Month: March 2021

In a new chat with Ray Shasho of BBS Radio’s “Interviewing The Legends”, MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson was asked which artist — dead or alive — he would like to perform or collaborate with if he got the chance. He responded (hear audio below): “Probably Eddie Van Halen. And I don’t say that just because [he recently] passed. [VAN HALEN is] a band that MEGADETH never played with. And they were such an influential band for me. And even as a bass player, Eddie was an influence on me. And I don’t play guitar like him at all. When I play guitar, I probably play more like Rudy Schenker [SCORPIONS] or Malcolm Young [AC/DC] or something. I’m not a lead guitar player — I admit that. I just love his approach to things — just kind of shoot from the hip, play from the heart.

“I really admire how [VAN HALEN bassist] Michael Anthony played bass to Eddie’s guitar playing,” he continued. “There was a simplicity that anchored it. Eddie used to really sing Michael’s praises back in the day about just being such a great solid bass player. And while that doesn’t get a lot of spotlight, it doesn’t get headlines… While Eddie was getting the headlines, I always admired that he spoke highly about Michael and his ability to just sort of anchor the band down.

“That would be a fun experience, to have played with [Eddie], even just for an afternoon.”

MEGADETH is continuing to record its 16th studio album for a tentative late 2021 or early 2022 release.

The early sessions for the LP took place in 2019 with co-producer Chris Rakestraw, who previously worked on “Dystopia”.

“Dystopia”, whose title track was honored in the “Best Metal Performance” category at the 2017 Grammy Awards, marked Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro’s recording debut with MEGADETH.

MEGADETH’s current lineup is rounded out by founding guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine and 46-year-old Belgian-born-and-now-Los-Angeles-based drummer Dirk Verbeuren, who had played with SOILWORK for more than a decade before joining MEGADETH.

Ellefson’s solo band released its covers album, “No Cover”, last November via earMUSIC (Europe) and Ward Records (Japan)

EVANESCENCE will release a new single, “Better Without You”, this Friday, March 5. It is the next single from the band’s upcoming album, “The Bitter Truth”, which will arrive on March 26 via BMG.

EVANESCENCE has just released a digital puzzle for fans to solve in order to hear a snippet of the new song; check it out here. Everyone who solves the puzzle will receive a free “Better Without You” ringtone and will be entered for a chance to be the first fan in the world (along with a guest) to hear the full song along with a private question-and-answer session with singer Amy Lee.

“The Bitter Truth” is EVANESCENCE’s first album of original music in ten years, and its songs have already earned accolades from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Elle, Billboard, and many more.

Fans can pre-order a “The Bitter Truth” digital version, CD, vinyl and a limited-edition deluxe fan box set featuring a bonus CD, journal, poster and special cassette of exclusive audio from the making of “The Bitter Truth”. Every pre-order will automatically come with downloads of already-released songs “Wasted On You”, “The Game Is Over”, and “Use My Voice”, as well as “Yeah Right”.

“The Bitter Truth” is an epic, guitar-driven collection inspired by the (often-bitter) realities of the 21st Century and our world. The already-released songs have received early accolades from Elle, Billboard, SPIN, American Songwriter, and more, and showcase the “ferocious and hymnal” (The New York Times) sound that made EVANESCENCE a household name, as well as the drama and powerhouse vocals that made Amy Lee “one of rock’s definitive voices” (Rolling Stone).

EVANESCENCE’s new music was produced by Nick Raskulinecz, who also worked on 2011’s self-titled LP.

On the topic of “The Bitter Truth” album title, Lee previously told Rock Sound: “As the lyrics had started to form, and just my feeling in this moment in general, there’s a big theme of disillusionment for me. Just growing up and seeing that fairy tales aren’t really real. And it’s hard to be a grownup — it really is. Because somebody else isn’t in charge, we really have to be able to make our own decisions, find out our own information, protect ourselves. People die — we’re all going to. There’s no magic castle. So that sounds like a lot of doom and gloom when I say it, but there’s a choice to accept that truth and live in it and embrace it and choose to live and choose to live in a moment, and the choice to just give up. And there’s a struggle there, but my choice is most definitely to take that pill.”

SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor is featured in “Live The Madness”, the new music video from MOONSHINE BANDITS, the American country rap group composed of Dusty “Tex” Dahlgren and Brett “Bird” Brooks. The clip, which can be seen below, also features Corey’s wife Alicia Taylor, a professional dancer and a member of the all-girl dance group CHERRY BOMBS.

“Live The Madness”, featuring Corey on guest vocals, is taken from MOONSHINE BANDITS’ latest album, “Fire”, which came out in 2020.

Since their formation in Los Banos California in 2003, the MOONSHINE BANDITS have continued a campaign of crossover genre-bending musical mayhem that appeals to the eclectic, color-outside-the-lines tastes of listeners, a.k.a. The Shiners, and they fiercely refuse to have their tastes confined and filed into categories.

The MOONSHINE BANDITS have crisscrossed the country performing hundreds of shows a year, ventured into branding their own beef jerky and moonshine, collaborated with some of the music business’s most prolific artists, outshined in the face of record industry roadblocks, earned a fiercely loyal fan following, and embrace the unconventional. It’s all part of a journey filled with good, bad and even some ugly, but ultimately the MOONSHINE BANDITS philosophy is summed up by Tex and Bird’s joint statement: “We always felt there aren’’ stops or boundaries if you pave your own lane.”

In a new interview with Greg Prato of Songfacts, legendary BLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi was asked to name the definitive song from the band’s Ozzy Osbourne era. He responded: “I always relate to ‘Black Sabbath’. And ‘Iron Man’. A lot of people say ‘Paranoid’, but the song was written as a filler for the album — it was never intended on being anything else. But it became a single because it was a short song, and because it became what it did, most people knew us because of ‘Paranoid’ in them days.”

During the same chat, Iommi also talked about how he came up with the classic “Iron Man” guitar riff. He said: “I was in a rehearsal room, and Bill [Ward, drums] started playing this boom, boom, boom. He started doing it, and I just went [sings bending string bit before the song’s riff] and came up with this thing and thought, ‘That’s cool.’ Bill kept playing it, and I just went to this riff.

“Most of the riffs I’ve done I’ve come up with on the spot, and that was one of them — it just came up. It went with the drum, what Bill was playing. I just saw this thing in my mind of someone creeping up on you, and it just sounded like the riff. In my head, I could hear it as a monster, so I came up with that riff there and then.”

The 73-year-old Iommi, who was diagnosed with the early stages of lymphoma more than nine years ago, revealed last month that he received the COVID-19 vaccine.

Tony is the third member of BLACK SABBATH to get a COVID-19 vaccine, after singer Ozzy Osbourne and bassist Geezer Butler.

Iommi is currently promoting the upcoming deluxe editions of BLACK SABBATH’s “Heaven And Hell” and “Mob Rules” albums.

Tony revealed his cancer diagnosis in early 2012, shortly after SABBATH announced a reunion tour and album. He underwent treatment throughout the recording of the disc, titled “13”, and the subsequent tour to promote it.

The BLACK SABBATH guitarist successfully underwent an operation in January 2017 to remove a noncancerous lump from his throat.

“13” was the first album in 35 years to feature Osbourne, Iommi and Butler all playing together.

In February 2017, SABBATH finished “The End” tour in Birmingham, closing out the quartet’s groundbreaking 49-year career.

“The End” was SABBATH’s last tour because Iommi can no longer travel for extended amounts of time.

In a new interview with the “Guitar Villains” video podcast, legendary guitarist Steve Vai revealed that he recently underwent hand surgery as a result of an injury he sustained while working on his upcoming “acoustic vocal” record. “I was doing this fun thing, and I had to put my thumb in this really weird position,” he explained (see video below). “And I had to kind of hold this chord really for a long time — I was meditating on it. And I knew it was a hard position, and I just kept sitting there and playing it and playing and playing, and 20 minutes later, I’d kind of come out, and I [felt pain in my hand]. So I kind of sprained this, and then, all of a sudden, I developed trigger finger… My wife said, ‘Don’t show anybody,’ ’cause they did that operation and they cut in there, and the guy’s fooling around with everything in there, and it’s really bizarre. But it’s all fine — it’s something very simple that they can fix. But I won’t be able to play for a while.”

