Month: August 2021

In a new interview with “The Metal Hammer Podcast”, former METALLICA bassist Jason Newsted discussed how his need to play other styles of music eventually led to his exit from the band more than 20 years ago.

“By the time the tour [for the ‘Black Album’] was done and we had some money to count and some bass to rest, I went in a totally different direction,” Jason said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET. “I liked playing the songs and I can raise myself up to perform the songs for the people and give it all I’ve got, but ‘Enter Sandman’ for the three thousandth time in a certain amount of days, it fucking wears on you.

“I’ve got dozens of new songs we’re working on [with Jason’s long-running project THE CHOPHOUSE BAND] — all the time, of all different instrumentation and shit,” he continued. “And if I’ve gotta sit on one for too long now, I’d go fucking crazy. [I’d be, like] ‘We’ve gotta move on, guys. We have 45 minutes. Let’s move on.’ And I’m ready to perform again and everything like that, but I can’t do that thing anymore — I can’t just do that Broadway show where it’s the same, same, same, same, same. And that’s what I thought was my advantage and my being able to harness and manage the balance.

“I wanted to be that person that I knew myself to be on and off the stage with METALLICA. When people saw me, they knew they were getting everything I had left — every fucking ounce of sweat on the stage every time. The way I was able to continue to do that was by playing the wacky music with my friends. It kept me cleansed, it kept me strong, it kept me interested in music. If I only had that one-dimensional part of music, I would have called it a long, long time ago. But I kept myself healthy by playing with all kinds of people, like I still do to this day, and like I will tonight and tomorrow. I know that I’m not alone in that, and there’s so many people that are my heroes that do the same thing — Neil Young, still to this day; Thom Yorke… any of ’em. [They’re] still seeking out other things.

“I know I can play the metal. I climbed that mountain — the tallest one. I can do that shit. Tell me what time you want me to throw down. I can throw down that stuff anytime. But I’m not satisfied with just that, and I haven’t been for a long, long time.”

The 58-year-old musician left METALLICA in 2001 after a 15-year run with the group. His exit was documented in the band’s 2004 documentary, “Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster”, which followed the members of the group through the three most turbulent years of their long career, during which they battled through addiction, lineup changes, fan backlash, personal turmoil and the near-disintegration of the group while making their “St. Anger” album.

Newsted was METALLICA’s third bassist, following Ron McGovney and the late Cliff Burton. Robert Trujillo took over in 2003 after Newsted’s exit.

Jason spoke in detail about the reason he left METALLICA in a 2013 interview with Scuzz TV. Newsted said that his eventual split with the group was over the way his then-side band, ECHOBRAIN, was handled. Newsted explained: “The management of METALLICA was very, very excited about ECHOBRAIN, wanted to take it out for me, wanted me to do ECHOBRAIN also, with METALLICA. They felt ECHOBRAIN was that good, the singer was that good, and it didn’t affect METALLICA because it was a totally different kind of thing, and I was in METALLICA; that would give it its pedigree already.”

Newsted continued: “They had told me, pretty convincingly, ‘This is a great record, we’ve been playing it around the office, that’s all I’ve been hearing, it’s fantastic, this kid has a great voice. Let’s do something with this.’ That’s what they told me, and then James heard about it and was not happy. He was, I think, pretty much out to put the kibosh on the whole thing because it would somehow affect METALLICA in his eyes, because now the managers were interested in something I was doing that had nothing to do with him.”

Newsted told The Pulse Of Radio a while back that he never saw how ECHOBRAIN could have interfered with METALLICA. “I never felt that it was going to affect METALLICA in any way,” he said. “There was no way that it could. The monster and the integrity and the legend that METALLICA’s built, it would take a lot more than that to ever affect it.”

Newsted added, “The people that I had counted on for 15 years to help me with my career, help METALLICA, take care of my money, do all of those things, told me, ‘Your new project is fantastic, we’d like to help you with it.’ James heard about it, the manager calls me back a couple of days later — ‘Sorry we’re not going to be able to help you with that ECHOBRAIN thing.'”
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In a video interview promoting his just-released homage to Italian spaghetti westerns and classic vampire films, “Death Rider In The House Of Vampires”, Glenn Danzig was asked if fans can expect to see a sequel at some point in the future. He responded: “That’s something I’ve been asked already informally. But yes. Of course, if the movie is successful, there will be a sequel. For sure, [actress] Kim [Director; ‘Blair Witch 2’, ‘The Deuce’] and I will come back, and that’s all I can tell you. The others may or may not come back. If we do the sequel, you’ll have to see it to see who doesn’t come back and who comes back.”

