of Time
08. Raptured
09. Grateful
10. Divided By Design
11. Imperfect World

About "End Of Days", STRYPER said: "'End Of Days' is a heavy track musically and lyrically. It has a classic sound with a few modern twists and turns along the way. Lyrically, it's probably the most fitting message according to the times we are living in. It really does feel like the 'End Of Days' in many ways. We're not only a divided nation, we're a divided world. It's time to make things right."

STRYPER's 40th-anniversary tour dates will begin this fall. After an appearance at the Alive Music Festival in July, tour dates kick off September 11 in Greenville, Tennessee and conclude November 16 in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

STRYPER's 40th-anniversary tour will be a celebration of both classic hits and new-era fan favorites, including outfit changes and an exciting new show production. In most cities, this will be a two-set "evening with"-style show.

In a recent interview with Canada's The Metal Voice, STRYPER frontman Michael Sweet spoke about the musical direction of the band's recently completed follow-up to 2022's "The Final Battle" album. He said: "I think what it's always been in the past 10 years, 12 years. It's kind of similar to the last album and the album prior to that. But this album has some different twists and turns to it. And you have to hear it to understand that. When I was writing the songs, I wanted to make sure the choruses kind of went from — the verses might be in a minor chord, a little more on the darker side, and the choruses go to a major chord, a little bit more on the lighter side. Not lighter, but happier side— more major, melodic, more of an anthem, sing-along kind of thing. Then when it comes back to the verse, boom, it darkens up a little bit. You hear more of that kind of stuff."

Regarding the lyrical content on the upcoming STRYPER LP, Sweet, who is responsible for almost all of the songwriting in the band, said: "[There are] a couple of twists and turns. There's a song called 'Betrayed By Love'. It's a dark song, musically and lyrically. It's not a happy, typical STRYPER song that people might expect, like 'Honestly'. It's a song about being betrayed by someone you loved or love. And I think people will hear that and think, 'Oh, wow. This is different.' It's a great song. It's really cool. But there's little twists and turns here with the lyrics. The lyrics are a little different. And really cool. I can't wait for people to hear it."

This past March, Sweet wrote in an online post that he was "a little nervous" about his voice prior to the recording sessions for the new STRYPER album, "but in all sincerity, it seems fine to me," he said. "I didn't have any trouble tracking vocals and if anything, it seemed a little easier this time around.

"I have to say that this album has a very special signature," he added. "It has a heaviness yet at the same time, a very melodic approach and a bit more of a 'sing-along' style when it comes to the choruses. I'm really pleased with the results and I truly believe it will be at the top of everyone's 'best of' list. There are some stand out tracks to my ears already but I won't go into details quite yet. Bottom line, a KILLER new STRYPER album is coming!"

Last September, Michael said that he wanted "to branch out a bit" on the next STRYPER album "and try some new things and I also want to get back to some 'pop metal' on a few tracks as well."

In December, Sweet underwent partial thyroidectomy, the surgery to remove part of his thyroid gland. It is the most common surgery for thyroid cancer.

The follow-up to 2020's "Even The Devil Believes", "The Final Battle" was produced by Sweet and was once again recorded at SpiritHouse Recording Studios in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Formed 41 years ago, STRYPER's name comes from Isaiah 53:5, which states: "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

STRYPER's albums include "To Hell With The Devil", "Second Coming", "No More Hell To Pay", "Fallen", "God Damn Evil" and the aforementioned "Even The Devil Believes" and "The Final Battle".

Michael is joined in STRYPER by his brother Robert Sweet (drums),Oz Fox (guitar) and Perry Richardson (bass).

STRYPER's "To Hell With The Amps: The Unplugged Tour" kicked off in late May. For the first time ever, the Christian rockers staged a full tour where they performed their hits and fan favorites acoustically.

Photo credit: Alex Solca Photography

Since this is already going around online, I thought I’d post it🤪

“When We Were Kings”

👊

You ready?

#heavy
#newmusic
#stryper

Posted by Michael Sweet on Thursday, July 11, 2024

In a new interview with Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio show, ACCEPT guitarist Wolf Hoffmann was asked what the biggest changes have been in his 50 years of recording music and touring. He responded: "Oh my god. Yeah, the whole landscape has changed tremendously. If you think about it, when we started, there weren't so many bands and it was all about getting that record deal with a major label. And then the goal was always to sell millions of albums, if possible. And think about how much that all has changed; now it's all about digital downloads and streaming. So the way that we distribute music has changed completely, and how we consume music, too. But I'll tell you what hasn't changed — it's the touring aspect of things. It's really still very much like it always was. I mean, you pack your gear, you get the guys together and you travel to wherever you have to travel and you play your songs in front of an audience and that's pretty much like it always was. And that's great. I think the experience of a live show has as much value [as], or maybe even more value than, it ever did because of all the digitization, if that's even a word."

As previously reported, ACCEPT will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2025-2026. To mark this mammoth milestone, the band will ring in the band's golden birthday with a very unique anniversary tour at the end of 2025. An anniversary album will be released early 2026.

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, ACCEPT is embarking on a spectacular world tour that will take fans on a musical metal journey through time. Fans can look forward to a unique stage show with surprise guests, all the classic hits from the band's history as well as rarely performed songs.

In spring 2026, ACCEPT will release a special album that covers the band's entire musical history. This anniversary album will contain a carefully curated selection of the best ACCEPT songs from the last five decades, re-recorded — partly with well-known surprise musical guests and colleagues, as well as with some rare tracks that have not been played so often before.

Over the past five decades, ACCEPT has sold millions of albums and inspired countless musicians. Their energetic live performances and iconic albums such as "Balls To The Wall", "Restless And Wild" and "Metal Heart" have left a lasting mark on the heavy metal genre. Hoffmann's guitar style and musical vision have made the band one of the most respected on the heavy metal scene.

After a hiatus in the band's career, Wolf was introduced to New Jersey singer Mark Tornillo in 2009. The chemistry and fit between them was so remarkable, ACCEPT reformed and almost immediately rose to global success with chart-topping albums. ACCEPT continues to be celebrated for each of their new records with Mark, who is now the longest-reigning frontman of ACCEPT, placing the Hoffmann-Tornillo partnership firmly in the Metal Hall Of Fame.

For decades, ACCEPT has been recognized as a guarantee of high quality and each of their albums has reached the top of the charts, delivering energy, melodies, killer riffs and an impressively powerful stage presence for 50 years.

ACCEPT's latest album, "Humanoid", was released on April 26 via Napalm Records. The LP was once again produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by critically acclaimed heavy metal producer Andy Sneap.

ACCEPT recently announced a massive European headline tour, with more than 20 shows across the continent for autumn 2024. This summer, ACCEPT will also return to some of the world's most important rock and metal festivals, like Wacken Open Air.

ACCEPT and KK'S PRIEST will join forces this fall 2024 for a North American tour. The run will begin on August 31 in Los Angeles, California, visiting a slew of major cities in the USA and Canada — such as Toronto, Montreal, New York and Nashville — before coming to an end in San Francisco, California on October 7.

In February 2022, it was announced that ACCEPT had inked a worldwide deal with Napalm Records.

