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21 фев 2025
DISTURBED Launches New Era With 'I Will Not Break' Single
 DISTURBED has shared a new single "I Will Not Break", the band's first release on its own label, Mother Culture Records.
Marking DISTURBED's first new music since its acclaimed 2022 album "Divisive", "I Will Not Break" is "a necessary song, about becoming stronger than the forces that constantly try to tear you down," according to the band.
"I Will Not Break" includes the stirring lyrics "I've had enough of feeling terrified, now I'm deciding that I won't be hiding from anyone," which encourages listeners to push back in the face of adversity.
"I Will Not Break" was helmed by producer Drew Fulk, also known as WZRD BLD (MOTIONLESS IN WHITE, LIL PEEP, HIGHLY SUSPECT),who previously worked with DISTURBED on 2022's "Divisive" album.
Back in February 2023, DISTURBED guitarist Dan Donegan talked to Terrie Carr of the Morristown, New Jersey radio station 105.5 WDHA about DISTURBED's decision to work with Fulk on its eighth studio album, "Divisive", which came out in November 2022. He said: "It's always challenging because… The early part of our career, we worked with Johnny K, who did the first three albums with us. He's a hometown friend, out of Chicago. I knew him growing up, being a local guy, doing the demos for bands locally. And then we kind of self-produced throughout the years. Then we went to Kevin Churko in Las Vegas, who's done FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH [and] IN THIS MOMENT — a lot of great bands — out of Vegas. So, at this point, we just felt like we needed new life, we needed another person in there. So to let somebody in from the outside, to kind of become that fifth member of the band, is always challenging. I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to our music, and to let somebody in and to try to allow them to have an opinion and trust them and respect what they do and bring to the table… I think we've opened up a lot more over the years. The older we get, we've kind of opened up to say, 'Hey, we can trust this person to throw ideas at us. It's gonna challenge us and push us too.'"
The guitarist continued: "It's a bit of a learning curve in the beginning. And I kind of was seeking out producers, trying to think who was catching my attention currently. And I thought Drew was kind of a younger guy in his 30s. I liked what he was doing [with] WAGE WAR and then MOTIONLESS IN WHITE, and he did a couple of one-off songs with PAPA ROACH and POP EVIL and stuff like that. So I really liked what he was doing with those bands, what he brought to the table with the production of them. And I thought that this could be a really good marriage between him and DISTURBED.
"We wanted to get back to some of the core elements of what DISTURBED is — those signature elements of… that animalistic side to David's vocals," Donegan explained. "Even though he's still very melodic, bringing out that animalistic side to him, bringing the heavy riffs with the syncopation in the rhythm section and then with the modern-day production. And we thought Drew would be a good marriage and a good addition to this band. And it was. I flew out to California to meet with him — it was just me and him — just to hang out, not even work together. I just wanted to see if we just vibed as people. And we just hit it off right away. I picked him as the producer. I told the [other] guys [in the band] my opinion: 'I think that Drew is the guy that we should at least enter the studio with and see how it goes.' And it was just a short period of time of being in the studio once we started the writing process that we felt his opinions, his contribution was something that we were gonna benefit from. And it just became a great friendship and working relationship with him. It was amazing. I've never had a better experience in the studio than being with Drew. Him and I had a great chemistry, and it really got the ball rolling for us to kind of create those ideas to give David a bed of music that was gonna inspire him melodically and lyrically."
"Divisive" was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee.
According to Billboard, "Divisive" sold 26,000 equivalent album units in its first week of release, with 22,000 units via album sales.
On the all-format Billboard 200 chart, "Divisive" debuted at No. 13.
DISTURBED has had five No. 1s on the all-genre chart, beginning with "Believe" in 2002.
Dan's divorce inspired the "Divisive" song "Don't Tell Me", which was a duet with HEART's Ann Wilson. In two decades, it broke ground as the first-ever guest collaboration on a DISTURBED record.
DISTURBED's 34-date "The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour" will kick off in Nampa, Idaho on February 25, 2025. Produced by Live Nation, the tour celebrates 25 years of DISTURBED's seminal debut album which launched the band into public consciousness and is one of the most important and influential heavy metal albums of all time. Each night will feature two sets of music, opening with DISTURBED playing the five times platinum "The Sickness" in full, followed by a full set of greatest hits. The first half of the tour will feature support from special guests THREE DAYS GRACE, featuring the return of original singer Adam Gontier, and opener SEVENDUST, and the second half will feature special guests DAUGHTRY with opener NOTHING MORE.
Since "The Sickness" was released in 2000, the album was certified five times platinum by the RIAA, spent a total of 106 weeks on the US Billboard 200 chart, and Revolver named it one of "Top 25 Debut Hard Rock Albums." Billboard said of the title track upon release: "'Down With The Sickness' is, of course, the quintessential DISTURBED song, harnessing all the band's seethe and its now-famous tribal beat and guitar chug into three and a half minutes of alt-metal mayhem. It's menacing, it's rhythmic, it's rebellious."
DISTURBED recently announced the 25th-anniversary edition release of "The Sickness". To commemorate the anniversary, the band will reissue the five-times-platinum-certified LP on March 7, exactly 25 years to the date of their original release, in editions including:
* A limited edition 1-LP (silver vinyl) and 3-CD box set. It includes the original album, B-sides, unreleased demos, and an unreleased 14-track concert from The Palladium in Los Angeles from April 2001 as well as songs recorded at Chicago's Metro in March 2000 and the London Astoria in February 2001. The box includes a poster, cloth patch, backstage pass, and a set of guitar picks. It also includes a book featuring rare photos and memorabilia, and an extensive essay with new interviews with the members of DISTURBED, and producer Johnny K. An exclusive lithograph signed by the band is included with the limited-edition D2C format.
* A 2-CD deluxe edition that includes the original album, plus a disc of B-sides, unreleased demos, and rarities. The booklet features an essay with new interviews with the members of DISTURBED and producer Johnny K.
* Vinyl editions, including variants in limited edition green vinyl, limited edition orange vinyl (Germany/Central Europe exclusive),and limited edition milky clear vinyl (Spotify Fans First).
* Digitally, which includes all 40 tracks included in the limited-edition box set.
"The Sickness" 25th-anniversary edition is available to pre-order on all formats. The deluxe box set will be available via the band's web site and digitally on March 7, and via all retailers in North American on March 21.
DISTURBED has become one of the most celebrated and commercially successful metal acts of all time. To date, DISTURBED has seen record-breaking success with sales of over 17 million units and 14 billion streams. It all began with "The Sickness", which includes their songs "Down With The Sickness" (recently certified eight times platinum),"Stupify" (two times platinum),"Voices" (gold),and "The Game" (gold). The album peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard 200 chart and spent a total of 106 weeks on the chart. To date, "The Sickness" has been streamed 2.5 billion times worldwide. It was included as No. 24 on Loudwire's "Top 25 Debut Hard Rock Albums" list, one of Metal Hammer's "20 Best Albums Of 2000," and was highlighted in Revolver magazine's "20 Essential Nu Metal Albums" list. Billboard said of the title track upon release: "'Down With The Sickness' is, of course, the quintessential DISTURBED song, harnessing all the band's seethe and its now-famous tribal beat and guitar chug into three and a half minutes of alt-metal mayhem. It's menacing, it's rhythmic, it's rebellious."
Emerging out of Chicago at the turn of the century with an insidious, infectious, and inimitable vision without comparison, DISTURBED have quietly dominated hard rock on their own terms. They make the kind of music that pushes you to hold on tighter, fight harder, and persevere forever. It's why they've claimed a place at the forefront of 21st century rock with record-breaking success, sales of over 17 million-plus units, nearly eight billion streams, and sold out shows around the globe. The band have six RIAA album certifications, and singles from all eight albums have reached the top ten of the Mainstream Rock chart.
The two-time Grammy Award-nominated quartet have notched five consecutive No. 1 debuts on the Billboard Top 200 for "Believe", "Ten Thousand Fists", "Indestructible" and "Asylum", occupying rarified air alongside METALLICA — the only other hard rock group to accomplish this feat. Since their influential five-times-platinum debut "The Sickness" in 2000, they have built a bulletproof catalog highlighted by a procession of smashes, including the platinum "Stupify", "Inside The Fire" and "Land Of Confusion", two-times-platinum "Stricken", six-times-platinum "Down With The Sickness" and seven-times-platinum "The Sound Of Silence" to name a few. The latter notably received a Grammy Award nomination in the category of "Best Rock Performance" as the band earned "Best Rock Artist" at the 2017 iHeartRadioMusic Awards. Still, DISTURBED never stop, and their most recent 2022 album "Divisive" featured their 17th No. 1 at Rock Radio "Hey You", "Unstoppable" and more.
Photo credit: Travis Shinn
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21 фев 2025
BLACK LABEL SOCIETY Releases New Single 'Lord Humungus'
 BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, the powerhouse hard rock band led by the legendary Zakk Wylde, has release a new single, "Lord Humungus". This track is a sonic sledgehammer brimming with pounding rhythms, blistering guitar riffs, and anthemic energy, and is out now across all major digital streaming platforms.
Get ready for pure, unfiltered hilarity with the debut of the music video for "Lord Humungus" — a spectacle wrapped in layers of jaw-dropping imagery directed by Justin H. Reich. Brutal. Hilarious. Downright Berzerker quality ferocity. This is BLACK LABEL SOCIETY like you've never seen them before.
Fans can stream and download "Lord Humungus" on all major platforms and watch the official music video on BLACK LABEL SOCIETY's YouTube channel below.
Last September, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY released another new single titled "The Gallows" via MNRK Heavy (formerly eOne Music).
In a September 2024 interview with Lipps Service With Scott Lipps, Zakk spoke about the progress of the songwriting and recording sessions for BLACK LABEL SOCIETY's next album. BLACK LABEL SOCIETY's twelfth studio LP will be the follow-up to "Doom Crew Inc.", which came out in November 2021 via MNRK Heavy.
"We've been recording a batch of stuff while we're home," Zakk, who has also been touring with PANTERA and ZAKK SABBATH, said. "I mean, obviously it's gonna be a lot of — we're gonna be doing a PANTERA celebration [tour] throughout 2025, and then there's going to be ZAKK SABBATH shows peppered in there as well. So I'd imagine somewhere — I don't know — maybe late 2025, [early] '26 or whatever, putting out another BLACK LABEL album. But I mean, all it does to me, it just gives you more time to just keep writing and listening to stuff and going back and going, 'No, you know what? Let me put more orange on that as opposed to red,' where you can actually sit back and look at it and everything like that. 'Cause usually, most of the time when I do the records, I'll go in, whether it was 'Stillborn', 'Suicide Messiah', anything like that, with nothing. I think if you ask any musician, they'll tell you, when you're in a recording studio, it's just a breeding ground for inspiration. Because everything sounds good... Whether you're sitting with an acoustic guitar, or you're sitting behind a piano, or you got the big distorted guitars going, the drums sound like cannons. So everything just sounds amazing. And it just is very inspiring."
In April 2024, Wylde confirmed to Scott Davidson of Chicago's Rebel Radio 92.5 FM that he and his BLACK LABEL SOCIETY bandmates were working on the group's next album.
In a separate chat with Metal Mayhem ROC, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY drummer Jeff Fabb stated about the band's next album: "I don't know exactly when it's gonna be released, but I heard some time in the new year. So I would assume that we're gonna tour it. So we're working on it right now. Actually. I'm about to go to [Zakk's] house in the next few days and finish up a few more songs that he wrote. And then, yeah, that's pretty much it."
BLACK LABEL SOCIETY headlined Zakk's inaugural music festival, Berzerkus, on September 14, 2024 at Poconos Park in Bushkill, Pennsylvania. Berzerkus was co-headlined by outlaw country music's Cody Jinks.
Four years ago, Wylde told the Morristown, New Jersey radio station 105.5 WDHA about the BLACK LABEL SOCIETY songwriting process: "The way it always goes, it's always the music first and then a melody. And then I've gotta find out something I wanna sing about. So then I'll write the lyrics. That's usually always the way it goes. And then, when it's all done, then the solos go on it. The painting's all done, and the solo is the frame that goes on the thing. So you can sit back and look at the whole thing. That's the way we pretty much always do it… I would just have a cup of coffee and just start writing riffs. You always get inspired by — for me, it's always Mount Riffmore, which is CREAM, MOUNTAIN, [LED] ZEPPELIN, [BLACK] SABBATH, DEEP PURPLE… If you're not getting inspired by the riffs those guys have created, it's just like… So I'll just go fishing and just start writing till you get to something you like."
Wylde formed BLACK LABEL SOCIETY in 1998 and has kept the band busy in between touring and recording with Ozzy Osbourne, whose backing group he first joined more than three and a half decades ago.
BLACK LABEL SOCIETY's "Order Of The Black" (2010) and "Catacombs Of The Black Vatican" (2014) both broke into the top five on the hard rock album charts.
Since first joining Ozzy, Zakk has played on all of the BLACK SABBATH singer's solo albums except for 2020's "Ordinary Man", including such classic efforts as "No More Tears" (1991),"Ozzmosis" (1995) and "Black Rain" (2007).
BLACK LABEL SOCIETY is:
Zakk Wylde - vocals, guitar, piano
John "JD" DeServio - bass
Jeff Fabb - drums
Dario Lorina - guitar
Photo credit: Justin H. Reich
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21 фев 2025
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21 фев 2025
ADRIAN SMITH + RICHIE KOTZEN Release Music Video For 'Black Light' From Upcoming 'Black Light / White Noise' Album
 BMG will release the second album by IRON MAIDEN guitarist Adrian Smith and THE WINERY DOGS frontman and acclaimed solo artist Richie Kotzen, "Black Light / White Noise", on April 4, 2025.
Recorded at The House, Los Angeles, California, produced by Richie and Adrian and mixed by Jay Ruston, the ten-track album is a masterclass in modern rock, with Adrian and Richie's prodigious talents as songwriters, musicians and vocalists on full display.
The official music video for the LP's second single, "Black Light", can be seen below. The dynamic, multi-layered clip, again produced and directed by Kevin and Richard Ragsdale a.k.a. The Ragsdale Brothers (DAUGHTRY, Dorothy feat. Slash, THEORY OF A DEADMAN),features the duo performing with bassist Julia Lage and drummer Bruno Valverde, alongside acclaimed Russian acrobat, contortionist and former Cirque Du Soleil performer Gyulnara Karaeva.
