Month: August 2021

New York hardcore veterans MADBALL have said that they will not perform in any venue that require audience members to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

The band touched upon the hot-button issue while updating fans on the status of MADBALL’s previously announced August 14 concert at Irving Plaza in New York.

Earlier today, the group took to its Instagram to write: “Heads up NYC : We’ve been asked a bunch if Irving is still happening… the answer is YES! That said, in light of the new rules that will be implemented in the city, this will likely be the last show we play here for a very long time. Sad to say.

“We truly respect whatever decisions people make with their bodies but we cannot in good conscience play shows that require personal/private medical information (like vaccination status) for entry.

“We have a special set list we’re working on. This show will be bittersweet.. let’s make it memorable! There’s still some tickets available.. grab em up while you can! #weloveyounyc #fight #tryanny #hclives.

“FYI – this show will NOT require proof of vaccination since some are asking! The rule goes in effect soon after though.”

Earlier this week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York will be the first U.S. city to to require COVID-19 vaccinations for concert attendees, although the city will not enforce the mandate until mid-September. Proof of at least partial vaccination will be required.

A vaccine passport is a physical or digital document that displays whether someone is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Critics say that such passports are a violation of privacy and an example of government overreach. Meanwhile, supporters point out that federal immigration law already requires that immigrants provide proof of vaccination status for several diseases.

There’s plenty of precedent for having to show proof of vaccination whether for work or travel. For a century, nearly every school in the U.S. has been requiring proof of vaccinations for students to enroll. Dozens of countries across the globe require a “Yellow Fever Card” to enter their borders.

Proponents of vaccine passports, including several high-profile heavy metal musicians, have touted them as one of the most effective ways to reopen the nation’s economy in a safe manner.

This past April, TWISTED SISTER frontman Dee Snider said that he was in favor of some kind of a coronavirus vaccine passport program whereby concert venues can ask patrons to show proof of testing or vaccination before attending certain events. Snider addressed the hot-button issue in a tweet, writing: “I get that some people are wary of this, but I want a vaccine passport in the worst fucking way! I wave my vaccination card around like a flag! I’ve got nothing to hide and if a vaccine passport will let me go places without all these covid protocols sign me the fuck up!”

Earlier that same month, TESTAMENT guitarist Alex Skolnick said that the recent announcement by various clubs and promoters around the country that they would begin staging events for only those guests who show proof of full vaccination was “what we need to do.” He explained: “To go to certain countries, we need to get a yellow fever shot, and we carry this card that’s put out by the World Health Organization that is proof of vaccination. What’s the difference? We’ve been doing this for years. We wouldn’t think otherwise. We don’t wanna risk getting somebody else sick. So why would there be an issue here? And then, when people complain about the vaccine — ‘I don’t know what’s in it. I’m suspicious…’ Well, are you suspicious of the polio vaccine? ‘Cause I think everybody gets that. I don’t think you leave the hospital without getting certain vaccines.”

Alex added: “I’m just amazed how people aren’t aware of this. There’s measles, mumps, polio… There’s vaccines that we’ve been getting for years, and that’s why we’re not getting measles or mumps, or why we’re not being forced to not be able to walk because of polio — because we get these vaccines. And the same medical and scientific communities that are behind those vaccines are behind these vaccines.

“My patience is running thin for these types,” Skolnick concluded.

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REO SPEEDWAGON has been forced to cancel two of its concerts this weekend after members of the band’s “touring family” tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. The August 7 show at the The Festival at Sandpoint in Sandpoint, Idaho and the August 9 appearance at the 80th Sturgis motorcycle rally have both been called off as much of the country grapples with a resurgence of coronavirus cases.

“Unfortunately, while we have been practicing CDC and locally recommended COVID-19 protocols on tour, members of the REO touring family still tested positive recently,” REO SPEEDWAGON said in a statement. “Fortunately, everyone was vaccinated, and all are feeling fine despite the positive tests. However, for the safety of our band, crew members, venue staff, our families, and our awesome fans, we will regrettably be canceling our upcoming show in Sturgis, SD. Once everyone affected observes the recommended quarantine and tests negative, we’ll be back on the road again! Stay safe & get vaccinated everyone!”