Tornillo joined ACCEPT in 2009 as the replacement for the band's original lead singer, Udo Dirkscheider. He can be heard on ACCEPT's last six studio albums, "Blood Of The Nations" (2010),"Stalingrad" (2012),"Blind Rage" (2014),"The Rise Of Chaos" (2017),2021's "Too Mean To Die" and 2024's "Humanoid".

Musicians paying homage to their influences is a story that has been around for decades. Every so often, an artist combines their influences and creates a new genre that defines their specific art and vision. This is what Uncured  -  the New Jersey quartet comprised of Rex Cox [vocals], Zak Cox [guitars], “King Z” Zachary King [drums], and Betto Andrade [bass] - has created with a genre they have affectionately dubbed “nu metalcore.”


This is apparent on their first single “Mask Of Sanity” - now available via all digital service providers - from their upcoming 2025 debut EP, Warpath. The track is full of memorable melodies and thought-provoking lyrics that encapsulate the lens through which Uncured views the world.


The track is available via all digital service providers here. The band has also released an visualizer for “Mask Of Sanity” that can be seen below.




“We describe our sound as "nu metalcore’,” states Uncured. “It combines the raw energy, power and aggression of 2000s metal with the huge hooks, catchy choruses and brutal breakdowns of today’s metal scene to deliver an intense, new experience.”


From the driving intro of “Mask Of Sanity” to the epic outro of “Perfect Specimen,” the Warpath EP showcases the sound that has been developing from Uncured since they started working on it in 2023. It was this sound and lyrical ideas that would capture the attention of platinum producer David Bendeth (Bring Me the Horizon, I Prevail) and convince him to work with the quartet. Songs like “Manifesto,” “Crucify” and “Bleed Me Dry” are the perfect companion pieces to introduce Uncured to the world. The result is a memorable EP that will lead to a full length album in late 2025.





Warpath EP tracklisting:


"Mask Of Sanity"
"Manifesto"
"Crucify"
"Bleed Me Dry"
"Fall In Line"
"Perfect Specimen"


"Mask Of Sanity" visualizer:





The band will be hitting the road throughout 2024 to bring Warpath and their nu metalcore sound to the masses. Uncured will tour this summer to promote the song, playing the Main Stage at Inkcarceration, along with Rock Fest and the Metal Injection Festival. All tour dates are below with more to be announced. Links to purchase tickets for all upcoming performance can be found here.





Uncured Warpath Tour 2024


July
19 - Cadott, WI - Rock Fest
20 - Mansfield, OH - Inkcarceration
22 - Cudahy, WI - X-Ray Arcade *
23 - Indianapolis, IN - Hoosier Dome *
24 - St. Louis, MO - Duck Room *
26 - Wichita, KS - Temple Live *
28 - Lubbock, TX - Jake’s *
29 - Albuquerque, NM - Launchpad *
31 - San Diego, CA - Soma Sidestage *


August
30 - Scranton, PA - The Ritz Theater


September
21 - Brooklyn, NY - Metal Injection Festival 2024


* Supporting Dark Divine


About Uncured:


Uncured’s explosive new EP Warpath, due in 2025, combines the raw energy, power and urban groove of 90s metal with the huge hooks, catchy choruses and brutal breakdowns of today’s metal scene to deliver an intense, fresh experience that can best be described as the birth of nu metalcore.  Warpath will defy your expectations. Rather than tread well-worn ground, the independent New Jersey quartet—Rex Cox (vocals, guitar), Zak Cox (lead guitar), “King Z” Zachary King (drums), and Betto Andrade (bass)—forge ahead with an aggressive, unrelenting, fearless sound and message of their own.  Unlike most other bands of this current generation, Uncured did not start its journey on social media.  Instead, the band honed its craft on the road, and has already played over 300 shows in 14 different countries, touring with top acts such as Bad Omens, Jinjer and Bad Wolves, to name just a few.  Uncured draws consistent praise for its energetic, relentless live performances and outstanding playing. In late 2023, Rex and Zak teamed up with platinum producer David Bendeth (Bring Me the Horizon, I Prevail) to co-write much of the material on Warpath.  The partnership has worked.  Warpath is a wild ride, showcasing the band’s exceptional musicianship and flair with songs that are controversial, insightful, and unapologetically angry.


(Photo - Neil van Niekerk)

Italian power metallers, Frozen Crown, have shared a full band playthrough of "Blood On The Snow" (3 guitars version) from the album, Winterbane. Live recordings mixed and mastered by Andrea Fusini.


"This is the last bit of old material from Winterbane we're releasing, closing the Scarlet FC chapter and officially opening the Napalm chapter! Let the new stuff in! Everything was played and recorded live by each member, making this playthrough sound as close as a (perfectly mixed and balanced) live set would sound (plus keyboards, recorded by Fabiola and Federico separately)."







Frozen Crown recently issued the following update:


"New album complete!


Dear friends, many of you asked us what we were doing behind the scenes during the last months. Now, after some hints here and there, we can say we're happy and proud beyond words to finally be able to listen to this new material. It's the best stuff we ever recorded and yes, we know, all bands say this about their latest album, but this time it couldn't be truer. Not only cause this is the first material recorded as a 6-piece band, but also cause this is the very first time every single Frozen Crown member actively contributed to the final result.


Once again we worked with the best, who has been the hidden additional band member for all these years: Andrea 'Fusix' Fusini, which crafted the sound of all our albums since the beloved debut The Fallen King. You may have listened to some of his latest work on Napalm Records if you happened to check the latest Delain album!"





Frozen Crown inked a worldwide contract with Napalm Records in June 2023. The five-piece was founded in 2018, and have since become one of the most influential Italian metal bands in the current scene.


So far, Frozen Crown have released four albums - The Fallen King (2018), Crowned In Frost (2019), Winterbane (2021) and this year’s Call Of The North - which have brought the band huge media exposure, millions of streams and video views, and big European tours with the likes of Dragonforce and Nanowar Of Steel, as well as two headlining tours in Japan.


Their current album, Call Of The North, is Frozen Crown’s most mature work so far, showcasing the best of the band’s unique power metal style infused with classic heavy metal, melodic death metal and speed metal influences, all topped with bombastic production highlighting opulent orchestrations and harmonies.


Frozen Crown on the signing: "We're happy and honored to join the Napalm Records family and we're ready for our next big step together. Since we founded this band in 2018 we worked hard incessantly, day after day, not only trying to put our best in our studio albums and live, but also managing the band all by ourselves, conquering every single little accomplishment with our DIY attitude, always keeping loyal to our (extremely) small entourage. Thanks to the support of our lovely fans, Frozen Crown eventually grew bigger, and got to a point where we were not able to handle it all by ourselves anymore. At the same time, we knew we needed more firepower to push the band further and bring it to the next level. And speaking of firepower, Napalm Records was just the best record label to start this new chapter with... We're excited beyond words to be part of the best metal label in the world, and we can't wait to start working together on our new album, joining forces with this huge team of professionals."


Sebastian Muench, Senior A&R Napalm Records, adds: “Frozen Crown are simply one of the most creative power metal bands to emerge in the last five years. Their previous releases, Winterbane and Call Of The North, are brilliant. We look forward to working with Frozen Crown to reach the next level in their career.”