"Black Light" was a song that very nearly didn't make it on to the album until a late-night session saw them strike studio gold. And it's lucky they did as not only is it a song about deceit and deception, where the black light is a metaphor that reveals the truth about a person lurking under the surface, but it's become a true album highlight, even lending its name to the album title. With help from U.K. photographer John McMurtrie, it also inspired the album cover with his UV lights picking up special paint on the black/rosewood custom Fender and Charvel guitars.
"It was a fun video to make," confirms Richie, "as they have all been when we play together. Adding the UV performance section was fantastic and took us back to the album shoot that we did in London last year."
"Our friend Gyula really added something to it," adds Adrian, "it helped the song's narrative of all is not what you see!"
The track itself rides in on a thunderous drum beat and a seething riff before Adrian's raw bluesy vocal explodes from the speakers complemented by Richie's higher pitched rock tones. A dramatic bridge leads into a knockout chorus, demonstrating the quality and infectious hooks that are to be found throughout "Black Light / White Noise".
"We had a lot of fun making this," says Adrian. "We'd be writing and I'd want something inspired by some of my old hard rock or blues go-to bands then it'd go into a more progressive feel — and then Richie has these strong soul influences so there's a lot to dig into there too. Influences are what makes the musical world go round — they go through you and come out slightly differently."
"SMITH/KOTZEN is all about finding common ground," adds Richie. "Maybe Adrian will tend to go heavy, and then I'll lean more in the fusion or funk or soul side of things, but somewhere in the middle is our sound: that heavy blues rock vibe that we really connect on."
"Black Light / White Noise" is a truly magnificent collection of songs that stands shoulder to shoulder with some of Smith and Kotzen's finest work to date. Atmospheric, ambitious, diverse and brilliant, the LP not only features stratospheric guitar solos and raw, bluesy vocals but soulful touches, intricate playing, beautiful songwriting and an assured poise and style that brings to mind a host of legendary musicians (THIN LIZZY, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, CREAM, FREE, DEEP PURPLE) but is undeniably the work of Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen in perfect harmony.
Kotzen comments: "We're so proud of this new album. It follows on from our debut and the EPs by focusing on collaborating on riffs, lyrics, harmonies and vocals. There's a SMITH/KOTZEN DNA now and it's definitely something we need to get out on the road with. I was pleased to work with my friend Jay Ruston on the mixing of the album, let alone my wife Julia (Lage) — who actually plays on 'White Noise' as well as four other tracks."
"We're like an extended family now," adds Smith. "We have a sound and a vibe and I don't think many artists are doing what we do — sharing the vocals and the guitars. It takes me back to those classic bands like HUMBLE PIE and CREAM — which is not a bad place to start!"
The full track listing of "Black Light / White Noise" is:
01. Muddy Water
02. White Noise
03. Black Light
04. Darkside
05. Life Unchained
06. Blindsided
07. Wraith
08. Heavy Weather
09. Outlaw
10. Beyond The Pale
Last July, Smith joined Kotzen on stage at the Islington Assembly Hall in London, England to perform THE YARDBIRDS classic "Shapes Of Things".
SMITH/KOTZEN released the "Better Days …And Nights" EP in September 2022 via BMG. The effort comprised five previously unreleased live tracks, plus for the first time ever on CD, the four studio tracks featured on their sold-out, limited-edition 12-inch vinyl EP, "Better Days", released in conjunction with Record Store Day in November 2021.
The live songs were recorded during SMITH/KOTZEN's inaugural whistle-stop tour of the U.S. and U.K. at the start of 2022, which attracted unanimously rave reviews from fans and media alike, celebrating the duo's debut on stage together with stellar back-up from Richie's wife, internationally acclaimed bass player Julia Lage (VIXEN),and drummer Bruno Valverde of ANGRA.
Japan's metal bible Burrn! magazine reviewing the Whisky A Go Go show in Los Angeles pronounced it, "An amazing night….this rock n' roll band is very different from any other…totally unique …and bringing you great songs!". U.K.'s Classic Rock magazine said the show was a, "masterclass in guitar playing and performance".
The original EP tracks were produced by Kotzen and Smith and mixed by Kevin Shirley. The live tracks were produced and mixed by Kotzen and Smith.
SMITH/KOTZEN's eponymous debut album was released globally through BMG in March 2021 to media and fan acclaim, charting No. 10 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart in the U.S., Top 20 in the U.K. as well as in other major markets such as Germany, Japan and Canada.
Smith is best known as one of IRON MAIDEN's principal guitarists, having also enjoyed success as a solo artist. Kotzen is the frontman for THE WINERY DOGS as well as having been the guitarist for both MR. BIG and POISON during his long and acclaimed career, which has to date seen him release more than 20 solo albums. Both artists are also prolific songwriters.
Photo credit: Piper Ferguson | +1 | |
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21 фев 2025
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21 фев 2025
DESTRUCTION Releases New Single 'Scumbag Human Race' From Upcoming 'Birth Of Malice' Album
 German thrash metal veterans DESTRUCTION will release their 16th studio album, "Birth Of Malice", on March 7, 2025 via Napalm Records. The official music video for the LP's third single, "Scumbag Human Race", can be seen below. On this track, DESTRUCTION bassist/vocalist Schmier rages against the corruption and deceit of humanity, with the unforgettable chorus acting as a call for reckoning as the band spits fury at those who exploit and manipulate. A blistering thrash anthem, this track will resonate with anyone fed up with the state of the world.
Schmier says: "Single number three, 'Scumbag Human Race', is a merciless steamhammer of a track! Its relentless groove and energy are pushing you straight forward into the moshpit! This will be an intense live track and that riff can melt faces! The lyrics are metaphorically speaking: how would this planet call us if it could talk? And what would it tell us? Right …wake the fuck up … SCUMBAG HUMAN RACE!!!!"
Schmier once again combines his dual vocal/bass attack with crashing riffs from dual battle axe masters Martin Furia and Damir Eskić, while Randy Black blasts his drums to new heights. As witnessed on their previous thrash fest "Diabolical" (2022),DESTRUCTION return with their uniquely raw and brutal sound, delivering merciless songs with a touch more variety and groove this time. All 12 songs straight from the butchers hit with a direct, clean sound — resulting in addictive metal anthems for the next generation of thrashers.
The "Destruction" single was released last November and as it's named after the band, it contains everything DESTRUCTION is revered for. This thrash anthem reflects on the band’s legacy, fueled by razor-sharp riffs and Schmier's relentless vocals. With lyrics celebrating their outcast origins and unbreakable metal spirit, "Destruction" is a tribute to over 40 years of thrash dominance.
Schmier previously commented on DESTRUCTION's eponymous battle hymn: "The crushing song 'Destruction' is the perfect opener for this album: it builds a bridge between our old-school sound and riffing, including songtitle phrases from classic DESTRUCTION tracks and more shredding and melodic twin lead guitars, that will pinch your brain with its razor-sharp leads! The message 'we are DESTRUCTION' unites us with our fans worldwide and manifests the bond we have together!
"I see this track in the tradition of a cult song like 'Curse The Gods' in the way it is composed — a thrash metal rollercoaster ride galore!"
Regarding the "Destruction" music video, Schmier said: "We filmed this clip in São Paulo, Brazil, one of the top-notch capitals of metal around the globe and a city that means a lot to us as a band. We played here for the first time in 1989 and have returned countless times for amazing concerts, festivals, visits... I feel at home here. Many friends live in this crazy town. I got my first tattoo, the 'Release From Agony' album cover, in São Paulo. We met SEPULTURA here the first time and the fans are simply mind-blowing! We wanted to catch the energy of a DESTRUCTION show and appreciate the faithful fans that breathe thrash metal to the core. Without them we are nothing, the lyrics of this song honor and acknowledge our supporters, they are our backbone, they are DESTRUCTION!"
DESTRUCTION's newest onslaught is opened by the aforementioned "Destruction", with a luring intro transforming into a true thrashing hymn with razor-sharp guitars honoring the band's 40-plus-year legacy, where mastermind Schmier reflects on the old days. Like the title "Birth Of Malice" suggests, lyrically, Schmier delves deep in human errors — like selfish behavior on "Greed" and "Evil Never Sleeps", while stomping "A.N.G.S.T." delivers shredding guitar solos and flirts with our paranoid instinct, criticizing evil forces who prey on the weaknesses of others. A clear statement is made with carnage on "Scumbag Human Race", exploring the mistakes mankind makes and pushing authorities in its memorable chorus "I will count your days!" The same rebellious attitude can be witnessed on the banging "No Kings – No Masters". DESTRUCTION also shifts to futuristic topics on the album, like the unconscious influence of technology and new forms of war on "Cyber Warfare". To close this brutal tour de force on a positive note, the thrashing legends celebrate their strong allyship with metal colleagues ACCEPT by presenting their own version of classic neck breaker "Fast As A Shark". All of these heavy topics are combined in the brutal cover artwork, designed by talented Hungarian artist Gyula Havancsák, known for his works for bands like ACCEPT, KREATOR and BLIND GUARDIAN.
"Birth Of Malice" was recorded at Switzerland's Little Creek Studio by V.O. Pulver. Guitarist Martin Furia mixed and mastered the masterpiece at The Black Mancave in Hannover, Germany.
"Birth Of Malice" track listing:
01. Birth Of Malice
02. Destruction
03. Cyber Warfare
04. No Kings - No Masters
05. Scumbag Human Race
06. God Of Gore
07. A.N.G.S.T.
08. Dealer Of Death
09. Evil Never Sleeps
10. Chains Of Sorrow
11. Greed
12. Fast As A Shark
DESTRUCTION's massive career has seen many successes, with the band hitting stages at the world's biggest festivals around the world like Hellfest, Wacken Open Air, Graspop Metal Meeting and México Metal Fest.
DESTRUCTION, known as one of the "Teutonic Four", alongside KREATOR, SODOM and TANKARD, were reunited with the other three acts at the "Klash Of The Ruhrpott" concert on July 20, 2024 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.
In a January 2023 interview with Felipe Canales of Chile's iRock, Schmier was asked if he and his DESTRUCTION bandmates have ever considered changing their sound in order to reach a wider audience. He responded: "In Germany, we say, 'Don't change your winning recipe. Stick to the guns. Stick to what you can do best.' And for me, what I can do best is playing thrash metal. Every album we do sounds a little bit different, but it always will sound like DESTRUCTION.
"When you get older, it's very easy to slow down," Schmier explained. "A lot of musicians, when they [get] older, they wanna slow down; they wanna play blues; they wanna play more mellow music. For me, that's never been the case. I think the older you [get], the more you go crazy about it. You wanna still show the young kids how it's done. When we go out there to the festivals, we compete… To all those young bands, I could be [their] father, so I have to be the role model. So that's how I see it. Slowing down and changing something is not what we do."
As for whether it's harder for him to play physically challenging music as he gets older, Schmier said: "It's like in football — the old, experienced player, he has the feel for it. The young player runs more and runs faster. The old player has the eye and the brain. And it's the same in music. Of course I have to train harder to go on stage, but my experience of my age is great because I have better voice control. I know more what I want. I know what I don't want and where the band belongs. So this experience of a certain 40 years in the music business is, of course, a great one."
In August 2021, DESTRUCTION officially parted ways with founding guitarist Michael "Mike" Sifringer and replaced him with Martin Furia. The Argentinian-born, Belgian-based Furia is best known for his work as sound engineer and producer for such bands as NERVOSA and EVIL INVADERS.
Sifringer was the only member of DESTRUCTION to have remained constant throughout the band's career. Schmier appeared on DESTRUCTION's first three albums before exiting the band and being replaced by POLTERGEIST vocalist André Grieder. André's sole recorded appearance with DESTRUCTION was on the "Cracked Brain" album, which came out in 1990. Schmier rejoined DESTRUCTION in 1999.
DESTRUCTION 2025 is:
Schmier - Bass, Vocals
Martin Furia - Guitars
Randy Black - Drums
Damir Eskić - Guitars
Photo credit: Elena Vasilaki
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21 фев 2025
POISON Drummer's THE ROCKETT MAFIA Releases First Single, Announces Live Shows
 THE ROCKETT MAFIA, the new band featuring POISON drummer Rikki Rockett alongside Brandon Gibbs (DEVIL CITY ANGELS) on vocals and guitar, Mick Sweda (BULLETBOYS) on guitar and backing vocals, and Bryan Kimes on bass and backing vocals, has released its first single, a cover of "I Think I Love You", a 1970 song by Tony Romeo, written as the debut single for fictional musical TV family "The Partridge Family". You can now listen to the track below.
THE ROCKETT MAFIA's current lineup will make its live debut this Friday, February 21 at the Whisky A Go Go. The band has several other shows scheduled for this year, including at the Arcada Theater in St. Charles, Illinois on March 8, at Warner Vineyards in Paw Paw, Michigan on July 2 and at the Milwaukee Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 2.
Regarding how THE ROCKETT MAFIA came together, Rikki stated during a February 19 appearance on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk" (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I always had Brandon Gibbs in the back of my mind for any project that I do, which hasn't been many. I mean, I did DEVIL CITY ANGELS [with him]. When I played The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride [motorcycle charity event], which I am one of the city co-hosts for — that's a worldwide ride that takes place in 300-some cities across the world — they didn't have entertainment. And I said, 'It's time to have entertainment at this thing.' And they said, 'Well, any suggestions? Can you play?' And I went, 'Well, I don't have a band.' [Laughs] 'So I'll have to put one together.' I had done a couple of shows with CHEVY METAL — me and Kenny Aronoff had done a couple shows with them — so I reached out to those guys, and I just basically had them come and play the show… So after that, I just said, 'I need my own band.' First person I met was Bryan who was working at a salon that I was in, and we started talking. And this guy is from Maryland, and we have the same circle of friends, but didn't know each other. He's played all that tri-state area back there, the same places we played, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, all that. And so we got along great. And I said, 'Let's get together. I've gotta find a guitar player.' And he mentioned Mick Sweda. and I was like, 'Is he busy? Is he doing something? I mean, that guy's a monster. Is this something that would interest him?' And the first thing Mick said when I called him up, he said, 'Look, if you're just gonna have me for one or two gigs and then get rid of me, I'm not interested.' I said, 'Well, Mick, I don't know. I've never played with you, but I think we should at least get together and play.' And we did. And we were playing AEROSMITH songs, VAN HALEN, everything, and we're just sitting there going, 'Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We're cut from the same cloth.' And I was amazed at how good of a player this guy is. And then, of course, I brought Brandon into the thing. And I said the whole idea is something that Taylor Hawkins [late FOO FIGHTERS drummer] told me that I should have been doing a long time ago. And I always got super serious with a band, like, 'I've gotta, right away, write a record and do all-original material.' And he's, like, 'No, just go play for a while. Get used to everybody. Make sure you wanna have a good time. POISON's your baby, just like FOO FIGHTERS are mine.' So I took his advice, God rest his soul, and several years later, I'm actually doing this thing. It's been so much fun, just in the rehearsal phase."