“Death Rider In The House Of Vampires” was written and directed by Danzig, with Glenn also acting as the executive producer, along with James Cullen Bresack. The cinematography is by Danzig and Pedja Radenkovic. The film follows the Death Rider, who travels to the desert Vampire Sanctuary, ruled by Count Holliday. The price of admission… one untouched virgin.

“Death Rider In The House Of Vampires” stars Devon Sawa as the Death Rider, Julian Sands as Count Holliday and Kim Director as Carmilla Joe. Joining them are Eli Roth as Drac Cassidy, Ashley Wisdom as Mina Belle, Victor DiMattia as Kid Vlad, Danny Trejo as Bela Latigo, and Danzig himself as the vampire gunslinger Bad Bathory.

Glenn told Rolling Stone about “Death Rider In The House Of Vampires”: “It’s an homage to classic vampire movies and, of course, classic Italian spaghetti Westerns. I just mixed the two genres. I didn’t think anyone would have done it before. Basically [the character] Death Rider travels to the vampire sanctuary out in the middle of the desert, and then it all goes crazy after that.

Asked if he wrote the Bad Bathory character for himself, Danzig said: “I started writing the script, and I had all these characters. And then eventually I was, like, ‘You know what? I could do this, and we won’t have to look for somebody and we get out of it cheap.’ So I didn’t originally intend for me to be that character, but then I just started thinking about him, like, ‘I’ll just do this one. It’s not a big part. It’d be easy. I could still do the directing.’

“With directing, at least for me, you’re involved in everything. People come to you with wardrobe, sets, casting; pre-production is insane. The director’s got the hardest job. I just want to make sure I’m, like, a real director and not like one of these Hollywood directors where somebody else will start the movie and then they take credit. [Laughs].”

“Death Rider In The House Of Vampires” opened across the U.S. at select theaters on Friday, August 27.

Fan-filmed video footage of SOULFLY performing a cover of FEAR FACTORY’s “Replica” (after the intro to “Body Hammer”) on August 26 at Red Flag in St Louis, Missouri can be seen below.

FEAR FACTORY’s Dino Cazares is playing guitar for SOULFLY on the Max Cavalera-fronted band’s current U.S. tour which kicked off on August 20 at Launchpad in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The 33-date trek will make additional stops in New York, Chicago and Austin before concluding in Tempe, Arizona on September 25. The final date will be a family celebration as it will include performances by INCITE, GO AHEAD AND DIE and HEALING MAGIC. Joining the band for select dates are NIVIANE and SUICIDE PUPPETS.

Max recently told Heavy New York about Dino’s addition to SOULFLY’s touring lineup: “I’m hugely inspired and excited and happy that Dino is doing this with us. Dino is an old friend. Our friendship goes back to the early days of SEPULTURA coming to America. I believe we met on the ‘Beneath The Remains’ tour. For sure by the ‘Arise’ tour we were friends. He tells the story better, but he had to wrestle me [over] the [FEAR FACTORY] demo tape that had ‘Big God’ on it. I loved it. I was listening to it on his Walkman. I didn’t wanna give it back to him. And it was his only copy. And we had to wrestle. He finally got it out of me. But I ended up bugging [then-Roadrunner Records A&R executive] Monte Conner at that time and saying, ‘You’re a fool if you don’t sign this band.’ I think I even called them ‘the future of metal’ at that time. I was, like, ‘This is the future of metal.’ If you pass on it, you’re a fool. And then Monte signed them, and the rest is history, as they say.”