Frozen Crown are:


Giada “Jade” Etro - Vocals
Federico Mondelli - Vocals, Guitar
Fabiola Bellomo - Guitar
Francesco Zof - Bass
Niso Tomasini - Drums

In a recent interview with Brian Kachejian of ClassicRockHistory.com, DEEP PURPLE drummer Ian Paice was asked what he and his bandmates meant when they announced in 2022 that they had welcomed guitarist Simon McBride as an official member of the band. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, we're a democratic outfit. Luckily, with five [members], we always get a decision. His vote is as valuable and as important as any one of the rest of four of us."

Regarding how McBride ended up joining DEEP PURPLE, Paice said: "We knew very, very quickly, and we had an impossible situation with our friend Steve Morse [DEEP PURPLE's previous guitarist]. He had this tragedy in his family [when his wife was battling cancer] and he couldn't be on the road. Family comes first. When we were in that situation, [we couldn't] say, 'Look, we might do a tour in the summer. You wanna book it now. We'll let you know later.' Nobody's gonna go for that. So, Steve had his situation. And we knew, at this stage of our lives and careers, if we stopped and waited for him, we probably wouldn't get going again. It would probably be the end. You can't take a year, two years off. Not now. It's not like being 21 again. It's not the same. So we had this impossible situation, both him and us. And we decided that we had to continue.

"Simon had worked with [DEEP PURPLE keyboardist] Don Airey before, and I think he'd done some work with [DEEP PURPLE singer] Ian Gillan before, on their own solo projects. And they just said, 'This guy is great.' He's gonna fall straight into the ethos of the band. So I said, 'If he's good enough for you, he's good enough for me.' And within — I don't know — half an hour of just jamming around together on the first day, it was obvious. Not only was he good enough, he was his own man while at the same time paying respect to some of the stuff that had come before he was there. But it was great fun playing with him. It still is."

On the topic of how playing with McBride's addition to DEEP PURPLE has affected the band's sound, Paice said: "If I say it's like a breath of fresh air, that's not to deny Steve's genius and his input for the last 20-odd years. It's just different, and sometimes a change of direction is very important. And I think Simon has given us that. He's brought a more riffy approach to the songwriting. Some of Steve's stuff was far more cerebral. You had to really work out where he was going. He's got a wonderful mind, Steve. He thinks of things that nobody else can come up with, and they're beautiful, they're clever. Simon is a little more — I get it straight away. And that is nice, 'cause, again, it's just a slight change of direction. Nothing we haven't done before. If anything, it harkens back to some of that stuff from the early '70s."

DEEP PURPLE's new album, "=1", is due on July 19 via earMUSIC. The LP marks DEEP PURPLE's first material with McBride.

Since 2022, Simon has already played to DEEP PURPLE audiences totaling more than half a million people.

With the legendary Bob Ezrin once again producing, "=1" evokes the pioneering band's classic sound, without relying on nostalgia.

The enigmatic title "=1" symbolizes the idea that in a world growing ever more complex, everything eventually simplifies down to a single, unified essence. Everything equals one. Its full meaning will be revealed in the coming weeks, with the artwork also playing its part. Fans have already been speculating after mysterious equations and depictions of multiverses appeared in London, Paris and Berlin in recent days.

With three consecutive No. 1 albums in their back pocket and a resurgent new energy powering them forward, this is DEEP PURPLE at their pinnacle. "Now WHAT?!" (2013),"inFinite" (2017) and "Whoosh!" (2020) have sold over one million copies worldwide, making DEEP PURPLE one of the most successful rock bands currently active. The latest studio album, "Whoosh!", reached No. 1 on the album charts in seven countries and charted in the top 10 in another 12.

There simply aren't enough superlatives to properly acknowledge the contribution DEEP PURPLE has made to rock music. Having sold more than 100 million albums and filled global arenas for decades, there's little wonder that the respected British radio station Planet Rock named the group the "Fifth Most Influential Band Ever". The band were also presented the Legend Award at the 2008 World Music Awards and were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2016. DEEP PURPLE truly are "rock royalty".

With a body of work spanning seven decades, DEEP PURPLE has helped pioneer and define the hard rock genre while progressively moving into new areas, both keeping their sound fresh and attracting new fans to the legions who have remained loyal since the band's inception. The celebrated MKII line up of Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Ian Paice, Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore were responsible for creating many of the defining rock albums of the early 1970s, including "Made In Japan", universally accepted as one of the most important and influential live albums of all time.

Known as one of the hardest-working bands ever, DEEP PURPLE has continued to release No. 1 albums and tour globally since forming in 1968, with little rest. In 2007 (almost 40 years after being formed),the band performed 40 dates in France to an award-winning audience, and they continue to spend much of their year on the road selling out arenas across the globe.

DEEP PURPLE has stayed true to its musical roots taking from an eclectic mix of styles to create a distinctive sound that defines the band today, but which in turn, has created a legacy that very few bands could ever hope to replicate. The band has written and produced so many "classic", well-known songs, that its audience range widely in age and background — something the band has readily embraced.

DEEP PURPLE's recent studio album "Whoosh!" (2020) followed their worldwide chart-topping albums "inFinite" (2017) and "Now WHAT?!" (2013). 2024 sees the release of their brand-new album "=1". On all albums, DEEP PURPLE joined forces with producer Bob Ezrin, who has worked with the likes of KISS, PINK FLOYD, Lou Reed and Alice Cooper.

Furthering their collaboration with Ezrin, in 2021 and during the pandemic the band recorded a collection of cover songs from their own homes (normal for most bands nowadays, revolutionary for a band that records everything together in the studio),creating an eclectic and celebratory history of their roots in music, in the shape of "Turning To Crime".

Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Ian Paice, Don Airey and Simon McBride continue with renewed vitality, pushing the boundaries of hard rock to audiences around the globe, proving that DEEP PURPLE are very much here to stay.

Photo credit: Jim Rakete (courtesy of The Outside Organisation

"Lightning Speed" is the thunderous new single from the energetic, heavy rock 'n' roll outfit, Midnight Tripper. The band's fuzz-fueled offering is ignited with a fusion of catchy rock 'n' roll qualities and stoner rock, all enshrouded in a darker, heavier atmosphere. 


The band comments on "Lightning Speed": "This single begins to define our brand of 'Heavy Rock 'n' Roll' with energetic, headbanging riffs and aggressive vocals. 'Lightning Speed' is about the willingness to sacrifice for your passion and the choices made to achieve your dreams. This is our first single with our new drummer, Lucas, who brings his own style of hard hitting, anthemic drumming to the mix."







About Midnight Tripper: the Canadian quartet combine heavy rock 'n' roll riffs infused with doom, groove and punk rock styles, and draw from an array of influences including the sounds of Black Sabbath, Cancer Bats, Sleep, Motörhead, and Nirvana. The band formed in 2022 after Reed Rosiana, Mike Manseau and Mikke Paonessa, who had been without a vocalist for around a year, had found their frontman in Dan Post.


Midnight Tripper began traversing the live circuits in 2022 Niagara, ON, performing with the likes of Mvll Crimes, Aawks and Sons Of Arrakis to name a few. Midnight Tripper released their debut EP, Ride The Wave, in September 2022, followed by the single “Mothman” in December of that year, and the unearthly EP, Paranormal, landed in 2023. In January of 2024, Reed left the band due to an injury and Lucas Spinosa joined on drums. 