As for what fans can expect to hear at THE ROCKETT MAFIA's live shows, Rikki said: "They're getting our original versions of cover songs for right now. Meaning we're taking songs that most rock bands typically don't do — some of 'em we do, but a lot of 'em most hard rock bands don't do — and we're reimagining them. And you'll see [when you hear 'I Think I Love You'] what I mean by that. And it's something that Mick dubbed, I think he called it 'satanic pop.' [Laughs] You'll see what I mean. So we're reimagining some of these songs that had great choruses and really catchy hooks, but were never meant to be necessarily hard rock songs. They were just crafted so well. And we're doing some regular FACES stuff and things like that as well. But we have decided now, and we started to fool around with our own stuff. So that is definitely forthcoming. But for this first little run, you're gonna be hearing a bunch of stuff that you went, 'Oh my God! That's that song. I know that song. I know that song.' That's what we're going for. And we keep adding [new songs] every day. I swear to God, we keep changing the set. We're, like, 'Hey, have you ever thought about doing this song?' 'Yeah, but how would we do that, do it THE ROCKETT MAFIA way?' So we're having a blast with it. It's just been really, really fun."
On the topic of how "I Think I Love You" was chosen to be one of the songs for THE ROCKETT MAFIA to cover, Rikki said: "I think I [suggested that one]. I always thought it was a great song. I had a crush on [actress] Susan Dey growing up, so, of course. But I always thought it was such a well-written song. It was written by Tony Romeo, who I don't know, but he's written other things. He passed away now. And I think David Cassidy was trying so hard at that time to make people realize that he was a really good player and he was a really good writer, and he couldn't extend past that idea of 'The Partridge Family' publicly. And I met him many years ago at an award show — he was super cool — and I told him how much I appreciated all the stuff that he really did reach out and do that he did in a more serious way. And I feel bad for him because he was never taken seriously. I think it made him an alcoholic maybe; I don't know. But I just thought it was a cool song. It was, like, 'This song needs a second spin.' The chord structures, everything is very hard rock, but the way they did it, it wasn't. So you'll see how we did it."
Rockett and Gibbs played their first show as THE ROCKETT MAFIA in May 2024 at the end of the aforementioned The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride motorcycle charity event in Santa Monica, California. They were joined at the gig by guitarist Brent Woods (SEBASTIAN BACH, CHEVY METAL) and bassist Wiley Hodgden.
Rockett and Gibbs previously played together in a band called DEVIL CITY ANGELS, also featuring guitarist Tracii Guns (L.A. GUNS) and bassist Eric Brittingham (CINDERELLA). The band released its self-titled debut album in September 2015. Following the recording of "Devil City Angels", Brittingham decided not to continue with the project and his spot was taken by Rudy Sarzo (QUIET RIOT, OZZY OSBOURNE, WHITESNAKE). Around a year later, Rockett, Gibbs and Brittingham joined forces with guitarist Joel Kosche (ex-COLLECTIVE SOUL) to form the LORDS OF DEVIL CITY. Within a few months, Rockett, Gibbs and Brittingham relaunched DEVIL CITY ANGELS, only for Eric to exit the project in the summer of 2017 and be replaced by Topher Nelson. In July 2020, DEVIL CITY ANGELS released a new single, "Testify".
In early 2019, Gibbs and Rockett were embroiled in a public war of words after Gibbs indicated he was no longer involved with DEVIL CITY ANGELS due to the fact that the band was "inactive." Rikki responded that DEVIL CITY ANGELS "went inactive" because he was diagnosed with cancer and suggested possibly moving on without Brandon. This prompted Gibbs to fire back that he had "never seen someone complain about money, perception and 1st class tickets" as much as Rockett allegedly did, "to the point where it gets in the way of doing anything." The two have since resolved their differences.
Back in 2015, Rockett told Sleaze Roxx about Gibbs: "The thing about Brandon is that he's a young guy but he sounds like he's from the '70s. That's what is so appealing for guys like us. That's the reason that I really wanted Brandon involved with us. Brandon doesn't have any baggage, which is good and he has a lot of experience. He's got a great pedigree."
In 2015, Rockett and Gibbs joined forces with Rikki's POISON bandmates Bobby Dall (bass) and C.C. DeVille (guitar) to play several shows as THE SPECIAL GUESTS in what was widely perceived as a not-so-subtle message to POISON singer Bret Michaels that they weren't willing to remain completely inactive while he pursued a solo career.
Promotional photo courtesy of THE ROCKETT MAFIA
https://whiskyagogo.com/calendar/events/13926683/the-rockett-mafia-featuring-rikki-rockett-of-poison-american-jetset-kry...
Posted by Poison on Tuesday, February 4, 2025 | 0 | |
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21 фев 2025
Star-Studded Tribute Album To BAD COMPANY Coming This Fall
 2025 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame nominee and music icons BAD COMPANY will be celebrated with a star-studded tribute album to be released in the fall of 2025 via Primary Wave Music.
"Can't Get Enough: A Tribute To Bad Company" brings together artists across rock, country and Americana to create fresh interpretations of BAD COMPANY's classic hits, including "Feel Like Makin' Love", "Run With The Pack", "Shooting Star" and the renowned self-titled "Bad Company". The album will also feature special appearances by original BAD COMPANY members Paul Rodgers and Simon Kirke, and a cover of FREE's "All Right Now", written by Rodgers and Andy Fraser, with more to be announced in the coming weeks.
Rodgers and Mick Ralphs of BAD COMPANY said: "As songwriters, Mick and I are intrigued to hear how these talented and varied musicians will perform our songs. From what we have heard thus far, the creative energy is definitely flowing and there is plenty of heart and soul energy being injected into the songs, we salute and thank them all."
THE STRUTS will kick things off with their rendition of the classic "Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy" with a limited-edition seven-inch colored vinyl exclusive for Record Store Day, available April 12, 2025.
"We are so thrilled for the British music legends BAD COMPANY to finally be getting their well-earned nomination to the Rock Hall," says Luke Spiller, lead vocalist of THE STRUTS. "It's been a real pleasure to pay homage to them with our cover of "Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy" and I hope they enjoy it as much as we loved recording it."
"Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy" limited-edition seven-inch vinyl Record Store Day exclusive:
Side A: "Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy"
Side B: "Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy" (instrumental)
Recorded and mixed by Bob Clearmountain
BAD COMPANY was formed in 1973, featuring lead vocalist Paul Rodgers, guitarist Mick Ralphs, bassist Boz Burrell and drummer Simon Kirke. Their self-titled debut album, released in 1974, achieved commercial success with hits like "Can't Get Enough" and "Feel Like Makin' Love", establishing them as major players in the rock scene. Known for their powerful blend of hard rock and blues, they continued their success with albums like "Straight Shooter" (1975) and "Run With The Pack" (1976) solidifying their reputation in the 1970s. | 0 | |
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21 фев 2025
RANDY BLYTHE Says Four Out Of Five Members Of LAMB OF GOD Are Sober Now: 'It's F***ing Great'
 In a new interview with the That Sober Guy podcast, LAMB OF GOD frontman Randy Blythe — who has been sober for more than 14 years — spoke about how hard it is to navigate the challenges of maintaining his sobriety on tour. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I'm lucky in the fact that in my band, four out of five of us are now no longer drinking. And I was the lone ranger there for a couple of years. And it was kind of hard, 'cause I quit and I'm on this heavy metal bus with these fucking maniacs drinking and doing drugs. And then my guitar player Willie [Adler] quit drinking. And he hasn't had a drink, and I've been sober 14 years — I think he's hasn't drank in 12. And then for the first eight years of my sobriety — I'm not talking out of class here, 'cause he just published a book, my guitar player Mark Morton, called 'Desolation'. He got really fucking bad on opiates, heroin. I don't know how I never got strung out, because he and I did a fuck-ton together, but alcohol, she's my baby. His was opiates. So then for eight years, I was rolling sober with him and he was just getting worse and worse and worse. And it was horrible, 'cause I'm clean, I'm sober and I'm, like, 'This dude's gonna die. I'm gonna find him in his bunk dead, but I never pushed it on him, man, because I didn't like it when people push shit on me. I never pushed it on him. I just tried to keep my side of the street clean and sort of be a good example, and if he ever wanted to talk, he came and talked to me and asked me for help from time to time."
Blythe continued: "It was very hard — very, very fucking hard — 'cause I was looking at him, and he's a smart guy, and I'm, like, 'Don't you know you're fucking killing yourself? Why are you doing this, you fucking idiot? This is horrible.' And I'm looking at him thinking all that, and that's what people were saying about me for 22 years. So I had to remember that. I'm, like, 'Just because you've been sober for three years doesn't make you the fucking king of sobriety, you dumbass.' So I had to just be there, man. And he would talk to me, 'I don't wanna die.' And I'm, like, 'I know, bro. This is what you've gotta do.' And then he'd go back out. And then finally it worked. And he's been clean and sober six years now. And then our drummer Art [Cruz], he joined the band. He was still partying. He's been sober over two years now. So you've got four out of the five dudes in the band that don't do shit. And it's nice. It's fucking great. But for a while, it was me. I was a lone ranger. Somebody's gotta put foot into the pool first."
Blythe previously talked about his sobriety earlier in the month during an appearance on "The New Man" podcast with Tripp Lanier. Asked about how he got over the notion that really creative people, including great writers, need alcohol or drugs to find their best ideas or perform to the best of their ability, Randy said: "That's a sort of cultural mythos, especially in rock bands, and even more so in a metal band. I believe that that mythos is sort of shifting, that paradigm is shifting, and the young kids don't think it's as cool to be fucked up anymore like we did when we were kids. It was part of the deal. And it's a lie, it's definitely a lie that you need all that stuff to do what I do. But it's a cultural sort of mythos that I bought in to, not just with music, but with writing, because like any other angst-riddled 20-something male American dude, I loved reading Hemingway, I loved reading Bukowski, I loved reading Hunter S. Thompson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, all these members of this supremely male canon of authors who really reshaped modern English literature. And all of them had a few things in common — all of them were wild, did wild manly shit, which I'm for. All of them drank to excess and generally got into some sticky situations from time to time. It's a cornerstone of your identity, it becomes so. So for me, in my twenties and thirties, I would talk about being a writer a lot and I was doing all the things that all those writers, Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson and Bukowski, all those guys did — I did a lot of drinking, I did a respectable amount of womanizing, I did some fist fighting here and there, I got into some crazy shit, I was practicing, I was doing all the things the great writers did except for the writing part. That's the hart part. So that's that cultural mythos with the writers. And then with music, and being in a heavy metal band, and the sort of cultural perception of that, that baggage, and me personally knowing some of the legends from this who did drink and drug to excess, I bought in to that. And in a sense in the beginning, alcohol was useful, and every now and then some drugs were useful."
Asked what he means when he says that alcohol and drugs were "useful", Randy explained: "Well, if you have a sense of stage fright, a liquid courage, a little bottled confidence [would always help in the early days]. And we were very confrontational band, so our earlier gigs were at house parties, squats and things like that. They weren't even in clubs, and you're on the floor with people, and [they were] very physical. The crowd can either aggressively not like you or aggressively really like you — either way.
"There's no school to teach you how to be a frontman, how to get in front of people and do your thing," Blythe continued. "You're not, like, 'Okay, I'm relying on my training,' like a Navy seal, like falling back on to the level of your training. It's, like, 'Okay, let's go out and see what fucking happens.' And so that can give you the nerves. And in the early days you, I could quiet those nerves with some alcohol. Most certainly. They don't call it liquid courage for nothing. After a while, that inhibits your ability to do your job. Luckily, in my case, I wasn't doing Al Green. I'm not Pavarotti. So if Pavarotti or Marvin Gaye got up there all fucked up, people would be, like, 'Oh my God, this sucks.' When you're in a heavy metal band, there's an element of danger to it, which I think is valuable in music, at least in what we do. And there was definitely an element of danger to what we did. And alcohol was part of that. The thing is, though, man, you don't need that. That's a lie."