Last month, Vai told “The Cassius Morris Show” that he also had a shoulder operation which further affected his playing ability.

“Before [the trigger finger surgery] happened, my shoulder was screwed up and I couldn’t use this [picking] hand, so I was playing with one hand,” he said. “So I did a little song with one hand, [and] I’m gonna work on trying to get that out.”

In addition to the “acoustic vocal” album, Steve is also reportedly working on three new instrumental guitar records — the first two with clean and dirty tones, respectively, and the third with all “drop-tuned eight-string stuff.” He is also planning a new “Generation Axe” live release, as well as additions to his orchestral record series, “Sound Theories”.

In September 2019, Vai released a Blu-ray edition of his 2015 live DVD, “Stillness In Motion”, via his personal record label Light Without Heat, distributed by The Orchard. The release features Vai’s complete performance at Club Nokia in Los Angeles on October 12, 2012.

As a virtuoso guitarist, composer and producer, Vai has sold over 15 million albums and won three Grammy Awards. Vai has toured the world with Frank Zappa, ALCATRAZZ, David Lee Roth, WHITESNAKE and the “G3” tour. He appeared in the acclaimed movie “Crossroads”, and also established the Make A Noise foundation. Vai owns the Favored Nations Entertainment record label, and has created music for blockbuster films, best-selling video games, national sports franchises, and corporate brand initiatives.

Former QUEENSRŸCHE singer Geoff Tate took part in an intimate acoustic performance on February 13 at the Everett Theatre in Everett, Washington. The socially distanced event operated at 25% capacity which equated to about 100 people in total watching the show inside the venue.

Professionally filmed video of Tate performing the QUEENSRŸCHE song “Around The World” at the Everett concert can be seen below.

Last month, Tate announced around a dozen U.S. dates in late summer and fall as part of a tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of QUEENSRŸCHE’s “Empire” and “Rage For Order” albums. All tickets will go on sale this Friday, February 26 at 10:00 local time.

For more information, including ticket links and links for meet-and-greet passes for purchase to meet Geoff and his band after the live shows, visit www.geofftate.com.

Early last year, Tate was forced to postone a number of his tour dates due to the coronavirus pandemic that is spreading across the globe.

Tate spent the first two months of 2020 performing the QUEENSRŸCHE albums “Rage For Order” and “Empire” in their entirety on the “Empire 30th Anniversary Tour”, which kicked off in January in Norway. Prior to that, Geoff celebrated the 30th anniversary of QUEENSRŸCHE’s “Operation: Mindcrime” album on European and U.S. tours.

Tate’s post-QUEENSRŸCHE band OPERATION: MINDCRIME released three albums over three years as part of a trilogy: “The Key” (September 2015), “Resurrection” (September 2016) and “The New Reality” (December 2017).

In 2019, Geoff released the debut album from SWEET OBLIVION via Frontiers Music Srl. The project saw Tate teaming up with a stellar cast of Italian musicians led by Simone Mularoni, the mastermind of prog metal masters DGM. The second SWEET OBLIVION album, “Relentless”, will arrive on April 9 via Frontiers Music Srl. This time the production was handled by Italian metal maestro Aldo Lonobile (SECRET SPHERE, TIMO TOLKKI’S AVALON, ARCHON ANGEL).

In April 2014, Tate and QUEENSRŸCHE announced that a settlement had been reached after a nearly two-year legal battle where the singer sued over the rights to the QUEENSRŸCHE name after being fired in 2012.

Tate was replaced in QUEENSRŸCHE by former CRIMSON GLORY singer Todd La Torre.

Vocalist George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher of Florida death metal veterans CANNIBAL CORPSE spoke to the “RRBG Podcast” about what the concert industry might look like post-pandemic. He said (hear audio below): “I just think that people are gonna throw caution to the wind and say, ‘Fuck it.’ I cannot see [if we play] ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ that people are gonna just stand there like zombies. They’re not gonna do it. There’s no way. People are gonna start slamming. They’re not gonna care.