For further details, visit Midnight Tripper on Facebook.


 

"Freaks! We're so excited to announce that we have partnered with our friends at Three Chord Bourbon again to make a new batch of Bourbon Whiskey," begins an annoncement from Halestorm.


"This batch has notes of baking spices, dark sugars, and roasted nuts, and the incredible label design was inspired by the subtle notes of cherries in the Bourbon as well as one of Lzzy's badass jackets. We think you're really going to like this one, so click the link to pre-order your bottle today!"







Halestorm and I Prevail are gearing up to embark on the "can't miss" US tour of Summer 2024. Their co-headline trek, produced by Live Nation, kicks off on July 9 in Raleigh, NC and runs through August 17 in Las Vegas, NV. Hollywood Undead and Fit For A King will serve as support, making this a powerhouse package that will be remembered as one of Summer 2024's best line-ups.


The tour is the catalyst and the creative spark for the bands' brand new collaborative track "can u see me in the dark?" It's an epic and explosive pairing, just like the tour itself, thanks to the vocal chemistry between Halestorm's Lzzy Hale and I Prevail's Eric Vanlerberghe, stormy riffs, and its unforgettable chorus. It will go down as one of the smash hits of the year!


Watch the lyric video below, get/play the track here.


"In celebration of our upcoming tour together, we joined forces with the boys of I Prevail and wrote an original song together," says Lzzy Hale. "'can u see me in the dark?' is written for our collective fan bases, our community, our family. We want you to know that you are seen and you are not alone shining through life’s myriad of joy and pain. We can't wait to feast our eyes on you this summer!"


"We're excited to finally have a song come out,' says Vanlerberghe. "It was a fun challenge to blend the Halestorm and I Prevail sounds together. We really focused on creating a music bed that felt very much I Prevail and letting Lzzy just shine and do what she does best. I feel we found a very sick way to blend the two identities of our bands into one massive song. I'm really looking forward to this tour and possibly playing this song live together for everyone."





Halestorm have partnered with mental health organization Sound Mind Live to engage fans to pledge support that will provide free-to-the-community mental health programming across the country for fans and the broader community.





Tour dates:


July
11 - Noblesville, IN - Ruoff Music Center
13 - Clarkston, MI - Pine Knob Music Theatre
15 - Gilford, NH - BankNH Pavilion
16 - Boston, MA - Leader Bank Pavilion
18 - Toronto, ON - Budweiser Stage
21 - Tinley Park, IL - Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre
23 - Bridgeport, CT - Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater
24 - Scranton, PA - Pavilion at Montage Mountain
26 - Holmdel, NJ - PNC Bank Arts Center
27 - York, PA - York Fair^
30 - Mansfield, OH - Inkcarceration*
31 - Alpharetta, GA - Ameris Bank Amphitheatre


August
1 - Tampa, FL - MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
3 - Charlotte, NC - PNC Music Pavilion
4 - Franklin, TN - FirstBank Amphitheater
7 - St. Louis, MO - Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
8 - Rogers, AR - Walmart AMP
10 - Woodlands, TX - The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion presented by Huntsman
11 - Irving, TX - The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory
13 - Denver, CO - Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre *^
14 - Albuquerque, NM - Isleta Amphitheater
16 - Phoenix, AZ - Arizona Financial Theater
17 - Las Vegas, NV - Bakkt Theater at Planet Hollywood Casino & Resort


* Festival
^ Non-Live Nation Date


 

New Heaven, Inter Arma’s new album (out now on Relapse Records), is a compelling testament to perseverance, top to bottom. Its thicket of ever-dense layers of doom, death, and black metal occasionally let bits of light slip in, fleeting reminders to keep going amid the tumult. The record marks a sharp turn for Inter Arma, showcasing some of the most extreme and angular songwriting the band has ever laid bare. Known for their cinematic take on sludgy, extremely cavernous and borderline psychedelic Metal, the Richmond band broadens their dynamics by seesawing between piledriving momentum and swirling oblivion. New Heaven crushes and conquers, and illustrates what Inter Arma can truly be.


The band have released a playthrough video for the title track, "New Heaven". Watch below:







Though New Heaven is indeed another triumph for the band, it is not a triumphant album, meant to offer some glib or naïve assurance that everything will be fine.


They call it the 'Inter Arma Curse': for nearly two decades, the band has emerged as one of the most inspired and fearless acts in or around American metal.  They’ve also endured an endless parade of complications, hurdles, and slights: visa problems in Russia, stolen passports in Europe, unexpected member turmoil in their ranks, accidents and near death experiences, and a pervasive paradoxical sense that they have either been too metal or not metal enough. It’s been forever Sisyphean, except that Inter Arma has sporadically crested the hill to make a series of visionary albums.


As New Heaven started to take shape, the curse roared to life. Worldwide pandemic that squashed tours and writing sessions aside, Inter Arma churned through four bassists before finding salvation in Joel Moore, a guitar-and-engineering whiz who had never before played bass in a band.  With the addition of Moore, drummer T.J. Childers admits that New Heaven features some of the kind of music Inter Arma could have never executed. Listen for the uncanny keyboards wedged between Paparo and the band, for the ways Steven Russell and Trey Dalton coil and collide with Moore, for Childers’ way of slipping some Southern soul into what borders on truly brutal prog.  Paparo’s keen and empathetic lyrics explore arduous facets of the human experience, from innocent victims of war, to addiction, and social apathy.  New Heaven is a record about enduring brambles and curses and lasting long enough to make something profound, honest, and even affirming about it all every now and again..


Childers comments, "New Heaven is the culmination of four years worth of adversity ranging from near death experiences, multiple member changes and of course a global pandemic. It marks a new chapter for us musically as we feel we've taken our songwriting to places we've never explored before. We're excited to have come out of the madness relatively unscathed and feel as though we've created something completely unique that will stand apart in the sometimes homogenous extreme music community."  Guitarist Trey Dalton continues, "This record, maybe more than our previous efforts, more fully represents what we're trying to accomplish. It's still very much us - you know, music made by dudes coming from disparate musical backgrounds and perspectives, but with a more collective and defined sense of purpose. Clarity in direction, maybe. Your mileage may vary, but we like it a lot, and we hope you do too."


Order New Heaven at this location, or direct from Relapse Records here.