Regarding how he turned that corner, Randy said: "I had to get beat on the head repeatedly that I was going to die if I didn't stop drinking. I can tell you about my first sober show if you want [to hear it]. We were in Australia, and we were on tour with a band called METALLICA. And we had been out with them for about a year over the course of two, two and a half years. We'd done Europe, United States a few times, and we ended this tour in New Zealand and Australia. And my last night of drinking was in Brisbane, Australia. And I went out with some friends and just got completely, utterly fucked up, except for that it didn't work. I drank enough and I'm sure had I been given a breathalyzer, they would have been, like, 'Jesus Christ, how is this dude still alive? There's almost no blood left in his alcohol system.' … And the alcohol, for me, was a thing that shut off the voices in my head, the voices that were angry at the way the world was behaving, that were angry at myself for my own shortcomings and asshole-ish behavior or moral cowardice at times — whatever. The inner critic was incredibly harsh — and still is sometimes. But I'm trying to ameliorate that from time to time. But anyway, I went out and it stopped working. And I woke up in Brisbane on a hotel balcony. And I looked out on the street below… And one of my favorite bookstores in the world was directly across the street from the hotel. And then down the streets more were great restaurants, plenty of food. And then over to the left was the Brisbane Botanical Gardens, which are cool. And they've got all sorts of beautiful, weird plants we don't have. And of course it's Australia, so you're gonna see weird-ass animals and birds. It's just a gorgeous place. And so I looked out from my hotel balcony. And I had a suite. It was very nice. We're in Australia. I've got money in the bank. I'm on tour with fucking METALLICA. It's the biggest heavy metal band in history, not to mention one of the biggest bands in the world, period. I've got money in the bank account. My band, I've learned somehow to function well enough, drunk, that I can still do my job. I still had a romantic partner at that time, a longterm romantic partner that ended eventually, but at that time I still had her. And everything on the outside was good. And I looked out over this street and all this cool shit and I realized I didn't want to do anything. I didn't want to exist. It wasn't like I felt suicidal, like 'I wanna kill myself', but I was, like, 'I don't wanna be here anymore. I just want to vanish from existence.' And I looked over at this table where I had set the beer bottles from the night before 'cause I'd been drinking for a few days and I'm kind of a weirdo OCD dude with my surroundings. So I had very carefully, even while intoxicated, lined these beer bottles perfectly up in this — you know how bowling pins would be, like they're just perfectly lined up, touching each other. All the labels are facing the right way. 'Cause I'm trying to, by controlling my external environment, exert some sort of control on the disaster that is Randy. So I looked over at these beer bottles that were empty and they were stacked there and I realized that they were a metaphor for my life. Because on the outside, just like my life, everything was perfect and orderly and in its place. But, just like those bottles, I had just become an empty receptacle for alcohol and drugs. And all it would take would just be a little push, and those bottles would just fall and shatter. So I looked. I was, like, 'Fuck. I don't wanna exist. I'm just an empty beer bottle now. And I thought, 'Man, maybe I ought to really try and quit drinking, honestly, this time,' because I'd been trying half-assed for, like, four or five years. And this time I took it serious. And I was, like, 'Hey, I have to quit drinking.' And so I asked the universe, I was, like, 'God, please help me.' Whatever's out there. I had this moment where it wasn't, like… I didn't have a picture of a bearded dude in the sky or anything, but I just asked — I use the term 'God' for lack of a better term. I asked, 'Whatever is out there, please help me because I don't know what to do.' I knew then, like, 'Let's stop and try drinking,' and a peace washed over me, like immense calm in that moment. When I was just, like, 'I'm fucked,' 'cause that's the only way, if you have a problem, you're ever gonna get better, is if you realize that you're fucked. It was a realization of reality, to put it simply recognizing that I was indeed totally fucked. So I had this brief moment of immense peace wash over me, and it lasted for approximately 45 seconds. And then this little devil on my shoulder, like little Satan, he's always there or whatever, the demon, it was, like, 'Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Let's think this through. Maybe you just had a bad night. Maybe you've just had a bad 22 years of solid drinking and drugging. It was crazy. It was crazy. I totally didn't wanna live anymore. And it wasn't the first time I'd felt that way. And I'd had these repercussions for drinking… You feel like you can't function. And I felt that. And I was, like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. A second ago you were all good, and then before that you wanted to die and now you wanna drink again. You're crazy. You are crazy, bro.'
"Some of the guys in METALLICA's band and crew were sober on that tour, and they had had words with me," Randy added. "I'd been getting signals for fucking 15, 20 years from parents, family, kindly members of the Richmond Fraternal Order Of The Police, judges. I had a journalist in Richmond write a story about me, like, 'This dude needs to sober up.' I was, like, 'Fuck you. Fuck you. You don't know what I do. If you had to do what I did, you'd drink too.' So I was, like, 'I think what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna try not to drink.' I made a decision, 'cause there was beer in the fridge right there in that hotel. I was, like, 'I'm not gonna go get a beer. I'm not gonna go get a beer. I'm gonna go to tonight's show and I'm gonna talk to these guys. I'm gonna be, like, 'Will you fucking help me? What the fuck do I do?' So I went to the gig, and I showed up early and I found a couple of those guys. I'm, like, 'Look, I'm fucked. Help me. I'm trying to be sober.' And they were, like, 'We got you, bro.' And my hair was still long then. I walked on stage that night in front of 14,000 people, falling to pieces, weeping hysterically. Luckily, like I said, I had long hair, so I kept it in my face. And our music is, like, super aggressive, so I'm just crying… I think [the emotion at the time] was just, like, 'I don't know what I'm going to do. What is going on? What happened to my life? How did I reach this point?' It's like someone had scraped my entire skin, like road rash all over my soul. So I stood on stage in front 14,000 people screaming my head off while weeping uncontrollably. Luckily, no one could tell because I was just constantly running and headbanging. And I made it through that show. And that was my first day sober. And that was October 18th, 2010. I haven't had a drink or a drug since."
In a separate interview with the The Lydian Spin podcast, Blythe spoke about the challenges of going on tour and being around people who are drinking. The 53-year-old musician said: "I can be kind of antisocial in general anyway. By the end of my drinking, I just wanted to be alone: 'Leave me the fuck alone, and let me drink.'
"I can go out," Randy explained. "I'll go anywhere. I'm not afraid of being around alcohol or drugs. If I was, I would never tour again. For me, being around utterly shitfaced people is fairly intolerable now. And so if I go to a party, if there's like a house party, friends of mine are having dinner, I'll hang out and I'll hang out until people hit me with the 'I love you, man,' like a couple times. I'm, like, 'Okay, it's time to go. I had a great time, and you guys can carry on and God bless. Good luck and godspeed. I'm outta here.' So, I don't have a problem [being around people who are drinking], and I don't walk around like some sort of angry curmudgeon, like, 'Don't fucking talk to me.' And when I am trapped by those people, I look at it as a karmic debt. I look at it as a karmic debt, because I fucking terrified and annoyed countless people for decades. So it's, like, what comes around goes around."
Randy previously discussed his sobriety during a September 2022 appearance on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk". He said at the time: "It's not attractive to sit up and fucking drink and snort coke and say a bunch of stupid shit with a bunch of morons when you're [in your early 50s]. It's just not. [Laughs] I haven't had a hangover in over [more than a decade]. I don't know if I would survive one now."
Asked by host Eddie Trunk if it was "tough" for him to be on the road where alcohol can be found everywhere, Randy said: "No. Hell no, dude. Seeing people party and stuff, especially when they 'party party' and get stupid… I don't judge, but it makes it more repulsive to me, 'cause I was, like, Jesus… I was pretty bad. Nobody looks cool when they're wasted, so it just doesn't appeal to me. And I have better things to do. I'm trying to do good things with my life — write books and do photography and shit like that. I can't do that when I'm drunk. Plus, man, I drank enough. I did it for 22 years. I'm not gonna discover anything new in drugs and alcohol."
Pressed about whether it bothers him when people around him are drinking, Blythe said: "It doesn't bother me. It only bothers me if they're fucking wasted and saying stupid shit to me and then I run. But it doesn't make me wanna do it, if that's what you're asking. It has the opposite effect. Seeing people drink does not bother me at all. The only thing that bothers me is when they're hammered and in my face. But other than that, I don't expect the rest of the world to behave… I can't expect the rest of the world to behave in the way I do and not drink because not everybody's an alcoholic like me. Some people are perfectly okay, and that's no problem. God bless. Have a good time. But if you're wasted and the 'I love you, man' starts, then I just dip out. It's not a problem."
Blythe discussed his battle with alcoholism and how he got sober after a couple of decades of drinking during a book-signing event and question-and-answer session for his memoir, "Dark Days: A Memoir", in 2015. At the time, he said: "Most people, when they stop… It's entirely individual… Some people hit bottom because they wake up in jail, because their wife has left them, because they don't have any money left, because they lost their job, or because they just can't… they can't take it anymore."
He continued: "When I woke up the morning… I wrote about this in my book; I wrote about the last night I drank and the first day of sobriety. I woke up, and I was on tour. I was in Australia. I was opening up for the biggest band in metal, in the world — ever, in the history of metal. I was in a beautiful place. I had money in my bank account. My wife hadn't left me yet — and she still hasn't, somehow amazingly. And everything on the outside of my life, to anyone looking at it, beyond the fact that I looked kind of busted, everything would look good. Like, this dude is in this band, he's on this tour in this beautiful place. It's Australia, it's paradise. He's getting paid…. Not millions of dollars; don't get me wrong. But he's making money. I woke up one day and I just did not want to do anything. It's the strangest feeling to not want to… I couldn't think of a single thing I wanted to do. I didn't wanna eat, I didn't wanna sleep, I didn't wanna read a book, I didn't wanna go to work, I didn't wanna… drink. I couldn't imagine not drinking. I didn't want to do anything. I felt completely empty."
Blythe added: "So, for me, it was a very emotional flatline… like, bottom. It wasn't anything traumatic whatsoever. I just reached a point where I was, like, 'I've gotta do something else, or else I might as well be dead.' And I firmly believe I would be dead [by now if I hadn't stopped]. So it was just a weird thing. I don't know why. I drank 22 years — heavy — and finally I got enough pain where it's, like, 'Okay, this sucks. I've gotta stop.' But it's different for everyone. Anybody who's ever had a drinking problem can tell you that it's different for everyone."
Blythe's second book, "Just Beyond The Light: Making Peace With The Wars Inside Our Head", came out on February 18, 2025 via Grand Central Publishing (GCP).
"Just Beyond The Light" was described by Blythe as a "tight, concise roadmap of how I have attempted to maintain what I believe to be a proper perspective in life, even during difficult times."
In December, Blythe announced more spoken-word and question-and-answer events to promote "Just Beyond The Light". The special "evening with" event includes a spoken-word performance, an audience question-and-answer session, a copy of "Just Beyond The Light" and an opportunity to have the book signed.
In 2012, Blythe was arrested in the Czech Republic and charged with manslaughter for allegedly pushing a 19-year-old fan offstage at a show two year prior and causing injuries that led to the fan's death. Blythe spent 37 days in a Prague prison before ultimately being found not guilty in 2013.
Blythe's prison experience inspired two songs on LAMB OF GOD's 2015 album "VII: Sturm Und Drang": "512", one of his three prison cell numbers, and "Still Echoes", written while he was in Pankrac Prison, a dilapidated facility built in the 1880s that had been used for executions by the Nazis during World War II. It also led him to write his first book, "Dark Days", in which he shared his whole side of the story publicly for the first time.
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21 фев 2025
CONJURER Release New Video “All You Will Remember” (Live @ Radar Festival 2024)
 Today, Conjurer release their brand new video, “All You Will Remember” (Live @ Radar Festival 2024), which shows a different side of what this band is capable of. In April, Conjurer will hit the road again and do a massive EU/UK tour together with Make Them Suffer, Resolve, and If Not For Me.
Singer Brady comments: “As we come to the end of the Páthos cycle, we wanted to share this live performance from our headline set at Radar Festival last year. ‘All You Will Remember’ is one of the deeper cuts from the record and is emotionally something that Dani put a lot of themselves into. For me, it shows a different side of what this band is capable of and is something that I hope resonates with people ahead of the new material we’re working on. I’d also like to thank our crew for helping us put the show together and for capturing this moment: we couldn’t do any of this without them.” | 0 | |
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21 фев 2025
BLACK MAP To Release Hex Album In May; “Hex (Come Get It)” Single And Music Video Out Now
 Today, multi genre rockers, Black Map, are excited to announce the release of their upcoming album, Hex, out May 9 via Spinefarm marking their first album release under the label. To celebrate the announcement, Black Map has released their second song from the album, and their first official single, the title track, alongside a music video, available to view below.
On the release of the single, vocalist/bassist Ben Flanagan comments: “It’s a song about finding the place we can go to mentally, that clears away whatever storm we are facing. For me, it has historically been music, but I didn’t want to limit the song to only that. Everybody has something that, if they channel it, changes things for the better. The ‘come get it’ is really a call to action in that way.”
At the start of 2024, Black Map retreated to Southern California to record Hex with Saosin guitarist Beau Burchell behind the board as producer. The band embraced a clear, collective vision, shifting from the expansive, ethereal nature of Melodoria to a more urgent and immediate sound.
Vocalist/Bassist Ben Flanagan describes Hex as a body of work with a strong “let’s f*cking go” spirit, while guitarist Mark Engles emphasizes its balance between atmospheric elements and a driving intensity. The album captures the band’s signature style, with Mark’s distinct guitar work ever-present and a renewed focus on immediacy and raw energy.
For Ben, Hex represents the profound impact of music, offering solace and connection. Drummer Chris Robyn adds that the album carries an unstoppable momentum, charging forward with force and intention. Rooted in themes of personal struggle, authenticity, and resilience, Hex stands as Black Map’s most powerful and urgent release yet.
Pre-order the album here.
Hex tracklisting:
“Disintegrate”
“Hex (Come Get It)”
“Badlands”
“Little Undead”
“Burning Satellite”
“Tethered”
“Oblivion Season”
“Price to Fix It”
“Fake Your Own Life”
“Disintegrate” lyric video: | 0 | |
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21 фев 2025
TOBIAS SAMMET Reveals How He Recruited HELLOWEEN’s MICHAEL KISKE For AVANTASIA’s Debut
 Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Tobias Sammet about his upcoming album Avantasia album Here Be Dragons which will be released on February 28, 2025 on Napalm Records.
Also in the chat Tobias talks about Avantasia’s origins and guest singers over the years.
On first starting Avantasia:
“I wanted to work with other people, not that I didn’t like working with my band fellows. I wanted to look outside the box and see what else I could experience and learn. I wanted to work with Michael Kiske (Helloween) because he had turned his back on heavy metal and apparently they didn’t want to reunite with Helloween (Laughs). They didn’t want to make a reunion so I said okay somebody’s gotta do it so let me do it. I was a huge fan of Michael Kiske. I’m still to this day and so that was one of the reasons why I did it was because I wanted to have Michael Kiske sing my songs.
“Classical double bass beat power metal songs. I also wanted to work with Bob Catley and David DeFeis and yeah just do an album and look outside the box. I knew his (Micahel Kiske) fan club president and I said like if you could pass on the message that that I have a couple of songs, I’m a real nice guy, I’m not a Satanist and also have a little budget so if he here, here’s my number. And he called me we just talked and we liked each other. He’s a very lovely person and he’s a very good friend now. We hit it off really well and that was the starting point. That was a big important thing about the first Avantasia album. Michael Kiske is the only one who’s been on every Avantasia record so far except for me, Bob Catley who was on every one since the second one which was recorded at the same time as the first one so technically Bob Catley has been there from the start.”