Late last month, just a few days prior to the cancelation, REO SPEEDWAGON frontman Kevin Cronin told Ultimate Classic Rock that people were “just so excited to have live music back. It’s been great for us so far,” he said. “Hopefully, the rest of the country starts to wake up and get vaccinated so this virus doesn’t take over and shut everything down again.”

Formed in 1967, signed in 1971, and fronted by Cronin since 1972, REO SPEEDWAGON’s unrelenting drive, as well as non-stop touring and recording jump-started the burgeoning rock movement in the Midwest. Platinum albums and radio staples soon followed, setting the stage for the release of the band’s explosive “Hi Infidelity” in 1980, which contained the massive hit singles “Keep On Loving You” and “Take It On the Run”. That landmark album spent 15 weeks in the No. 1 slot and has since earned the RIAA’s coveted Diamond Award for surpassing sales of 10 million units in the United States.

Today, REO SPEEDWAGON has sold more than 40 million albums around the globe, and Cronin and bandmates Bruce Hall (bass), Neal Doughty (keyboards), Dave Amato (guitar), and Bryan Hitt (drums) are still electrifying audiences worldwide in concert with hits and fan favorites such as “In Your Letter”, “Can’t Fight This Feeling”, “Time For Me To Fly”, “Roll With The Changes”, the aforementioned “Keep On Loving You” and “Take It On the Run”, and many, many more.

Attention Sturgis, SD fans!

Unfortunately, while we have been practicing CDC and locally recommended COVID-19 protocols…

Posted by REO Speedwagon on Thursday, August 5, 2021

Former ICED EARTH singer Stu Block says that Jon Schaffer “fucked up real bad” when he got involved in the violent protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 that left several dead, including a Capitol police officer.

Four months ago, the ICED EARTH leader pleaded guilty for his role in the Capitol riot. Although he was initially charged with six crimes, including engaging in an act of physical violence and targeting police with bear spray, he pleaded guilty to only two charges: obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress; and trespassing on restricted grounds of the Capitol while armed with a deadly or dangerous weapon.

Block, the Canadian-born vocalist who had fronted ICED EARTH since 2011, officially quit the band in February, stating at the time it was “the best decision in many ways” for his “personal and professional growth going forward.”

Stu addressed Jon’s involvement in the Capitol riot as well as his departure from ICED EARTH in a brand new interview with Canada’s The Metal Voice. Speaking about his former bandmate, he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We all make bad decisions, man, and [Jon] fucked up real bad. And I’m sure he knows it, and I think everybody with half a brain knows it… The line that was crossed with going in and all that kind of stuff… He had so much going on. It was a shame. It hurts, ’cause you’ve got plans, and all of a sudden, you can’t tell someone what to do — you can’t tell a very strong-willed individual what to do; you can’t. And so it would be lost words.”

He added: “At the end of the day, I don’t hate him. I’m not writhing in hate for him. I feel sad. I feel bad that everything went down the way it did. And maybe one day we’ll talk. I don’t know. I’m not too sure. But I think he knows that I still have a place in my heart for him, because I’ve seen that man do a lot of amazing, wonderful things for people. But I just wanna move on. And that’s what it is.”

Following the initial reports that Schaffer was involved in the riot, his ICED EARTH bandmates distanced themselves from his actions. Block and bassist Luke Appleton later posted separate statements on social media announcing their resignations. BLIND GUARDIAN frontman Hansi Kürsch also quit DEMONS & WIZARDS, his long-running project with Schaffer. The allegations also apparently affected Schaffer’s relationship with his longtime record label Century Media, which had released albums from both ICED EARTH and DEMONS & WIZARDS. As of mid-January, the Century Media artist roster page did not list either band.

According to CNN, prosecutors and Schaffer’s attorneys agreed to recommend that he get between three and a half and four and a half years in prison, based on how fruitful his cooperation is with the government.

The government agreed not to oppose Schaffer’s release during the sentencing phase.