New Heaven tracklisting:


"New Heaven"
"Violet Seizures"
"Desolation’s Harp"
"Endless Grey"
"Gardens In The Dark"
"The Children The Bombs Overlooked"
"Concrete Cliffs"
"Forest Service Road Blues"


"Desolation's Harp":





"Concrete Cliffs" video:





Catch Inter Arma on tour with Pallbearer and The Keening at the following shows:


July
11 - St. Louis, MI - Off Broadway
13 - Denver, CO - Gothic Theater
15 - Calgary, AB - Dickens
16 - Edmonton, AB - The Starlite Room
18 - Vancouver, WA - Rickshaw
19 - Seattle, WA - Substation
20 - Portland, OR - Star Theater
23 - Sacramento, CA - Harlows
24 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall
26 - Santa Cruz - The Catalyst Atrium
27 - San Diego, CA - Brick By Brick
28 - Los Angeles, CA - Terragram Ballroom
29 - Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom
30 - Albuquerque, NM - Sister Bar


August
1 - Dallas, TX - Trees
2 - Austin, TX - The Parish
3 - Houston, TX - White Oak Music Hall


(Photo - Jonah Livingston)

In a new interview with George Dionne of KNAC.COM, W.A.S.P. frontman Blackie Lawless was asked if he and his bandmates have been working on music for the follow-up to their 2015 album "Golgotha". He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We have been, and last year, we had done quite a bit of work in between the American tour and the European tour, we did a lot of recording, a lot of demoing. And I thought I liked what I was hearing, and then I came back. I had a problem with my back last year when we were in Europe, and, actually, my back got broken while we were over there, so I had to have a couple of surgeries when we got home from the tour. And it gave me a lot of time to sit around, twiddle my thumbs and just listen to stuff. And I listened to the demos that we did, and there is some good moments, but it's not consistent. 'Golgotha' was a very consistent record. I mean, 'Golgotha', I think, is one of the best things I've ever been a part of. And to try to at least do something on that level…"

He continued: "Today, a band like us, it's all about your legacy, because we're not making records anymore to sell records. I mean, those days are gone. But what we do, or what any artist does when they make a new record now, they are competing against their past. So your new album effectively becomes your opening act, and it's an opening act that's going up against songs that the audience has heard and romanced in their heads for decades. That's stiff competition. So when something new comes out, for it to even be remotely considered good, in all honesty, it has to be better than the original stuff, and that's no joke.

"It had been a while since I listened to 'Golgotha', and I listened to it — I don't know — a couple months ago, and it was, like, 'Wow, this is a pretty good record,'" Lawless added. "And it has to be that good to compete with the 'L.O.V.E. Machine's and the 'I Wanna Be Somebody''s of the world. Because, again, people are romancing those songs in their head, and rightfully so.

"Music does a funny thing to our sense of time. It creates memories, the same way smell does and things like that. We remember where we were when we heard a certain song, and those are very powerful memories. And I'm glad we have that, but at the same time, when you're the person that has to create new music, you're constantly going up against that legacy.

"So, again, the new album will always be your opening act, and your opening act has to try harder just to get noticed," Blackie concluded.

W.A.S.P.'s latest release was "ReIdolized (The Soundtrack To The Crimson Idol)", which came out in February 2018. It was a new version of the band's classic 1992 album "The Crimson Idol", which was re-recorded to accompany the movie of the same name to mark the 25th anniversary of the original LP's release. The re-recorded version also features four songs missing from the original album.

Blackie previously spoke about the progress of the songwriting sessions for W.A.S.P.'s new LP in a recent interview with Meltdown of Detroit's WRIF radio station. He said: "We still are [working on it]. What happened was when we came back from the European tour, I had to have surgery and stuff, about a year prior to that, we had been working on a lot of new stuff. And when I came back, I've had a long time to go through those early demos, of what we have been working on. Listening to it with fresh ears, some of it's really good, but there's not enough of it yet where I would be comfortable in saying, 'Okay, this is finished, and let's go with it.' I'd like to go back and visit the drawing board, so to speak, and see what else is there. Because even from a two-year period of when we started working on that before to where we are right now, you're gonna gain so much, you're gonna grow so much."

Blackie continued: "I've learned you don't make records or I don't make records anymore that are spread out over a two- or three-year period, because the guy you are when you first start making it is not the guy you are when you finish making it. Get in, six months top to bottom, get that thing cranked out, because, like I said, if you don't, you end up running the risk of it kind of being a schizophrenic type of record where you've got one type of one thing and then the other half is something else and it has no real cohesiveness."

Asked what kind of stuff inspires him now in 2024, Blackie said: "Well, when we got ready to start this record a couple years ago, my mindset was I wanted to do a heavy, nasty, stinky rock and roll record. And that's where my heart was at. But when I started to write, that's not what was coming out. And so when you first start the process, you think, 'Okay. We'll go along with whatever comes out to begin with, but I wanna try to start steering this ship in a different direction as time goes by.' And that's just not what was happening. It was stuff that was more in-depth. And I thought, we did call 'Golgotha', that's one of those thinking man's records, and I thought, I don't wanna do that this time. I wanna do something that's a little lighter, like I said, a little nastier, stinkier old-time rock and roll, but as hard as I was trying to force it in that direction, that's not what was happening. Now, when we get done with this tour and the European tour next year, then it'll be time to start looking at that again in earnest. So who knows where we'll come out of it again? To give you an honest answer, I'd need a crystal ball right now to tell you that, 'cause I don't know."

Last November, Blackie addressed the high musical standard of W.A.S.P. most recent albums, telling Canada's The Metal Voice: "Nobody makes money making records anymore. So if you're going to make records now, you're doing it because of your legacy. And if you're going to do that, then you really have to make sure that it's as strong as it can be, because it's always gonna be measured against what you did to begin with."

He continued: "All bands, they make their bones the first five years they're together, the first five or six records they make; their whole legacy is cemented there. It doesn't mean you can't make good records later on down the line, but everything is gonna be constantly compared to that… In other words, think of whatever new record you do now as your opening act. It's always gonna be compared to that early stuff. And so for it to get an honest review or a fair shake, so to speak, that new record has to maybe be even better than the original stuff was, because people have had so many years to romance those older songs in their heads. And when you go up against people that have been doing that for a long time, it's hard to erase those memories, and you don't wanna do that anyway. But you just want the new stuff to have a chance to compete. And the only way that new stuff can do that is they have to be solid records."

2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of W.A.S.P.'s first album. To celebrate this classic metal album, W.A.S.P. will, for the first time in 40 years, play the entire album from top to bottom, start to finish, on a fall 2024 North American tour, dubbed "Album ONE Alive", this fall. Support on the trek will come from DEATH ANGEL and UNTO OTHERS.

Along with bassist Mike Duda and lead guitarist Doug Blair, whose tenures in the band are 29 and 26 years respectively, W.A.S.P. is joined by longtime drummer extraordinaire Aquiles Priester.

The 39-city run kicks off on Saturday, October 26 in San Luis Obispo, California, making stops across North America in Vancouver, British Columbia; Toronto, Ontario; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Dallas, Texas; New York City; Orlando, Florida; and more before wrapping up on Saturday, December 14 at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, California.

W.A.S.P. will again offer fans VIP tickets that give fans a chance to meet Blackie Lawless, get a personal photo with Blackie, autographs and take part in a very personal question-and-answer session with Blackie. VIP tickets can be purchased at waspnation.myshopify.com.

Because of the extensive back injuries Lawless suffered during the European leg of W.A.S.P.'s 40th-anniversary tour, the band's previously announced 2023 U.S. tour was canceled.

W.A.S.P.'s massive European leg of the 40th-anniversary world tour wrapped on May 18, 2023 in Sofia, Bulgaria at Universidada Sports Hall.

W.A.S.P. wrapped up its first U.S. tour in 10 years with a sold-out show on December 11, 2022 at The Wiltern in Los Angeles. This marked the 18th sold-out shows for the U.S. tour, which kicked off in late October 2022. W.A.S.P.'s performances included the return of the band's classic song "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)", which hadn't been played live in over 15 years.