On why Michael Kiske wanted to be called Ernie on the first album:
“That was his own idea back in the day. I wanted to have Michael Kiske and I said I want you to be on the record because you mean so much to me and I made the big mistake telling him like even if I didn’t have your name it’s not because of your name it’s you could be called anything. I just want you and your voice and he said, ‘okay then let’s call me Ernie on the record’ and he put it in the contract. I said, ‘are you serious, Ernie? I mean why don’t we just call you Joe Vocal or whatever’ but no no let’s do it Ernie, that’s his sense of humor.
“I said okay Ernie and Bert, great let’s do it. He (Michael Kiske) was hesitant I believe back in the day because he had announced in advance that he would never return to metal again and metal was music of the devil and you know and it was all said and done back in the ‘80s. He will never return, his heart is elsewhere and all of a sudden he returns to the metal scene appearing on a Metal Opera with Kai Hansen and Markus Grosskopf appearing on nine songs singing speed metal songs. He probably thought people would think that’s weird with everything he said in advance so he said ‘let’s call me Ernie.’ So we did it and everybody knew it was Michael Kiske (on the record). So on the second record I asked him like’ I mean it’s still in the contract but do you seriously want to be called Ernie again everybody knows’ and he said ‘why don’t we just go with Michael Kiske (laughs).” | +1 | |
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21 фев 2025
HELLOWEEN’s “I Want Out” Music Video Remastered In HD
 Not many bands can lay claim to creating an entire genre, much less a movement that has continued to flourish for over four decades, but German heroes Helloween did exactly that. Combining the speed of thrash, the twin-guitar approach of NWOBHM, and the hymnal melodies of European folk music, Helloween paved their own path, creating a genre that would resonate for decades afterward: the mighty, dragon-slaying style known as power metal and every band that has raised a sword to honour and glory owes their life to this band, who are now celebrating 40 years of existence and still thriving.
To mark this momentous occasion, BMG is proud to present March Of Time (The Best Of 40 Years), a storming, double-bass-led thrill ride through Helloween’s triumphant history. Featuring 42 handpicked tracks from the early days to their staggeringly successful reunion, this massive compilation is the perfect companion on your epic quest to storm the ‘Walls Of Jericho’ and capture the ‘Keeper Of The Seven Keys’. It might even drag you ‘Straight Out Of Hell’ when you’re done.
Formed by Kai Hansen, Michael Weikath, Markus Grosskopf and Ingo Schwichtenberg, Helloween burst onto the scene in 1985 with their self-titled EP and quickly found fame as the leading lights of the German metal movement, setting new standards for melody and speed. Stepping down from the mic, guitarist Kai Hansen brought in 18-year-old Michael Kiske to front the band, and it wasn’t long before they’d created their first true classic. Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part I was stuffed to the gills with immortal anthems such as “Future World” and “I’m Alive”, but it was 1988’s second instalment that made them famous on both sides of the Atlantic. Bolstered by “I Want Out” and the high-flying “Eagle Fly Free”, Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part II got them support slots with Iron Maiden, Ozzy and the Scorpions, but darker times loomed.
The music video for the above-mentioned “I Want Out” has been remastered in HD. Check it out below:
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21 фев 2025
RONNIE ROMERO Shares Live Version Of “Vengeance”; Official Video Streaming
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21 фев 2025
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21 фев 2025
Ex-MEGADETH Guitarist JEFF YOUNG On His Upcoming Solo Album 'rEvolutions': 'I've Been Working On It For 11 Years'
 At last month's NAMM convention in Anaheim, California, former MEGADETH and current KINGS OF THRASH guitarist Jeff Young spoke to Metal Magnitude 's Chelsea about some of the solo material he is planning on releasing in the not-too-distant future. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, I've been working on a album called 'rEvolutions', with a small 'r' and a capital 'e', 'cause it's the revolutions on a turntable, but it's also my evolution. I've been working on it for 11 years. And it includes all the musicians I've met along the way, some of the best players on the planet, including Mohini Dey, who's playing all over this year. She's on a couple tracks. Some great vocalists, great drummers, bass players."
Regarding the musical direction of his new solo material, Jeff said: "The album's got a hard rock feel, but there's also a lot of funk and world music vibes and It's really danceable. But it's also the evolution of the recording medium, because how we used to record music 11 years ago, with all the technology we have here at NAMM, it's a totally different recording world today. So it's kind of cool that the people will not only be able to feel my revolution, but… Many albums sound identical from track to track. My album won't, 'cause it was done in different studios, different engineers and different years."
Young's entire career with MEGADETH was spent recording and touring in support of the band's 1988 platinum-selling album "So Far, So Good...So What!"
Jeff made headlines in December 2009 for accusing MEGADETH leader Dave Mustaine of, among other things, "dissing, exaggerating and just plain lying on some level about nearly every talented musician that has passed through his dysfunctional little ensemble." He also disputed Mustaine's claim in an interview that Young's drug problem led to MEGADETH's 1988 Australian tour being called off and the group being "banned" from performing in the country.
In a 2023 interview with Metal Edge magazine, Young was asked if he regretted his decision to "walk away" from MEGADETH in 1989. He responded: "Sure, I would have loved to have stayed in MEGADETH. But it was to the point where you had a guy suffering from paranoid delusions freebasing drugs 24/7."
Asked about the rumors that Young's dismissal from MEGADETH was caused in part by his attempt to put the moves on Mustaine's then-fiancée, Young said: "It never happened. But these are the bullshit lies that have been spread repeatedly. To this day, MEGADETH's fans look at me weirdly. And to be honest, I don't really appreciate it."
KINGS OF THRASH recently completed several tours during which it performed MEGADETH's classic albums "Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good!" and "So Far, So Good… So What!" A live CD/DVD package called "Best Of The West…Live At The Whisky A Go Go" was recorded and filmed live at the legendary Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood, California on October 15, 2022 and was released in March 2023 via Cleopatra Records. The DVD, which was directed by Michael Sarna for Inmotion Entertainment, includes an appearance by another former MEGADETH member, Chris Poland (guitar).
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21 фев 2025
CRADLE OF FILTH Releases Music Video For 'To Live Deliciously' From Upcoming 'The Screaming Of The Valkyries' Album
 Grammy Award-nominated extreme metal institution CRADLE OF FILTH will release its 14th studio album, "The Screaming Of The Valkyries", on March 21, 2025 via Napalm Records. The band reigns supreme as one of the most revered, formative and notorious names in music — from the depths of the extreme metal underground to the peaks of mainstream pop culture itself, and are responsible for breaking ground for many of today's top metal artists with their trademark mixture of blackened heaviness, macabre theatricality and scintillating gothic style.
Today, following the release of their acclaimed new single "To Live Deliciously", the track's music video has been released in all of its gory glory. Experience the ride of your life (or death, rather) and watch the video now below.
CRADLE OF FILTH master of ceremonies Dani Filth says about the new video: "An observation on religious restraint as well as being a window to tout a bit of blasphemous filth, the video for 'To Live Deliciously' (our second from the new album) is a pleasant social engagement betwixt a pious young nun and her mentor priest. Just with a smattering of demonic possession and sexual misconduct added for good stock."
On "The Screaming Of The Valkyries", Dani's recognizable scream and equally identifiable growl stand mightily alongside twin guitar attacks, symphonic flourishes and explosive rhythm section, implemented by drummer Martin "Marthus" Skaroupka, bassist Daniel Firth, guitarists Marek "Ashok" Smerda and Donny Burbage and keyboardist/vocalist Zoe Federoff.
After album opener "To Live Deliciously" hits immediately, second track "Demagoguery" blends dark beauty, blast beats and slaytanic groove as only CRADLE can combine. Across the album’s blunt and unforgiving yet inviting expanse, CRADLE summons the succulent flavors of classic albums like "Dusk… And Her Embrace" and "Cruelty And The Beast" with the galloping (but no less fierce) thunder of recent entries "Hammer Of The Witches" and "Existence Is Futile". Flashes of early metal influences coalesce with carnivorous glee into unapologetic death 'n' roll. "White Hellebore" is CRADLE OF FILTH at its most devilishly straightforward, juxtaposing traditional heavy metal with blasts of thrashing fury, spinning back to operatic goth without sounding disjointed. Anchored by arguably the most mournful melody in their catalog, "Non Omnis Moriar" ("I shall not wholly die") could be a cousin to PARADISE LOST or ANATHEMA, inverted through CRADLE's thorny prism. "You Are My Nautilus" is the darkest song IRON MAIDEN never wrote, spinning an epic tale with dueling guitars, while "Ex Sanguine Draculae" conjures "Dusk"-era atmosphere with imaginative new colors.
Produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Scott Atkins at Grindstone Studios in Suffolk, England, "The Screaming Of The Valkyries" beckons the brave into a new era of CRADLE OF FILTH misadventure, celebrating massive melancholic melody, blackened thrash, and apocalyptic existential dread with a grinning smattering of unbridled revelry. "The Screaming Of The Valkyries" is a bloody dark love letter to the longtime legion of CRADLE OF FILTH faithful and a stunning entryway for fresh lambs to the sonic slaughter.
"The Screaming Of The Valkyries" track listing:
01. To Live Deliciously
02. Demagoguery
03. The Trinity Of Shadows
04. Non Omnis Moriar
05. White Hellebore
06. You Are My Nautilus
07. Malignant Perfection
08. Ex Sanguine Draculae
09. When Misery Was A Stranger
In a recent interview with U.K.'s Metal Hammer magazine, Dani stated about "The Screaming Of The Valkyries": "It's got elements of everything we've done, really. It has a few head nods to works like 'Midian' and 'Dusk[... And Her Embrace]', especially in the atmosphere and the subject matter. It's also got a very brilliant production, courtesy of Scott Atkins."
Asked if there is any overarching theme to it, Dani said: "No, I wouldn't say so. They're tricky things, concept records. You have to have tunnel vision and you can't veer from that path. So this is just an album. It's not an album with filly bits attached, like intros and outros. No guest appearances. Just nine songs. It's still quite a lengthy running time, obviously. We can't write a short song to save our fucking lives."
Dani went on to say that CRADLE OF FILTH's collaboration with pop superstar Ed Sheeran won't be on "The Screaming Of The Valkyries" "because we don't want it to overshadow the record. But we are going to bring it out. Originally, everybody wanted us to bring it out to glorious fanfare but Ed's management weren't keen on that. We're not absolutely sure how it will emerge, but it's been done, mixed and it's sitting on the shelf somewhere… you know, virtually. And it's fucking fantastic. But only a handful of people have actually heard it. My mum hasn't even heard it."
Last November, Dani was asked by Portugal's Look Mag, CRADLE OF FILTH frontman Dani Filth why it was taking more than three years for him and his bandmates to release the follow-up to "Existence Is Futile" album. He responded: "[We've done] loads of tours. We were in the studio beginning the drums last May. But then we went and did all summer festivals. Then we had holidays — one holiday a year, which we allow us to rejuvenate. Then I was recording with my friend in America. Then we went to South America and Mexico. Then we went, did a co-headline tour with DEVILDRIVER. Then we went back to the studio. Then our producer had a baby. Then it was Christmas, and we did more in the studio. Then we went on tour in Europe. Yeah, that's what happened. We've just been very, very busy.
"It was finished — it's been ready since July [2024], I think," Dani revealed. "We're having two more videos and singles before the album drops. Yeah, maybe even four; I'm not sure. It depends how well it goes. But yeah, there's a plan to a gameplan to everything."
Asked about the musical direction of the new CRADLE OF FILTH material, Dani said: "It's very hard to talk about it. I don't really wanna talk about it because I can't do it justice. Every album has a lot of things going on. It's just a very, very great record. It's the next stage of our evolutionary step as CRADLE OF FILTH, moving on from the [two new songs] we debuted on [the 2023 live album] 'Trouble And Their Double Lives'. It has elements of old-school CRADLE, elements of new-school CRADLE. It's catchy, it's fast, it's slow, it's romantic, it's heavy, it's theatrical."
In October, CRADLE OF FILTH released a new single, "Malignant Perfection", along with a music video directed by Vicente Cordero, who has previously worked with FILTER, DEVILDRIVER, IN FLAMES and BLACK VEIL BRIDES, among others.
In 2023, CRADLE OF FILTH released its first live album in over 20 years, the aforementioned "Trouble And Their Double Lives", via Napalm Records. The LP was recorded between 2014 and 2019 at different performances in the USA, Europe, Australia and beyond during the band's "Cryptoriana" world tour and dates following. Produced, mixed and mastered by Scott Atkins at Grindstone Studios, with recording captured by Danny B, the effort not only featured a slew of fan favorites encompassing the band's discography but also two bonus tracks and two entirely brand new songs, "She Is A Fire" and "Demon Prince Regent".
CRADLE OF FILTH will co-headline the 2025 edition of the North American "Chaos & Carnage" tour, featuring fellow co-headliners DYING FETUS, as well as FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE, NE OBLIVISCARIS, UNDEATH, VOMIT FORTH and CORPSE PILE.
CRADLE OF FILTH is:
Dani Filth - Vocals
Marek "Ashok" Smerda - Guitars
Martin "Marthus" Skaroupka - Drums
Daniel Firth - Bass
Donny Burbage - Guitars
Zoe Federoff - Vocals, Keys
Photo credit: Jakub Alexandrowicz
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21 фев 2025
KLAUS MEINE: 'There Are A Million Good Reasons' For SCORPIONS 'To Go Back Into The Studio Soon'
 In the second part of a new interview with Scorpions Brazil, SCORPIONS frontman Klaus Meine was asked if there are any plans for him and his bandmates to work on the follow-up to 2022's "Rock Believer" album. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I really don't know. There are many good reasons why we maybe should do it, because it's so much fun, and to write new songs and to give it a try. And we have such a great team working with us. And our co-producer, engineer, Hans-Martin Buff, just received a Grammy in L.A. last weekend for his working with Peter Gabriel on 3D sounds. He is very specialized on 3D productions now, and he is really, really good, and it's always fun to work with him in the studio, record vocals, record new songs. And we have such a great setup.