“We’ve gotta get back to the way it was,” he continued. “And who knows if it’s ever gonna be that way? I think maybe people are gonna be more cautious about washing their hands and coughing. Trust me — that’s a pet peeve of mine. Before this [pandemic] ever happened, when people were just sitting on our bus [and coughing], I’m, like, ‘Dude, I don’t want your shit.’ ‘Well, you can’t get it through that.’ Well, you know what? I’m sorry — when you cough, you spit. You don’t even see it. Go look online. There’s [been] experiments. When you cough, you don’t even know it. I probably spit on my [computer] screen about five thousand times while I’m talking to you, and I don’t even know. So I don’t like that anyway. And I’m not like some germaphobe or nothing.

“I just really want it to go back to normal,” Fisher added. “I’m sure I’ve been singing and I spit by accident into the mic and it went over and maybe hit some kid in the head. And I can imagine that people will be thinking about that now.

“I’m not a scientist, I’m not anybody in the know, but I just hope it can come back to normal. I think mentally we’re never gonna be normal again. Everybody’s gonna be thinking about it in some way or another.”

CANNIBAL CORPSE will release its 15th studio album, “Violence Unimagined”, on April 16 via Metal Blade Records. Erik Rutan, one of the death metal’s most acclaimed guitarists who is known for his time as part of MORBID ANGEL throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, as well as handling vocals/guitars for HATE ETERNAL, lent his guitar as well as production skills to the effort, which was recorded at his Mana Recording in St. Petersburg, Florida. Rutan previously produced four CANNIBAL CORPSE albums (in addition to “Violence Unimagined”), alongside the likes of GOATWHORE, SOILENT GREEN and BELPHEGOR. Filling in live on guitar since 2019, in 2020 he became a full member, contributing to the writing process.

TESLA’s Brian Wheat has once again spoken about the departure of original guitarist Tommy Skeoch. The bassist made his comments while talking to Eonmusic about his book “Son Of A Milkman: My Crazy Life With Tesla”, which was released in December.

Skeoch, who was a founding member of the Sacramento five-piece, played on the band’s defining albums, including 1986 debut “Mechanical Resonance” and 1990’s “Five Man Acoustical Jam”, exited the group for the final time in 2006.

Speaking about the departure, Wheat said: “Well, I don’t really like talking about it, to be honest with you, because, quite frankly, he was given many chances, and he chose his path; no one chose it for him.”

He continued: “Because I am the outspoken one, you know, the one who will just go, ‘Hey, there’s a fuckin’ elephant in the room, here,’ I caught a lot of his shit. And that’s just it. Someone asked me the other day if I ever thought I’d be friends with him again, and I said, ‘No.’ And then I thought that maybe that was a bit harsh, but really, when I think about it, I don’t think I ever was his friend.”

The bassist went on to say that he believed that Tommy didn’t really had a close relationship with anyone in TESLA, with the possible exception of vocalist Jeff Keith. “I don’t know if anyone in that band was his friend — maybe Jeff Keith,” he said. “So, it’s not like we went on vacation together or anything. We worked together, and at a certain point, it got hard to work together — for everybody, not just myself.”

Skeoch, who was fired due to substance abuse issues in 1994, rejoined when TESLA reformed more than two decades ago following a brief hiatus. “The sad thing about it is, ironically, when he was in the band from 2000 on, he stayed with me all the time, and I thought we were good friends,” Wheat said. “And then he took some shots at me right after he got out of the band again, and at that point, I was just, like, ‘Fuck you, dude. I didn’t do this to you, man. I tried to help you. And although I was the one that had to bring it up, you were continuing fucking up.”

The bassist went on to say that although others in the band struggled with their own demons, none of them let it affect their gig. “[Tommy] alludes to the fact that Jeff was doing the same things and Jeff didn’t get treated like that, and, to a degree, maybe he’s right, but Jeff never wasn’t able to perform, or Jeff didn’t miss gigs because he couldn’t get ahold of it, or he wasn’t out trying to score, or do whatever. I mean, I’m sorry man, but the same thing would happen if it was me.”

Finally, he concluded: “That’s just the reality of it, and I keep it real. Don’t deflect, you know, ‘Everyone else did this and that’ — own your shit. To this day, I don’t really think he’s owned it.”

Read the entire interview at Eonmusic.