As part of the plea deal, Schaffer agreed to cooperate with investigators and potentially testify in related criminal cases, according to CNN. In return for Schaffer’s assistance, the Justice Department might later urge the judge to show leniency during his sentencing.

As part of the agreement, the Justice Department has offered to sponsor Schaffer for the witness protection program.

Earlier this month, Block announced his permanent return to his pre-ICED EARTH band INTO ETERNITY.

Before joining INTO ETERNITY in 2005, Block began his musical career singing for various bands in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. After two albums with INTO ETERNITY, Block joined ICED EARTH in 2011, with whom he recorded three LPs: “Dystopia” (2011), “Plagues Of Babylon” (2014) and “Incorruptible” (2017).

Don’t sleep on technical death fiends Nightmarer .
The post Track Premiere: Nightmarer – “Ekstasis” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

In a new interview with “The Paula Faris ‘Faith & Calling’ Podcast”, John Cooper, the frontman and bassist for the Grammy-nominated Christian rock band SKILLET, spoke about his intensely strict religious upbringing where all pop music, black clothes and even Christian rock music was banned. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I am the product of an incredibly faithful mom. My mom was a Jesus fanatic. I’m talking about everywhere we went, my mom was sharing Jesus with every single person at the grocery store. I am a product of a very faithful, praying mom, but I do think that my childhood did have a lot of what I would consider to be a little fundamentalist, a little bit of that legalism and maybe a lot of fear — a lot of fear of what’s gonna happen in the world, rather than focusing on the fact that we can be full of God’s presence in order that we would be a light going into the darkness.”

He continued: “My mom passed away when I was 15, so a lot of this kind of got shaped after that, I would say, taking my mom’s zeal, my mom’s passion and my mom’s love for the Bible and realizing that I’m so thankful for her, even though there are some things that I don’t think we’d disagree on now if she was alive because I think that she was on this journey — she was on this journey to what I would consider to be a more liberating place in the spirit as opposed to the opposite.”

Asked how he reconciled the fact that his mom once said that rock music was the tool of the devil with him being the frontman of a successful rock band, Cooper said: “I will tell you something that I don’t know if I’ve shared on a podcast before. And after 25 years, that’s a big deal. I think the hardest thing about it was this: all right, my mom loved God, [and she] really believed that rock music was evil. I mean, the drums were Satanic, the guitars were Satanic, the long hair, the black [clothes] — the black was a sign of death. I mean, all of it. Christian music, to her mind, was even worse, because Christian music had all those aspects but it also had the deception — wolves in sheep’s clothing — that Christian music was just like the worst thing in the world to my mom.

“How I worked through this was this: Having to come to terms with honoring your father and your mother, but at some point, I’m an adult. I’m 18 years old. God’s called me to do something in my life, and I feel in my heart I’ve got this burning, burning desire to play music. And I believe that I want to do that because it’s a calling from God — not just because my flesh wants it. I don’t wanna be a rock god — I wanna be used by God to spread a message of hope through music.

“But here’s the thing I haven’t shared before,” he continued. “On my mom’s deathbed — she fought cancer for three years — I did not get to see her for the last nearly three weeks of her life. She didn’t want me and my siblings to come see her because she thought that we would lose hope and we would lose faith and maybe we wouldn’t be praying for her, and she wanted to be healed. So I did not see her, but I’ve been told in her last days and the last day [before] she passed away, she was beginning to have visions on her deathbed. Apparently one of the things that she said was, ‘I’m so concerned for John. John is going to be used by the devil to play rock music. And John’s going to help bring the king of darkness to the earth and this and that and the other’ — because of rock music. That weighed very heavily on me because I respect my mom so much — she is the reason that I am who I am today.