"So there are a million good reasons to go back into the studio sometime soon," he continued. "But, on the other side, these days, it's not the time anymore really to make albums. It might be good to record a few songs; that would be a good thing. But it's always a good option to go back and to wake up your creativity. That's always something great, and we enjoy this always. So I don't know. But let's see how it goes this year. And there's so many shows coming up, and, yeah, we've gotta bring it on first before we make plans for what might come up in '26."
"Rock Believer" was recorded primarily at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany and was mixed at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin, Germany with engineer Michael Ilbert, who has earned multiple Grammy nominations for his mix work with producer Max Martin on albums by Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.
SCORPIONS originally intended to record the new album in Los Angeles with producer Greg Fidelman, whose previous credits include SLIPKNOT and METALLICA. However, because of the pandemic, some of the initial work was done with Greg remotely, after which SCORPIONS opted to helm the recordings themselves with the help of their engineer Hans-Martin Buff.
SCORPIONS' latest album marked their first release since 2017's "Born To Touch Your Feelings - Best Of Rock Ballads", which was an anthology of new and classic material.
SCORPIONS' previous full-length collection of new recordings was "Return To Forever", partially comprising songs the band had in the vault from the '80s. It was the final recorded appearance of SCORPIONS' longtime drummer James Kottak, who was dismissed from the band in September 2016. He has since been replaced by Mikkey Dee, formerly of MOTÖRHEAD.
Last month, SCORPIONS postponed their 2025 Las Vegas residency due to Dee's ongoing recovery from his recent hospitalization. Promoted by Live Nation and Caesars Entertainment, "Scorpions - Coming Home To Las Vegas 60th Anniversary Las Vegas Residency" was scheduled to kick off on February 27, 2025 at PH Live at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino. SCORPIONS.
The new dates are as follows: August 14, August 16, August 19, August 21 and August 23.
BUCKCHERRY will still provide support for the new SCORPIONS Las Vegas residency dates.
In celebration of SCORPIONS' 60th anniversary, the new show follows the band's two previous sold-out residencies at the venue — "Scorpions - Love at First Sting Las Vegas" in 2024 and "Sin City Nights" in 2022.
Earlier in January, Mikkey, who was previously a member of MOTÖRHEAD for 23 years, revealed that he was recovering after spending most of the holiday season battling a "very serious blood infection (Sepsis)."
In a post on social media, Dee said he spent three weeks in a hospital in his hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden, during which he underwent "several operations." He thanked his doctors and nurses for their "excellent care" and said he was back "home fighting this bastard bacteria" and that his "numbers are all going in the right direction." Dee added he had a lot of "recovery and rehab" ahead and was aiming to be "back on the drum stool" for SCORPIONS' upcoming residency.
Dee offered more details about his health setback in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, saying the medical emergency began with a sprained foot that quickly swelled and became infected.
"It was surgery right away, the first of three," Dee said. "They cut away what was dead and infected and badly infested. It was not a good journey I was on… Another day and I'd be playing drums with [late MOTÖRHEAD frontman] Lemmy in heaven. I can say that."
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21 фев 2025
KERRY KING Wants To Release Second Solo Album In Early 2026: 'That's A Realistic Goal'
 In a new interview with Sylvia Alvarado of the Las Vegas radio station KOMP 92.3, SLAYER guitarist Kerry King spoke about his plans for a follow-up album to his solo debut, "From Hell I Rise", which came out last May via Reigning Phoenix Music. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Me and Paul [Bostaph, Kerry King drummer] have got 10, 12 songs demoed already. I've just gotta get off my butt and write lyrics for 'em.
"None of us are young. We wanna keep going," he explained. "We want the machine to roll. We don't want five-year gaps.
"As soon as album one cycle is done, which looks like it's gonna be — I don't know — September maybe, we wanna jump into rehearsal or jump right into the studio and take the momentum of the tour, so we can have another two-week recording cycle. And then get that to the record company, and when that comes out, start record cycle two. You'll see us again."
Asked if fans can expect the second Kerry King solo album in early 2026, Kerry said: "That's a realistic goal, and I wanna achieve that, for sure."
King kicked off his first-ever headlining tour on January 15 at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco, California.
With MUNICIPAL WASTE as special guest and ALIEN WEAPONRY supporting, the tour is set to wrap at House of Blues in Las Vegas on February 22.
Joining Kerry in his new band are singer Mark Osegueda (DEATH ANGEL),guitarist Phil Demmel (MACHINE HEAD, VIO-LENCE),Kyle Sanders (bass; HELLYEAH) and Bostaph.
All material for "From Hell I Rise" was written by the 60-year-old SLAYER guitarist. Helming the sessions at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles in 2023 was producer Josh Wilbur, who has previously worked with KORN, LAMB OF GOD, AVENGED SEVENFOLD and BAD RELIGION, among others.
King authored all the lyrics, mainly for logistical reasons. "I finished everything before Mark knew he had the gig," he explained. "But that's not to say he will or won't write on record two." Circumstances dictated that King sing on all "From Hell I Rise" demos. "I did scratch vocals on everything," King said, adding, "I'm not a singer. I'm a guitar player. I've got conviction when I sing, but I have no range, and I need some distortion to help me out a little bit. There was always, 'I got this if whatever we're looking for doesn't work.' Luckily, we didn't have to go that route."
Last year, Kerry said that he knew people would compare "From Hell I Rise" to SLAYER. "I'm not afraid of that because I think it stands up to anything we've done in our history, musically, performance-wise," he said. But he was quick to add: "There will be people complaining, 'Why does it sound like SLAYER?' And 'why doesn't it sound more like SLAYER? That's just what people do."
In early May 2024, the KERRY KING band performed its first live show at Reggies in Chicago. In the days following, the band went from playing an intimate venue to performing at the huge U.S. festivals Welcome To Rockville (Florida) and Sonic Temple (Ohio).
KERRY KING launched a European tour on June 3, 2024 — King's 60th birthday – in Tilburg, The Netherlands. The trek combined headline shows in the U.K., The Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain but also festival appearances such as Rock Am Ring, Hellfest, Tuska, Download, Sweden Rock Festival and many more.
The SLAYER guitarist's solo band played its first concert as the support act for LAMB OF GOD and MASTODON on July 19, 2024 at the Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie, Texas. The six-week "Ashes Of Leviathan" tour wrapped on August 31, 2024 in Omaha, Nebraska.
Photo credit: Andrew Stuart
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21 фев 2025
ENSIFERUM Debut “Victorious” Music Video
 Finnish folk metal goliaths, Ensiferum, are pleased to present their video for “Victorious.” The track is taken from the band’s Winter Storm full-length, out now on Metal Blade Records, and arrives in advance of the band’s upcoming North American co-headlining tour with Korpiklaani.
A grandiose and heroic offering, Winter Storm centers itself on a fantasy concept narrative penned by bassist Sami Hinkka. “Victorious” follows the band’s “The Howl” video where the young boy in the story grows up and becomes a shaman. His people are losing the war and as his final deed, he calls upon the Old Spirits one last time. He sacrifices his mortal form and becomes a spirit wolf and starts his journey to find The One to avenge for his people’s fate.
Offers Hinkka on “Victorious”: “The One and the spirit wolf have now roamed the lands and gathered an army. They march to the gates of the city of the Winter Storm Vigilantes. The battle starts, but who shall be the last to stand on the battlefield? Who shall be victorious? This fast and furious song calls everyone into a moshpit! We are victorious!”
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21 фев 2025
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21 фев 2025
KAMELOT Drummer Officially Launches ROKK Streaming Service, With 'Fair Compensation For Artists At Its Core'
 KAMELOT drummer Alex Landenburg and MENTALIST guitarist Peter Moog have officially launched a new streaming service called ROKK.
ROKK is billing itself as "the ultimate streaming platform for all things hard and heavy, with superior sound quality and finally fair compensation for artists at its core."
The two musicians say "ROKK is the first service to offer direct artist support for your favorite band or musician right in the app. Fair music streaming, by artists for artists, and real music fans!"
A special launch offer, a free trial month to experience the platform, is now available, with exclusive introductory pricing: €8.99 per month for the first three months after your trial month, after which standard pricing of €10.99 per month applies. There are "no strings attached" and you can "cancel anytime", Landenburg and Moog say.
The offer and the reduced price is only available if you register and subscribe through the ROKK web site. The offer is valid until March 31.
Landenburg states: "After nearly four years of hard work, Peter Moog, myself, and our dedicated team behind the scenes — is beyond proud to finally officially launch ROKK!
"As a professional drummer and lifelong metal fan, I have now spent over two decades touring, recording, and experiencing firsthand the struggles musicians face — especially when it comes to streaming revenue in this modern landscape. My co-founder, Peter, shares the same passion for music, and together, we decided to do something about this.
"ROKK is not just another streaming service — it's about a community committed to giving rock and metal the recognition it deserves, where artists can receive fair compensation for each and every stream.
"One of the main reasons we built ROKK is to address a long-standing issue in the industry: the fact that most musicians have made very little to no money from their music being streamed. With our Direct Artist Support, you can help change that. An artist over the course of a year could see earnings equivalent to selling multiple records, and that's already covered in your regular subscription fee.
"To be transparent, just because we're incredibly proud of ROKK does not mean it is perfect right out of the gate.
"We built this with a fraction of the capital other platforms started with, as well as a small but incredible team. We're already hosting over 60 million songs, and we add more every single day. In fact, we import well over 10,000 tracks each week. Still, there will be some gaps, and you might run into the occasional technical glitch. If you do, please let us know directly. We're on it!
"Just a heads-up: if you click on a track and it takes longer to load, you're likely to be the first listener triggering its playback (transcoding). While the initial wait might feel lengthy, it happens only once — after that, the track AND entire album load instantly. Plus, we pre-transcode as much music as we can to ensure this delay remains a rare occurrence.
"Also, please note that initially some artwork might be missing, or that some information might be inaccurate. Like I said, we're just getting started, and we hope our community will step in to help us improve these details over time.
"This is the chance to use your knowledge to help shape the definitive rock and metal database. What do I mean by that? Our in-app music encyclopedia, or as we like to call it, Rokkpedia.
"With a free trial month and a reduced introductory subscription offer, we hope to make up for any initial shortcomings. Our goal is to eventually create something as great as the community it represents, and we look forward to improving every element, to build the platform we all dream of having. Every play, every share, every bit of feedback helps us make ROKK better, all while paying more to the artists you are listening to.
"Thank you for your support, and your patience (I'm looking at you Indiegogo community),and for being part of the music revolution.
"Time to ROKK!"
ROKK is available now on iOS, Android, and on the web at rokk-app.com throughout Europe, with plans to expand to other territories soon.
Many people still think Spotify doesn't pay the artists who are featured on its platform fairly.
In recent years, Spotify CEO and founder Daniel Ek has been trying to defend the company's payouts, telling CBS News in early 2023: "We don't pay artists directly. [Artists] have their deals with their record companies and their deals with their publishers, et cetera. And what Spotify does is we pay out to those record companies and these publishers, and don't know what individual deals these artists may have."
Almost four years ago, Spotify created a web site called Loud&Clear to clarify exactly who receives payments.
According to Forbes, "Spotify has been paying back nearly 70% of every dollar generated from music as royalties to rights holders who represent artists and songwriters. These organizations, which include independent distributors, publishers, performance rights organizations, record labels, and collecting societies, then pay the artists and songwriters based on their agreed terms."
Spotify boasts 675 million monthly active users as of December 2024. The number of people paying for Spotify Premium currently stands at 263 million.
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21 фев 2025
KANSAS Vocalist RONNIE PLATT Diagnosed With Thyroid Cancer
 KANSAS vocalist Ronnie Platt has revealed that he is battling cancer. As a result, the band has canceled two previously announced shows in Louisiana — in New Orleans on February 21 and Lake Charles on March 1. Tickets will be refunded at point of purchase.
On Saturday, February 15, the 64-year-old Platt took to his social media to write: "For all of you asking, Tuesday [February 11] I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer but before everyone gets all excited, it has a 99% survival rate, it has not spread. It's contained to my thyroid. I just have to have my thyroid removed. Go through some rehab time and be right back in the saddle.
"I sincerely appreciate everyone's positive thoughts and prayers.
"I have some absolutely amazing people going to bat for me!!
"As it has been put to me, this is just a bump in the road and will be behind me very soon! So everyone please CARRY ON!"
Platt joined KANSAS in July 2014 after the departure of longtime singer Steve Walsh.
Ronnie can be heard on KANSAS's last two studio albums, 2016's "The Prelude Implicit" and 2020's "The Absence Of Presence".
Formed in Topeka, Kansas in 1974, KANSAS has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide and has a catalog that includes 16 studio albums and five live albums, eight of which are gold and three that are platinum.
In a 2024 interview with Wyoming Tribune Eagle, Platt stated about how he landed the KANSAS gig: ""It's such a wild story. I've been telling it for 10 years, and it's still surreal to me. One day, while I was at work — I used to be a truck driver — I received a text message from a friend of mine, Dina, who knew what a fan I was of KANSAS. All of my cover bands back in Chicago would play KANSAS. ... Dina saw the announcement of Steve Walsh's retirement, and I reached out to Rich Williams (the original guitar player for KANSAS) on Facebook to ask him if they would consider me. I was in a band called SHOOTING STAR from 2007-2011, and we played with KANSAS a couple of times, so we already knew each other. The very next day, I get a message from him saying, 'We're about to go on stage in Houston, Texas. If you get this in the next 90 minutes, give me a call.' Before I knew it, I was flying to Atlanta, having a great conversation with Phil (Ehart) and Rich, I get back home to Chicago, and then I get a congratulations e-mail from Phil saying I'm in."
For all of you asking, Tuesday I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer but before everyone gets all excited, it has a 99%...
Posted by Ronnie Platt on Saturday, February 15, 2025 | 0 | |
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21 фев 2025
KISS Celebrates 50 Years Of 'Strutter' With Ultra-Rare 'Pure Gold Edition' And Limited 'Gold-Plated Edition'
 The #1 most gold-awarded U.S. artist and Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductees KISS proudly present "Strutter" on a limited-edition, playable gold records in honor of 50 years of the single available now. KISS partners with Precious Sound to produce two versions — the ultra-rare Pure Gold Edition and the Gold-Plated Edition.