What happens when rock, metal, hip hop, gaming, video and tech get together? Something "terRIFFic"!


DMC from Run DMC, Dan Lorenzo from Patriarchs In Black, Jon "JROD" Cioricari got together on a song produced by JROD and rapper/producer Bumpy Knuckles to create a terRIFFic song. The collaboration came together so powerfully something like this needed a unique way to share it with the world.


After brainstorming unsuccessfully for two weeks, the idea for the video came to Cioricari who walked in on his children watching other kids play video games on YouTube.  Cioricari thought, "Why not put music to this if kids are already watching?". Searching YouTube, he found it hadn't been done before. Cioricari brought his vision to Malik at Good Game Lounge in West Nyack, NY and the end result is...."teRIFFic".




"Bump, Dan and JROD created a track that is like an adventure. It's an experience of Rock Riffs and Rhymes" DMC said. He continued. "I wanted to make a statement that rock isn’t dead… people that don’t know a damn thing about rock are the ones who are dead! Fun, good music is alive! I work with some of the best musicians and artists in rock and metal, so it’s my responsibility as The King Of Rock to speak up and do cool musical and artistic things."


The single is out on all digital platforms.





Patriarchs In Black's third album Visioning, will be out July 19th on MetalVille Records. The project utilizes Kelly and Lorenzo on bass and guitar, and then numerous singers and bassists including Karl Agell (COC Blind), Kyle Thomas (Exhorder), John "JD" DeServio (Black Label Society) among others. 


Darryl "DMC" McDaniels (RUN/DMC) has joined former Type O Negative drummer Johnny Kelly and Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Non-Fiction) on the new Patriarchs In Black single, "Welcome To Hell Again".


The song "Welcome To Hell Again" also features Kelly Abe who was on the TV show, Search For The Next Ozzfest Opener. 


Regarding the lyrics DMC said, "I'm basically saying it’s a choice to live in hell! We sometimes create our own hell. Regardless of what’s going on, we can speak life or death and positivity or negativity. The spirit I spit is how I live my life. How I can carry myself. I’m basically telling the devil and evil to bring their best! I can handle whatever they bring at me! I love working with Patriarchs In Black because they’re great musicians and I love the content of their songs. A lot of emotional stuff I can relate to."


Lorenzo returned the favor by co-writing DMC's next solo single and video out soon, "teRIFFic". "It's amazing to me that not only am I writing with DMC, I actually get a shout out in the first verse of his next single. Mind blowing!" said Lorenzo.





Visioning artwork and tracklisting:





"Entry"
"What Do They Know? (For The Champions)"
"Before I Go"
"Heart Of Spite"
"Low Price"
"Welcome To Hell Again"
"Whiskey On My Mind"
"Empty Cup"
"Curse My Name"
"A Few Good Men"
"Birth"


"Visioning""What Do They Know? (For The Champions)":





 

Norwegian/American hard rockers TNT have canceled three previously announced shows for August in order to allow singer Tony Harnell to "undergo a time-sensitive medical procedure for which the minimum recovery time is six weeks."

Tony says in a statement: "Hello dear friends and TNT fans, just want to let you all know that I have to undergo a time-sensitive medical procedure next week that requires a six-week recovery period. Don't worry! My voice is totally fine and I will also be fine! I'd rather not get into details at this time, but rest assured I'll be back onstage soon! Just a little bump in the rock n roll road! Much love, Tony".

Affected TNT shows:

Aug. 02 - Notodden Blues Festival (NBF) – Notodden, Norway
Aug. 03 - Bergenhus Festning – Bergen, Norway
Aug. 10 - Havnafestivalen - Sandnessjøen, Norway

TNT deeply regrets this unfortunate circumstance and will return to the stage next year.

Harnell beat thyroid cancer in 2009 and later appeared in advertisements for the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists in order to share his story and help educate others about the warning signs of thyroid cancer.

TNT played its first concert with returning singer Harnell on June 2, 2023 at Jærnåttå in Bryne, Norway.

The 61-year-old Harnell, who was born in San Diego, grew up in California and moved to New York when he was 16, announced his return to TNT in November 2022, saying that he would reteam with guitarist Ronni LeTekrø and drummer Morten "Diesel" Dahl on stage in 2023 and beyond for select live appearances. The trio is joined in the current TNT lineup by returning bassist Sid Ringsby, who played with TNT for the first time on the "All The Way To The Sun" album in 2005 and has appeared with TNT at various concerts over the years.

In April 2021, Harnell, who has been in and out of TNT several times throughout its four-decade existence, told "The Chuck Shute Podcast" that he didn't rule out returning to the band. "Ronni and I, contrary to popular belief, we talk often," he said. "Most of the things that pushed us apart — again, contrary to popular belief — are business related. I'll just leave it at that. 'Never say never' is a good way to put it [regarding a possible new TNT album]. And there might be a time and a place."

Harnell's most recent split with TNT took place in October 2017, less than a year and a half after he rejoined the group. He later described his relationship with TNT in an "Unphiltered" interview as "a very long marriage. I'm here [in New York], they're there [in Norway] — they're across the pond really far away. It's a very difficult situation to be in without having a very unified business organization, and no matter what I did, I could not get the thing unified. We were just on two totally separate not only continents physically, but mentally, psychologically, we were on two different continents as well."

Harnell said that he "really, really wanted" his last collaboration with TNT to work out. "In my opinion, this was gonna be it — we were gonna stay together until I didn't feel like singing anymore," he said. 'I was gonna do other things and do other projects and so forth, but my goal was that TNT would be my band for at least another five years, maybe 10 years or whatever, until it ran its course. So this was kind of an unexpected thing."

TNT's latest studio album, "XIII", came out in June 2018 via Frontiers Music Srl. The band's thirteenth LP was TNT's first to feature vocalist Baol Bardot Bulsara, who replaced Harnell. Baol is a Spanish singer whose debut with TNT happened in front of 8,000 fans in November 2017 when the band opened for German hard rock legends the SCORPIONS in Oslo, Norway.

We regret to inform you that the upcoming TNT performances in August are canceled. In mid July Tony Harnell will undergo...

Posted by TNT on Thursday, July 11, 2024

In a new interview with Portugal's Underground's Voice, MEGADETH drummer Dirk Verbeuren was asked how he has dealt with some of the recent lineup changes in the band, specifically with the departure of guitarist Kiko Loureiro and addition of Teemu Mäntysaari, as well as the return of bassist James LoMenzo following the dismissal of David Ellefson. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It's life. Things happen. It's difficult being in a band, especially for an amount of time. And it's like any job. Oftentimes they say, [being] in a band, it's kind of like a marriage. And sometimes it doesn't work out. People have things happen in their life. Like in Kiko's case, for example, he had family things happening that demanded that he should be there for his family. And we tour a lot, and it just became very difficult for him to really enjoy and be present on tour, because of the stuff that was happening back at home. So I think we all believe that he made the right decision, because family comes first, of course; his children come first. But that's how it is. And luckily, we found Teemu, who's an incredible guitar player. Kiko recommended him, and Teemu came towards the end of Kiko's time in the band. Teemu came and joined along and watched the show and went over all the details and stuff. And so when we finally started playing with him, he was already very familiar with how we operate. And he's been amazing. He's an amazing guitar player, he's a great person to be around. So it's been really nice. And the same with James. James, of course, he has been in MEGADETH for many years before, between 2006 and 2010, so when James came back, it was very natural as well. And he's an expert — he's been doing this for many years playing with a lot of different people. And [he's] a great person as well. I love James a lot."