“So to answer your question, how I worked through that. I was reading my Bible and I came to this remarkable passage,” he added. “Do you remember when Jesus told this man to follow him, and the man said, ‘I want to follow you. First, let me go home and bury my father.’ And Jesus says, ‘No, no, no. You let the dead bury the dead. You come follow me now.’ The call is for now; the call is not for the future. I remember reading that when I was getting very serious about the Bible, when I was about 18, and I remember thinking, ‘Is that what the call is like for me, I wonder.’ And then I read another thing that Jesus says when he says, ‘Anyone who’s not willing to hate their father and mother for my sake is not worthy to be called a disciple.’ I read that and I thought, ‘Okay, I know that Jesus doesn’t want me to hate my father and mother, but I wonder if what God is saying, through this passage of scripture, to me is that there comes a time when we have an ultimate authority. Yes, my mom and my dad are my authority, but they are under authority. All authority belongs to God. So if they are under authority and God tells me that I am supposed to go do something as an adult, then it’s right for me to circumvent a wrong authority that is acting outside of his godly bounds to obey the lord. God used that to totally shape my mind and to realize, okay, in the end, God’s given me this dream. It was a passion — something I believe he wanted me to do for his name’s sake. And so that’s my story.”

This past April, Cooper told the “Undaunted.Life: A Man’s Podcast” that it was perfectly fine for Christians to play rock music. “I would say that music is created not by the Devil; [it is] created by the Lord,” he said. “All things were created by God. So instead of thinking that the Devil owns a genre of music, I would say capture that music and bring it back into subjection under the lordship of Christ.”

Cooper recently published his first book, titled “Awake & Alive To Truth (Finding Truth In The Chaos Of A Relativistic World)”. It “tackles the reigning philosophies of our day of post-modernism, relativism, and the popular view of the goodness of man-and combats these viewpoints by standing on the absolute truth of the Word Of God,” the book’s description reads.

In various interviews over the years, Cooper has said that he “always had faith in God.” He also claimed that he was willing to put his career on the line to take a stand for Christ.

Crunching the numbers on Morbid Angel’s ill-fated Illud Divinum Insanus and defending 54.55 percent of it.
The post Justify Your Shitty Taste: Morbid Angel’s ‘Illud Divinum Insanus’ appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

SHINEDOWN drummer Barry Kerch has tested positive for the novel coronavirus after being vaccinated.

The 44-year-old musician, who lives in Jacksonville, Florida, revealed his positive diagnosis in a video message earlier today.

He stated in the clip (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “In the 20 years of SHINEDOWN, I have never missed a show — until now. I regret to say that I, unfortunately, during rehearsals, contracted COVID. And before you get all crazy on me, I got fully vaxxed in April. I followed all the rules — wore masks, washed my hands, et cetera. Unfortunately, I’m one of those ones that got it even though I was vaxxed. So, unfortunately, I’m still testing positive. I’m quarantined. My health is good, which is good news. I’ve had symptoms, but I’m okay, and I will be okay. But until I finish my quarantine and test’s negative, I’m stuck in these four walls. I can’t risk it for my band and my crew; they’re all doing fine.”

He continued: “That being said, woe is me — move on. The shows are still gonna happen. Our good friend Dustin Steinke — I remember him from a wonderful band called SIXX:A.M. — he’s gonna be filling in for me. And he’s gonna kick ass, and the band’s gonna kick ass. And I’m happy that the shows can continue on. And as soon as I’m healthy and able, I’ll get back out there. So that’s the news, folks. Till next time.”

Kerch, like many others, is showing that while vaccines are exceptionally effective in preventing death and severe illness from the coronavirus and its known variants, some are far from foolproof in preventing infection altogether.

Most of the people with so-called “breakthrough” infections are asymptomatic.

According to Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (CDC), large-scale clinical studies found that COVID-19 vaccination prevented most people from getting COVID-19. Research also provides growing evidence that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) offer similar protection in real-world conditions. While these vaccines are effective, no vaccine prevents illness 100% of the time. For any vaccine, there are breakthrough cases.

New variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 illness are spreading in the United States and other countries. Current data suggest that COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the United States offer protection against most variants. However, some variants might cause illness in some people after they are fully vaccinated.

SHINEDOWN is scheduled to play the Mississippi Valley Fair in Davenport, Iowa tonight (Thursday, August 5) before playing seven more shows in August and then returning to the road in early September.

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