As the ultimate KISS precious metal collectible, the world's first-ever Pure Gold Edition playable disc will be limited to only five copies worldwide pressed from eight ounces of pure .999 24-karat gold. These five-inch records are specifically remastered for gold playback on any manual turntable system. The A-side boasts the playable grooves, a rim engraving with each record's unique edition number as well as the KISS logo adorned with Swarovski crystals and the B-side celebrates the original Casablanca single label etched into the gold with proof-quality finish. The package features a luxurious coffee table display case bound in sustainable faux leather with gold foil accents and a Swarovski crystals KISS logo. The two-drawer case is hand-crafted to preserve this everlasting record for a lifetime. One drawer houses a protective sapphire crystal glass capsule and the other holds an exclusive book signed by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Other accessories in the set range from the gold-accented pen utilized to sign the respective book, a laser-engraved and numbered metal certificate of authenticity, a custom-made cork record mat for optimal playback, and a microfiber cleaning cloth. Each pressing is made-to-order.
Available to ship around the globe now, just 500 copies of the Gold-Plated Edition have been crafted for the world. The five-inch copper-core record is coated using .999 24-karat gold and are playable on any manual turntable. It is presented in a custom display case with a crystal glass window, a booklet, a silicon record mat, a micro-fiber cleaning cloth, and its own hand-numbered certificate of authenticity. Orders will be limited to two copies per customer.
Precious Sound crafted each version in Bavaria, Germany, implementing an impressive, patented process. 11 artisans completed the 304 steps of this process in order to create the Pure Gold Edition and Gold-Plated Edition.
"Strutter" notably opens the band's gold-certified self-titled debut album KISS — originally released on February 18, 1974 via Casablanca and produced by Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise. The song stands out as one of a few in the group's catalog co-written by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. This upbeat anthem effectively set the tone for KISS. In retrospect, Paste ranked it at No. 2 on "The 20 Best KISS Songs," and American Songwriter summed it up succinctly as "classic." As the story goes, Gene and Paul initially brought "Strutter" to life before even settling on the band name. A bit later on, it graced an early five-track demo cut at Electric Lady Studios with producer Eddie Kramer. Finally, it served as the third and final official single from their first LP. It has impressively amassed hundreds of millions of streams, appeared in classic video game franchises such as "Grand Theft Auto" and "Guitar Hero", and would later be covered by everyone from EXTREME to VITAMIN STRING QUARTET.
Also, KISS and Disco Lines collaborated on a new remix of one of the band's most iconic songs "I Was Made For Lovin' You". The song, "I Was Made For Lovin' You (Disco Lines Remix)", was released digitally on Valentine's Day and can be streamed below.
Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame icons KISS have earned the most RIAA certified albums of any other American band with 16 gold, 14 platinum and 3 multi-platinum, they have sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, 15 million monthly Spotify listeners with 96 million listeners in 183 countries, generating 3.57 billion streams. Their 1979 single "I Was Made For Lovin' You" crossed one billion streams last year.
Zurich, Switzerland-based Precious Sound has pushed the material possibilities of music to create a new medium through which to experience it: playable gold, platinum, and silver records. The first playable gold and silver records — pressed with their patented technology — were launched in 2024. In the same year, Precious Sound launched its collectibles line of spectacular limited-edition products honoring musical icons and metal craftsmanship, such as THE BEATLES, THE ROLLING STONES and now KISS. | +4 | |
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20 фев 2025
PETER BALTES On Re-Recording ACCEPT's Iconic 'Balls To The Wall' LP: 'I Was Nervous Touching The Album Again'
 In a recent interview with Jorge Botas of Portugal's Metal Global, Udo Dirkschneider and Peter Baltes spoke about the upcoming reimagining of ACCEPT's iconic album "Balls To The Wall" to celebrate the LP's 40th anniversary. The band's founding member and former frontman has reinterpreted this classic with a fresh and star-studded twist. Far from a simple remake, this project was born out of countless conversations with prominent artists across the global rock and metal scene, who frequently asked: "Are you planning anything special for the 40th anniversary of 'Balls To The Wall'?" These discussions sparked the idea to re-record the album's legendary tracks alongside a stellar lineup of guest musicians, transforming the project into a heartfelt tribute.
Asked what led to the decision to release a reimagined version of "Balls To The Wall", Udo said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Normally it was not planned to do an album; it was only planned to do a tour about the 40-years anniversary of 'Balls'. And so on some festivals, a lot of singers [from other bands] came up [and asked], 'Oh, you do something special for the 40th anniversary.' And then we said, 'Yeah, touring, definitely.' And then they said, 'Oh, I would love to sing a song of the 'Balls' album.' And then the idea came up very slowly. We said, 'Yeah, it can be interesting.'"
Udo continued: "To re-record the 'Balls' album, it's like, 'Don't touch the holy cow.' But with the guest-singer thing now, what we did, I think it worked out very well. The reactions are very good so far. And so I think I'm happy with the result of everything."
Asked if he enjoyed the process of hearing different guests singing with Udo, Peter said: "I enjoyed it tremendously. I also was nervous touching the album again. But after we started recording, I felt really into it. And I played it the way I play live today, the songs. I decided not to copy the original, on my bass playing specifically, because these songs evolved over so many years to what I'm playing today. And that was one of the reasons. The other as much as the holy cow and iconic it is, it also sits on the shelf somewhere and everybody's behind you and it hasn't been moved in 20 years. So it is an honor for us to be able to reintroduce the album to a younger generation, to a whole new world today. And I think it gives the album a great honor that it deserves, where it stands."
Udo added: "I was quite nervous when I started recording the album, with vocals. I mean, I was not quite sure that I'd hit all the notes [laughs], the high notes and all that. But in the end, I think it works. So I'm lucky. And I think especially the whole atmosphere between the guest singers and my vocals, I think it gives the whole thing a new dimension, a new atmosphere. And yeah, I like it very much."
In a separate interview with The Brutally Delicious Podcast, Udo stated about "Balls To The Wall - Reloaded": "Let's say in the beginning it was just planned to do a tour [celebrating] the 40 years of 'Balls To The Wall'. But then on festivals, some musicians came up and said, 'Oh, you do something special for this 40-years anniversary of 'Balls'. And I said, 'Yeah, touring.' 'Yeah. You know I love this song. I would love to sing on this,' and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I think it developed."
Udo's son Sven Dirkschneider, who plays drums in DIRKSCHNEIDER and U.D.O., added: "The idea came together. We had so many great vocalists that wanted to participate on this album. So we sat down and had a thought if we can — because it's very tough in managing all this. I mean, everyone is busy, everyone is doing their own records and whatnot. So it was quite challenging, but in the end it worked out. I think we got the last vocals in last minute to get this done. But yeah, we have really good people on this album and we appreciate that they wanted to do it. And I think they're great new versions of the legendary album."
Asked if they had certain vocalists in mind for certain songs, Sven said: "We had a very long list. And stuff like [SAXON's] Biff Byford on 'London Leatherboys' was kind of obvious, that we wanted to have him for this. And, yeah, we're going on tour with SAXON as well in November this year. So, it all makes perfect sense. And, yeah, [there are some] very, very good collaborations."
Udo continued: "All the singers, they did a great job on it. For example, Joakim [Brodén] from SABATON, 'Balls To The Wall', he did a great job. And also [TWISTED SISTER's] Dee Snider on 'Losers And Winners'. And also Biff on 'London Leatherboys'.
"The thing was we did not tell them, 'Okay, you have to sing this line and this line and this line and this line.' [We told them to] sing the whole song and then we can see which parts fit together with my vocals," Udo explained. "And then, when you listen, for example, to the vocals of Biff for 'London Leatherboys', it can be a SAXON song… I mean, Doro [Pesch] did a great job on 'Winter Dreams'. And also Mille [Petrozza] of KREATOR, 'Fight It Back'. And also Michael Kiske, from HELLOWEEN, he was singing 'Losing More Than You've Ever Had'. He did a great job. Also for me, especially, it was interesting to hear this. 'Wow, okay. Good.' Yeah, I think we are happy and I think also the guest singers, I think they really enjoyed to do this. And that was the most important thing. And also that they put their own character on each song, not trying to be Udo. That makes no sense."
Referencing the new version of "Balls To The Wall" featuring Brodén, Sven said: "We called [Joakim] up because we have a long relationship with SABATON. We played their festival multiple times and we've always had a good time with them. So that was kind of natural, and he was totally up for it. But it was also very interesting. He, for example, did the speaking part. And then he came back to us and said, 'No, use Udo's, because he does it better.' But it was super cool that, yeah, everyone put his character and his style of singing on to the songs. So that was great."
Sven also talked about the overall approach when it came to the production of "Balls To The Wall - Reloaded", saying: "'Especially with the drum sound, we tried to get as close as possible from this old-school vibe, but still, I mean, now we have modern technology recording stuff, so it definitely sounds up to date, but it's still with the old-school vibes. It's natural. I mean, when Peter [Baltes, former ACCEPT and current DIRKSCHNEIDER and U.D.O. bassist] plays bass, it's Peter playing bass. So it is that sound. And as soon as Udo's kicking in… And our guitar players, they're doing it for such a long time that they also are totally into the vibe of this kind of music. So it came along naturally, I would say, the sound of this album. But still, it's modern quality, which I think is awesome."
"Balls To The Wall - Reloaded" track listing:
01. Balls To The Wall (feat. Joakim Brodén of SABATON)
02. London Leatherboys (feat. Biff Byford of SAXON)
03. Fight It Back (feat. Mille Petrozza of KREATOR)
04. Head Over Heels (feat. Nils Molin of DYNAZTY/AMARANTHE)
05. Losing More Than You've Ever Had (feat. Michael Kiske of HELLOWEEN)
06. Love Child (feat. Ylva Eriksson of BROTHERS OF METAL)
07. Turn Me On (feat. Danko Jones)
08. Losers And Winners (feat. Dee Snider of TWISTED SISTER)
09. Guardian Of The Night (feat. Tim "Ripper" Owens of KK's PRIEST, formerly of JUDAS PRIEST)
10. Winter Dreams (feat. Doro Pesch)
The second single from the album, a re-recording of "Winter Dreams", reveals a softer side of the LP while preserving a meaningful lyrical depth, making it an emotional anthem of freedom. The single stands out not only for its significance but also for featuring the legendary German metal queen Doro Pesch, alongside Udo Dirkschneider. This collaboration highlights the album's unique approach, underlining the long-running inspiration for the whole scene and renowned metal figureheads and companions alike.
Udo commented: "It was a very special experience for me to re-record 'Winter Dreams' with Doro Pesch. Doro and I have spent so many years together in the scene and there is a deep, almost familial connection between us. Her voice gives this song an incredible magic and emotionality that takes it to a whole new level. It was like a reunion with an old friend for me and together we made 'Winter Dreams' even more intense and personal. It just feels right to share this moment together!”
Doro added: "'Balls To The Wall' has always been one of my absolute favorite albums. I was really happy to sing the wonderful 'Winter Dreams' as a duet with Udo Dirkschneider and to shoot a great video for it. We have a long friendship and it is always special to work with him."
Taking fans to the vaults of Castle Reifenstein (Freienfeld, Italy),located in a beautifully wintry mountain landscape, the "Winter Dreams" music video, starring both vocalists Udo Dirkschneider and Doro Pesch, can be watched below.
Regarding the task of reimagining the entire "Balls To The Wall" album, Udo previously stated: "Re-recording 'Balls To The Wall' was a big challenge for me. The album is a milestone of my career, of course. That's why it was even more important to me to make the original songs shine in a new light without losing their initial essence. All guests have put their individual stamps on these classic tracks, and collaborating with such outstanding vocalists has moved them into a fresh and exciting dimension. The result is a powerful homage to all fans but also an invitation to the next generation to experience the songs not minorly passionate than I was when I recorded them back in the day. It's a never-ending personal journey for me — 'Balls To The Wall' will always be a part of me."
DIRKSCHNEIDER, the band featuring former ACCEPT members Dirkschneider (vocals) and Peter Baltes (bass),along with drummer Sven Dirkschneider and the talented guitar duo of Andrey Smirnov and Fabian "Dee" Dammers, celebrated the 40th anniversary of "Balls To The Wall", which was originally released in late 1983 and is the most commercially successful and best-known album by ACCEPT, by performing the LP in its entirety on a recent tour of South America.
In an interview with Eric Blair of The Blairing Out With Eric Blair Show, Udo was asked what he loves about playing with Peter again. Udo said: "[It's] fantastic. We have a really good relationship. So when he left ACCEPT in 2018, we were working together on an album with the German army, a classic album. We were writing songs together, and that was the first time we were working together again. And then the problem came for [U.D.O.] when we had this 'Game Over' tour in Europe. The other bass player that we had at this time felt very sick. And then for me it was, like, 'Hmm, hmm. What am I doing? I need a bass player who can do everything very quick.' I was calling Peter. I asked him, 'Can you help us on this tour?' And then, I think in South America, the bass player that we had before, he said, 'Yeah, I don't wanna do it anymore. I'm out of U.D.O.' And then we were sitting there in a restaurant, and I said, 'Oh, no. We have to look for a new bass player.' And Peter said, 'Maybe I would love to join U.D.O.' So here we go. And it's good. I mean, I'm really looking forward also to work with him on the next U.D.O. album."
Ten years ago — in 2015 — Udo announced that he would embark on a special tour during which he would perform ACCEPT songs one last time under the DIRKSCHNEIDER banner before closing that chapter for good. Since then, the former ACCEPT frontman has continued to play ACCEPT material at select shows, including at the September 18, 2020 U.D.O. concert in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, which was released on DVD and Blu-ray.
When he first announced the original DIRKSCHNEIDER tour in 2015, Udo said that had "to make a clear break for myself — close the book and this is it. And I have the problem that people come to me and ask me to play more ACCEPT songs," he explained. "Other people ask me why I play ACCEPT songs at all, because there are [more than] fifteen U.D.O. records. I want to avoid such things and avoid the repeating questions concerning ACCEPT. I just can't stand that anymore. There is nothing more to be said. U.D.O. exists longer than ACCEPT. We have more records than ACCEPT."