MEGADETH's latest album, "The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead!", sold 48,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart. It marked MEGADETH's eighth top 10-charting album. Of "The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead!"'s 48,000 units earned for the week, album sales comprised 45,000, SEA units comprised 3,000 and TEA units comprised a negligible sum.

MEGADETH's previous top 10 entries on the Billboard 200 were "Countdown to Extinction" (No. 2, 1992),"Youthanasia" (No. 4, 1994),"Cryptic Writings" (No. 10, 1997),"United Abominations" (No. 8, 2007),"Endgame" (No. 9, 2009),"Super Collider" (No. 6, 2013) and "Dystopia" (No. 3, 2016).

MEGADETH recently announced a North American tour "Destroy All Enemies", produced by Live Nation. Support on the 33-city trek, which includes stops in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Boston and St. Louis, will come from MUDVAYNE and ALL THAT REMAINS. The tour begins in Rogers, Arkansas on August 2 and runs throughout the month before wrapping in Nashville, Tennessee on September 28.

Mäntysaari joined MEGADETH last September after Loureiro, announced earlier that month that he would sit out the next leg of MEGADETH's "Crush The World" tour in order to stay home with his children back in Finland. It was later revealed that Mäntysaari would continue to play guitar for MEGADETH for the foreseeable future, with Loureiro seemingly having no plans to return.

The 37-year-old Mäntysaari was born in Tampere, Finland and began playing guitar at the age of 12. In 2004, he joined the band WINTERSUN. He has also been a member of SMACKBOUND since 2015.

MEGADETH played its first concert with Mäntysaari on September 6, 2023 at Revel in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Loureiro officially joined MEGADETH in April 2015, about five months after Chris Broderick's exit from the group.

Photo credit: Gornoss (courtesy of Season Of Mist)

Swedish hardcore punk icons and recent Metal Blade signees, Wolfbrigade, will release their eleventh full-length studio offering, Life Knife Death, on September 13 via Metal Blade Records.


Formed in 1995 in the small Swedish city of Mariestad by key players from Sweden's legendary hardcore scene, Wolfbrigade - previously known as Wolfpack until 1999 - stands among Scandinavia's most respected, influential, and reliable purveyors of real-world brute-force tumult.


On their crushing Life Knife Death, thirty years of skill are honed to a fine edge and dispatched with greater style and intensity than ever before. Most immediately, there's the sheer velocity and barely controlled rage pumping through dynamic d-beaten blood-shakers like "Ways To Die" and "Your God Is A Corpse," the furious attack assisted to heart-fluttering greatness by a newly loosened sense of raucous spontaneity. "We didn't really rehearse any of the songs on this album," the band reveals. "We tend to overwork and overanalyze everything that we do, and sometimes we get lost in that process. This time we wanted to go rough, to capture the raw essence of the song when it's just out of the womb. All the blood and gore."




Wolfbrigade's penchant for focused self-reflection aided them most satisfyingly in the arrangement and sequencing of these twelve killer tunes. The subtle shades of melody and versatility throughout Life Knife Death represents another of Wolfbrigade's strongest suits, the songs progressing with an organic, complementary flow, from the epic guitar heroics opening "Unruled And Unnamed" to the spooky churning outro "The Age Of Skull Fuckery."


The band's disparate influences are drawn together with unifying solidity - the remorseless rhythms of Discharge, the blue-collar rock 'n' roll of Motörhead, the heads-down bludgeon of classic Entombed - even the Beatles get a look in, albeit in subverted form, with the splendid title "A Day In The Life Of An Arse." "I just thought of that song title, which is genius on its own, and 'Of An Arse' just popped into my head. Beatles churned through the Wolfbrigade mill, the horror of waking up to another day, playing your part in the never ending shitscene of mankind."


In a 2019 Bandcamp interview to promote Wolfbrigade's last LP, The Enemy: Reality, bassist Johan Erkenvåg observed that, "the political climate in the world these past few years has been the worst that we've ever experienced in our lifetimes." After half a decade of war, pestilence, catastrophe, and terror, it's as if the world heard Erkenvåg's assertion and said, "hold my beer." Mounting global chaos may have us all darkly fearing the end times, but it has also seemingly created the ideal circumstances for a hardcore punk LP as coruscatingly brutal as Wolfbrigade's Life Knife Death.


"Well yeah, who could've known! The five years that have passed since our last album have served as a pretty good backdrop for a new punk record or misanthropy in general," affirms the band, adding a wry reference for the Bill Hicks fans, "Mankind - a virus with shoes. As always, our lyrics are fueled by the ever-growing disgust we feel about humanity. The everyday realization that we are a part of this fear-animalistic stupidity that drives the world further into oblivion. The inspiration just keeps raining down from the sky, killing the masses. Waking up to this every day makes us want to scream in horror."


In advance of the release of Life Knife Death, today the band unleashes first single, "Disarm Or Be Destroyed" noting of the track, "This is a song about the ugliness of desire and the beauty of destruction. The urge to burn and destroy is also an urge to create and evolve. Right or wrong, there's pleasure in smashing some things into pieces." Listen to the track below.





Life Knife Death will be released on CD and digital formats as well as vinyl in the following formats:


- White (US)
- 180g Black (EU)
- Orange Marbled (EU - Ltd. 1000)
- 180g Black (EU - Ltd. 500)
- Dark Grey Marbled (EU - Ltd. 500)
- Clear w/ Red/White splatter (EU - Sound Pollution Exclusive Ltd. 200)
- Orange w/ Red Splatter (EU - Evil Greed Exclusive Ltd. 300)
- Orange/Black Dust Splatter (EU - 200)
- Orange/Black Split (EU - TNOR Exclusive - 200)


Find pre-orders here.





Life Knife Death tracklisting:


"Ways to Die"
"Disarm or Be Destroyed"
"Life Knife Death"
"A Day in the Life of an Arse"
"Unruled and Unnamed"
"Skinchanger"
"Your God Is a Corpse"
"Nail Bomb"
"Cyanide Messiah"
"Mayhem Mongrel"
"Sea of Rust"
"Age of Skull Fuckery"


"Disarm Or Be Destroyed":





Wolfbrigade is:


Micke Dahl - vocals
Erik Norberg - guitar
Jocke Rydbjer - guitar
Johan Erkenvåg - bass
Tommy Storback - drums


(Photo - Therese Öhrvall)

In a new interview with The Classic Rock Podcast, former MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson was asked if he envisions a time where he and the Dave Mustaine can get back together and work on MEGADETH again. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, I suggested that in 2004, when he was coming back from his hand injury, talking about putting it back together again. I said, 'Why don't we do…?' 'Cause ASIA and YES had just done it. I thought it was so cool. They brought everybody back — Steve HoweandTrevor Rabin. And I'm a Trevor Rabin fan. I'm kind of more of a fan of that era. But there's some that are the fan of the other guy. So, I thought, 'What a cool thing [it would be] to bring [former MEGADETH guitarist] Marty [Friedman] and [former MEGADETH drummer] Nick [Menza].' Nick was still with us. At that point, Gar [Samuelson, former MEGADETH drummer] was the only deceased member the legacy. And I just thought, 'Man, how cool would it be to bring everybody back?' Even if it was a tour, to just do something like that, because as the years go on, it's harder and harder to do that. I guess now they save that shit for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction. Then they get everybody there."