While acknowledging that some ACCEPT fans want to hear the band's classic songs performed by the group's original singer, Dirkschneider explained that "you always have these comparisons [between how these songs are played by ACCEPT and U.D.O.]. I don't want this anymore either. [The current lineup of ACCEPT] also play 'Metal Heart', they play 'Balls To The Wall' and 'Princess Of The Dawn'. And then some people tell me, 'Oh, [current ACCEPT singer Mark Tornillo] is doing it better than you.' And I go, 'That's fine. Enjoy yourself.' But I don't want this anymore. And to avoid all of this in the future, I said, 'We are doing this one more time.'"
Dirkschneider said that his vow to never play ACCEPT material again came with one caveat. "If the band ACCEPT dissolves one day in the near future and I am still around with U.D.O., then there is a chance that I put ACCEPT songs back in the setlist," he said. "But currently there is ACCEPT, so go see them [if you want to see those songs performed live]. They are playing these songs."
Udo previously said the original plan was for DIRKSCHNEIDER to only "a few shows," and "then [the tour] got bigger and bigger [due to demand]." But, he added, "I don't want to complain about that."
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20 фев 2025
BRIAN WHEAT To Launch New Band With TOMMY SKEOCH And CHRIS HOLMES
 In a new interview with Ernest Skinner of Canada's Border City Rock Talk, TESLA bassist Brian Wheat discussed his friendship with former W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Me and Chris are gonna do a band or a project, whatever you wanna call it, together. And [former TESLA guitarist] Tommy [Skeoch] has agreed to do it as well. So the three of us have talked about putting together a project, band, whatever you wanna call it this day and age, but me and Chris have already started to work on some songs. And I know me and Tommy know how to write songs together 'cause we did a lot in TESLA. So the next step would be to get me and Tommy and Chris together, whether it's on a Zoom, working together like that or whatever, and write some material, and then find a singer that would be the right singer for that project.
"But, yeah, me and Chris are pretty good buddies," Brian continued. "We see each other when I'm at my house in Italy. He's there all the time. He lives in France. And I'm in Florida now for the winter. Tommy's in Florida. So we've all talked about it. So it's just when we get around to doing it. And it's just carving out a time where Chris isn't busy doing MEAN MAN, I'm not doing TESLA or VIOLET BREED, and Tommy's not doing BAD MARRIAGE.
"I'm looking forward to it, because I like Chris and I wanna work with Tommy again," Wheat added.
In February 2022, Skeoch, who left TESLA in 2006 to receive treatment for substance-abuse issues, reconnected with Wheat for the first time in more than a decade and a half aboard that year's Monsters Of Rock cruise. The charter cruise featured performances by Skeoch's then-band RESIST & BITE while Wheat was onboard showing his art.
In an interview with SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk", Skeoch was asked if he exited TESLA of his own accord or if he was asked to leave. Tommy said: "I was fired. I was getting fucked up and I was definitely in the wrong about a lot of stuff, and they put up with it for a long time. But at the same time, none of us were angels, and we put up with a lot of stuff from the other guys for a long time too, and they're still there. So I felt like a little scapegoated by the thing. And the other thing is they didn't want people — I guess for the benefit of my family, so it wouldn't look bad — they said, 'Tommy's just gonna spend time [with his family].' That's why nobody knows, and that's why you're asking this question. Everyone's confused on even what happened. Basically, I was fired. I was getting fucked up, and I kept fucking up, and I kept telling 'em I wouldn't, and I just couldn't stop."
Skeoch added that he accepts responsibility for the circumstances that led to his departure from TESLA. "I do, of course," he said. "But I also believe we put up with a lot of shit for a long time from almost every other guy in the band, and they're still there. So I don't know what's up with that; that's a little weird to me."
Skeoch, who was a founding member of TESLA, played on the Sacramento five-piece defining albums, including 1986 debut "Mechanical Resonance" and 1990's "Five Man Acoustical Jam".
Tommy, who was fired due to substance abuse issues in 1994, rejoined when TESLA reformed more than two and a half decades ago following a brief hiatus. | 0 | |
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20 фев 2025
Ex-FEAR FACTORY Singer BURTON C. BELL To Release Two New Singles Before The Summer
 In a new interview with Australia's Heavy, former FEAR FACTORY frontman Burton C. Bell spoke about his plans for new music after issuing two singles in 2024 — "Anti-Droid" and "Technical Exorcism" — and a cover of RAMMSTEIN's "Du Hast" in 2023. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I've had a great response [to the singles I've released so far]. Live, the fans really like it. They really translate live very well. The band that I have gathered, or should I say curated, 'cause it took me a couple of years to curate this band and grab these guys together. I've known [them] for a few years, but finally I got this band together. And the music that we play is really translating into a new group that's really translating these songs in a heavy, groovy, dark and moody way. It's amazing. So what you hear is gonna be heavier live."
Asked if he is sticking with his previously announced plan of putting out one song at a time before eventually releasing a full-length album, Bell said: "I am, but I've been recording a lot more new songs. So I've been releasing one thing at a time, but I do plan to have an actual physical release, hopefully in the coming year. So, the band and I, we have a few more songs that we're working on and that we're gonna just start working on new stuff. Well, we're already working on new stuff, but the two new songs — the first song that you guys are gonna hear in probably another month is a fucking banger, dude. It crushes — crushes. And the one after that crushes as well. And we're just gonna continue with that mode — just crushing."
Regarding whether "Anti-Droid" and "Technical Exorcism" are "a good sonic representation of what to expect from the whole album", Bell said: "I would say come to see us live and that will be a great representation of what you'll expect from the album, because, like I said, what we do live is we translate these songs to what we are doing now to our version. So even FEAR FACTORY songs and GZR songs, they are much more full. When you come [to see us] live, it's becoming more of an organic kind of feeling; it's just heavy. It's me, obviously, and then I have two guitar players. They both trade off doing rhythm and lead, bass player and drums. So, if you wanna hear what the album is gonna be like, come see what we do live and you'll understand and you will not be disappointed."
Video of Bell's December 13, 2024 concert at The Regent in Los Angeles, California as the support act for GOD FORBID can be seen below.
Bell played the first concert with his solo band on June 13, 2024 at 1720 in Los Angeles, California.
Backing Bell at the gigs were guitarist Henrik Linde (THE VITALS, DREN),drummer Ryan "Junior" Kittlitz (ALL HAIL THE YETI, THE ACID HELPS),bassist Tony Baumeister (ÆGES) and multi-instrumentalist Stewart Cararas.
When the 1720 concert was first announced, Burton called the gig a "historic event" and vowed to perform "new songs and classics spanning my career."
In August 2024, Bell released a new solo single, "Technical Exorcism", along with the official Don Pancho Films-directed music video for the track.
In March 2024, Bell, who released his debut solo single that same month, "Anti-Droid", was asked by Knotfest's "Nu Pod" podcast if he has an entire album's worth of material ready to come out. He responded: "No. I'm working on individual singles at a time. I do have a record's worth of music. But I'm adopting the hip-hop strategy where instead of coming up, releasing a single and then the whole album comes out a couple of weeks later, and then a couple of weeks later, when that album is out, the momentum of the single and the whole record just kind of slows and becomes sluggish and just almost crashes. So I learned watching hip-hop artists and other artists as well, [where] they would just release a single at a time, keep that momentum, keep that spotlight on them and just release a single every few weeks and just keep that momentum going."
He continued: "In this day and age, the short attention span of the masses is very apparent. There's this old saying in economics, less is more — supply and demand, less is more. So if you just feed 'em just a little bit at a time, they wanna hear more. And that's where the interest stays. They're compelled to keep listening. 'Oh, he's got something else coming out. Oh, he's got something else coming out.'"
Bell's discography includes multiple live and recorded collaborations with BLACK SABBATH icon Geezer Butler and JOURNEY's Deen Castronovo (as G/Z/R); industrial maverick Al Jourgensen and MINISTRY; and guest vocal appearances with PITCHSHIFTER, CONFLICT, SOIL, STATIC-X, SOULFLY and DELAIN, among others. He's the vocalist of ASCENSION OF THE WATCHERS and CITY OF FIRE and, of course, the co-creator of FEAR FACTORY and the only musician to appear on every FEAR FACTORY release from 1992 through 2024.
FEAR FACTORY created a sound that revolutionized extreme metal, defined in no small part by Bell's innovative scream/sing dichotomy and the influences he brought from post-punk and industrial. Songs like "Replica", "Linchpin", "Edgecrusher", "Fear Campaign", "Archetype", "Cyber Waste" and "Zero Signal" are modern metal anthems. "Demanufacture" (1995) and the RIAA gold-certified "Obsolete" (1998) are genre-redefining works heralded by fans and critics as essential albums. Orwell, Bradbury, "Blade Runner", and sophisticated sci-fi and fantasy works fed Bell's lyrics and concepts.
The band toured the world with METALLICA, SLIPKNOT, KORN, MEGADETH and OZZY OSBOURNE, taking bands like SYSTEM OF A DOWN and STATIC-X out as support acts in their early stages. After years of behind-the-scenes band member turmoil and legal issues, Bell left FEAR FACTORY in the fall of 2020.
Bell said "Anti-Droid" is "a statement about breaking free. Breaking the bonds of what I felt was a prison in many ways. Not just financially or contractually but creatively, as well. I felt constrained to this format we'd written ourselves into. The 'factory' doesn't have a capital F. It's the factory of the music industry, a certain form of business, and priorities. Being a slave to an established way of thinking is not really freedom. I am moving forward."
The 55-year-old Bell had been largely inactive on the musical front since officially announcing his departure from FEAR FACTORY in September 2020. At the time he said that he could not "align" himself with someone whom he did not trust or respect, an apparent reference to FEAR FACTORY founding guitarist Dino Cazares.
In March 2023, Bell was asked by Joshua Toomey of the "Talk Toomey" podcast how it felt to see FEAR FACTORY going out on tour with someone else singing the parts he originally wrote and recorded with the band. He responded: "It doesn't affect me at all. To be honest, I haven't been this happy in a long time. More power to them, but I'm just moving forward in my own life, my own career, and I'm just trying to make a name for myself."
Asked if he has checked out any of the videos on YouTube of FEAR FACTORY performing with his replacement, the Italian-born singer Milo Silvestro, Bell said: "No, I don't. I don't care to."
Burton went on to say that he doesn't mind being asked about FEAR FACTORY despite the fact that he is no longer in the band. "FEAR FACTORY, it's what I'm known for," he explained. "And the 30 years I had with FEAR FACTORY were some of the proudest moments of my career. And everything I've ever done in FEAR FACTORY I'm very proud of. Even some of the questionable things I've done in FEAR FACTORY I'm still proud of. It was a great legacy."
During an April 2022 appearance on an episode of "The Ex-Man" podcast hosted by Doc Coyle (BAD WOLVES),Bell touched upon FEAR FACTORY's latest album, "Aggression Continuum", which was released in June 2021 via Nuclear Blast Records. The LP, which was recorded primarily in 2017, features Bell and fellow original FF member Dino Cazares (guitar) alongside drummer Mike Heller.
"I was just happy that record finally came out," Burton said. "We finished that record in 2017. By the time it came out, I'd forgotten all about it. 'Oh, yeah, I remember that song. Oh yeah.'
"There's some good songs on that record. The song 'Collapse' is a good song. The title track 'Monolith' is a good song," he added, referencing the LP's original working title, before it was changed by Cazares.
When Coyle noted that the mix on "Aggression Continuum" is "great," Bell hesitated for a couple of seconds before reluctantly agreeing. "I guess," he said. "When I finished the record [in 2017], the record was done and agreed upon and then further work was done without my say."
Elsewhere in the chat, Burton admitted that "it was difficult" for him to leave FEAR FACTORY. "Stepping away from FEAR FACTORY was not an easy decision by [any] means," he said. "But what I experienced for the 10 years before that, the lawsuits, the acrimony, that was the one that killed me. And I just had to step away to realize, you know, they can take all this stuff from me — they can take the money, they can take the royalties, they can take the trademark away from me — and I realized that didn't define me. They can take that, but I'm still Burton C. Bell, motherfucker, and whatever I have they can't take. So I'm just kind of moving forward and doing new things."
According to Bell, hardship is par for the course for most musicians, who often find themselves victims of bad contracts, unscrupulous management and, all too often, what appears to be a penchant for self-destruction.
"I knew a long time ago I wanted to be an artist — way before I was in FEAR FACTORY," he said. "When I was in high school, I was, like, 'I wanna be an artist.' To be an artist, you've gotta suffer. You've gotta understand that people wanna take from you the entire time — what you create they wanna make money off of and take it away from you and just give you a pittance. But being bitter is not my style — never has been.
"Whatever negativity has happened in the past with FEAR FACTORY doesn't even hold up to the amount of positivity that has happened," he continued. "If you think about the negative, it can weigh you down so much, but it's not really that much in comparison to what the band achieved, what we created, what we provided to the music world, and for that I'm proud and very happy.
"No one likes to talk to a bitter person at all," Burton added. "Me for one. It's, like, 'Man, just get over it and just move on.' 'Cause holding on to the past doesn't serve me anything, it doesn't serve anybody else anything. Move on and show 'em what you can do from that point forward."
Bell's exit from FEAR FACTORY came more than two weeks after Cazares launched a GoFundMe campaign to assist him with the production costs associated with the release of FEAR FACTORY's latest LP.
Bell later told Kerrang! magazine that his split with FEAR FACTORY was a long time coming. "It's been on my mind for a while," he said. "These lawsuits [over the rights to the FEAR FACTORY name] just drained me. The egos. The greed. Not just from bandmembers, but from the attorneys involved. I just lost my love for it.
"With FEAR FACTORY, it's just constantly been, like, 'What?!' You can only take so much. I felt like 30 years was a good run. Those albums I've done with FEAR FACTORY will always be out there. I'll always be part of that. I just felt like it was time to move forward."
In 2023, Bell unveiled "Paradise Found", his debut exhibition of photographic works, at the Vincent Castiglia Gallery in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The photographs Bell presented were representational of his industrial and science-fiction aesthetic.
"Paradise Found" consisted of 20 original full-color photographs of abandoned industrial buildings taken in darkness and fog from 2002 to 2003. Bell's images are printed on aluminum using the dye sublimation process — an approach Bell calls "celluloid impressionism."
Bell's ASCENSION OF THE WATCHERS project released its second full-length album, "Apocrypha", in October 2020 via Dissonance Productions.
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Lacrimosa