Ellefson continued: "Look, the truth of it is we've all had a great journey. We've had our own personal journeys, our journeys together. Look, Dave's doing his thing. He seems happy where he's at doing that. Jeff [Young, former MEGADETH guitarist] and I are happy over here doing our thing [with KINGS OF THRASH and other projects]. And when you spend some years and some miles together in the yellow submarine, the tin can of a tour bus and hotels and planes, look, it's easy to get on each other's nerves. You just need some space. And especially, I think, as we get older and we've done it a lot more. As I told the guys [in KINGS OF THRASH] last week — we were on the bus — I was, like, 'Guys, I've been bouncing around in these tin cans for 40-plus years.' And it's fun… But for people that haven't done it as much, it's thrilling. And it's still fun for me, man. Get on a bus, lay in your bunk, lay in your coffin and go, 'All right. I guess if I die here, I'm just driving 70 miles an hour down the road tonight.' That's the journey. That's where the journey ends. That's the life of a troubadour, the life of a musician. So, I think for us to just be out doing what we love to do, and the fact that people still actually wanna pay us to do it, and still ask us to go to the stage, I mean, that is a real gift. It's a real treat that they still wanna hear that from us. So we're lucky that we all got to be in one of the cool bands, that people still wanna see and hear us do this."

A little over a year ago, Ellefson was asked by Loaded Radio podcast if he would consider returning to MEGADETH if he was ever asked again. He responded: "Well, look, I'm not the one who closed the door. [Laughs] You know what I mean.

"Dave's always gonna be my brother, man. And it's funny, when I think about Dave — I'm just walking around the house, I'm thinking about some moment in our friendship and our history together — they're usually fond memories. And look, brothers fight, brothers hug and make up, and that's the journey. As a musical gig, it's, like, oh, well, set that off. That's off the palette now. Clearly I've moved on with other things that you can see I really enjoy. So… whatever.

"I've talked to other friends of mine about this who have had bands, and they're in other bands where members have come and gone and whatever, and especially when you're a principal, key member and a founding member and all these different things, you have a deferent kinship to your fans.

"I always say this: when you make a record, you're making it for you. But when you put that record out, that record is for your audience," he explained. "And at that point, it now becomes bigger than you; it becomes bigger than the four or five or three of you, whatever are in the band — it's bigger than you now. And those songs are gonna outlive us. And everything about that legacy and the stories we just talked about here are now in infamy; they're gonna last forever.

"So, for me, you're part of a family. And look, should there ever be a family reunion? Hey, of course, I'll always take the call," Ellefson added. "But with that said, I'm not sitting around waiting for a MEGADETH reunion. Let's just put it that way. I'm very forward focused right now and I'm very laser focused on what's ahead."

In a May 2023 interview with Brazil's Heavy Talk, Ellefson was asked if he spoke to Mustaine "about a solution" before he was fired from the group in May 2021, just days after sexually tinged messages and explicit video footage involving the bassist were posted on Twitter. He responded: "I got one call: 'You're fired.' [Laughs] And I said, 'What the fuck, man?' I said, 'Some shitty fucking people just dropped a bomb on my house. And that's it? It's not even true. It's fucking bullshit. And this is how you treat me?' It was non-negotiable. I mean, I asked. I said, 'I'm gonna take care of it. Let me just deal with it. And it will fucking be done. We'll be ready to go on the road in two months, and everything will be fine.' And it was. Because it was just false allegations and bullshit. But [Dave] didn't wanna know about it. I think he was getting pressure from some other people around him. And it's too bad it went that way. Because it was really nothing. I took care of it. And then once the word came out that I was fired, then it turned into this big fucking thing, which, quite honestly, was very damaging and very hurtful and not fair. I'm glad I don't have that fucking amends on my shoulder, because that was fucked up.

"Look, I have no choice but to have to forgive it so I can move on. I really don't," he continued. "So I don't know what more to say about it other than that. Look, at some point… The damage was done. So you move on. We're all human, and it is what it is. You can't lament it. I've watched how he's treated his dismissal from METALLICA, still bitching about it 40 years later, and I think it looks fucking pathetic. And it's, like, 'You know what? Fix you shit and move on.' And that's how I've chosen to deal with it: fix your shit and move on. And that's why I put out four records in the time the last fucking MEGADETH record came out, and I think every one of 'em are as good or better than the latest MEGADETH record. I think the quality… And part of it is I'm working with great people. Whether they're famous or not doesn't matter. I'm working with good people. They're safe, they're reliable, they're truly men of integrity, and I think that really makes a big difference. I feel safe around them. And the creative process is fun. It's not restrictive. It's unlimited. And so this creative explosion has happened. And again, listen, I'm not trying to be in 85 bands — believe me, I'm not. But it's interesting that there was this sort of post-MEGADETH season here where all these records came out. And rather than try to limit them and restrict them, I'm, like, 'Fuck it. Put 'em out. Let's go.' In a lot of ways, it's turned out okay. It's been fine. And I'm okay. People ask, and I'm, like, 'I'm okay.' It was kind of a weird ending."

Ellefson added: "I mean, look, I knew three things when I met Dave: one, our band was gonna be successful; two, it was gonna be a lot of work; and three, one day this is gonna end really badly. I just could tell. [Laughs] Even at 18 years old, a kid from the farm, naïve as I was, I went, 'Yeah, all three of those things.' And I was right: check, check, check. I certainly didn't see it ending like that. And part of me, I always kind of go, 'Is it really the end of the story?' I mean, look at how it ended in 2002. In 2004 and [200]5, we were in litigation over business matters and stuff, and I ended up going back to the band. So I'd rather not disrespect it and be pissed about it. These are things that you work out privately, not publicly. And the press liked to have a field day with it because it was good clickbait there for a season. But the truth of it is Dave and I aren't talking about it anymore, and that's why I'm not talking about it anymore. At some point, you move on. You let the music do the talking now."

Shortly before Ellefson was fired from MEGADETH, he released a statement on Instagram denying all social media chatter that he "groomed" an underage fan. He also filed a report with the police department in Scottsdale, Arizona alleging unlawful distribution of sexually explicit images of him by unknown offenders.

Mustaine — who formed MEGADETH with Ellefson in 1983 — released a statement on May 24, 2021 announcing the bassist's departure from the band. In the statement, Dave said: "We do not take this decision lightly. While we do not know every detail of what occurred, with an already strained relationship, what has already been revealed now is enough to make working together impossible moving forward."

In 2004, Ellefson filed an $18.5-million lawsuit against Mustaine, alleging the frontman shortchanged him on profits and backed out of a deal to turn Megadeth Inc. over to him when the band broke up in 2002. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed and Ellefson rejoined MEGADETH in 2010.