He continued: “That’s why this link, this possibility, the situation that happened and we needed somebody to fill in, I couldn’t think of a better person than Dino — musically and as a friend. ‘Cause we’re still very hurt, mostly from the stuff that [former SOULFLY guitarist Marc] Rizzo has been saying [in the press] — it hurts us a lot. And it’s good to have a friend that you could talk about it. And then musically I think it’s insane. To think of songs, especially the songs that have crunchy guitars, I close my eyes and I imagine Dino’s sound on some of those songs, like ‘Downstroy’ and ‘Babylon’… ‘Cause there’s a lot of chugging — SOULFLY always had chugging. But Dino is a whole another level of chugging. [Laughs]”

When his addition to SOULFLY’s touring lineup was first announced, Cazares said in a statement: “The first time I met Max in 1991, I knew we were going to be longtime friends. I was standing at the bar, he grabbed my arm and yelled ‘Papa Capado.’ I was like ‘who the F@#% are you? He said ‘I’m Max’ and from there we just hit it off. That same night I played him the FEAR FACTORY demo tape on his cassette Walkman in his hotel room while we were attending a music convention in Los Angeles. He liked it so much that he wouldn’t give it back, so I had to wrestle him and take it out of his Walkman, haha. It was my only copy. Max told Monte Conner, the A&R director from Roadrunner Records, that we had a new demo that he needed to check out, so our manager at the time sent our demo to Monte after many labels turned us down. The rest is history.

“Over the past 30 years, I’ve guested on a few of Max’s projects and jumped on stage whenever and wherever I could. Now it’s a great honor to be doing this tour alongside Max as the second guitarist. It’s going to be amazing for all the fans to see the two of us playing a selection of SOULFLY songs and a few familiar extras.

“Much respect to Max and his family — thank you for always making me feel at home with the SOULFLY Tribe. Let’s do this!!!! Um Dois Três Quatro”.

Although Rizzo’s departure from SOULFLY wasn’t officially announced until August 7, it was widely speculated that he was out of the group two days earlier when it was revealed that Dino would play guitar for SOULFLY on the current tour.

Earlier in the month, Max told Metal Kaoz that Marc has been spewing out “lies and bullshit” in some of his recent interviews regarding his exit from SOULFLY. “All these accusations — it hurts,” he said. “It hurts to hear. After everything that we did for him, which was a lot — we put him on all the records and always took really good care of him, always really, really gave good treatment to him. To hear him backstabbing us like that, it’s just not nice. He’s obviously trying to get fans to be against me and make him the victim… It just sucks to hear all that. It definitely hurts me when I hear all these accusations that I know are lies and bullshit; it’s all fabricated by his crazy mind. I don’t know. It’s a strange situation.”

He added: “I don’t want to turn this into an ugly thing. I don’t wanna talk bad about him; I really don’t. Of course I don’t like those accusations, and it’s bullshit, but he has the right to say whatever. But I think we treated him really good through all those years. We put him on the map pretty much. When he joined the band, not many people knew him. Just a little bit of gratitude would have been nice. Because even on ‘Max Trax’ [Cavalera’s a twice-weekly Internet video series in which he discusses the inspiration for many of the songs spanning his nearly 40-year music career], when I mentioned that I fired him, I thanked him for the 18 years of SOULFLY, and I said good luck on his projects. I’m not bitter. I don’t wanna be a bitter guy.”

In a new interview with Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station, IRON MAIDEN’s Nicko McBrain shared his thoughts on the recent death of Charlie Watts, drummer and core member of THE ROLLING STONES for the past six decades, as well as the tragic passing of former SLIPKNOT drummer Joey Jordison. Asked if Watts was an early influence on his playing, McBrain said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Oh, absolutely. Charlie was such a phenomenal timekeeper — a great player. There’s a saying — I’ve said it a couple of times before — it’s not about the notes; it’s about the space in between, in taking the music generality of it. And that’s what Charlie did — he had this incredible feel on the backside of the groove.

“When I started playing, it was Ringo [Starr] and Charlie — literally Ringo and Charlie were the two influences that I learned from, that I based my style of playing at that time on,” he continued. “And then the wonderful Keith Moon came along, and John Bonham. So those four guys were my primary influences.

“But certainly Charlie is a sad loss to the music world and the drumming fraternity across the table. He will influence all these drummers that are getting into that music from THE STONES. He’s a jazz drummer — he came from a jazz background. He played traditional grip; he played orthodox as well. Matched grip as well, but that was his main style. Just a wonderful, wonderful player.

“And Joey, of course… You turn eight chapters down the line, and you’ve got this guy who’s playing these incredible kind of bar speeds [with a] beautiful, beautiful bass-drum technique,” Nicko added. “I’m a single bass-drum player, but I can always really appreciate these guys that bring something else to the table. So having lost the pair of them, it’s really a great loss to us all. And he’ll be sorely missed, both of them.”

Watts’s publicist said that he “passed away peacefully” on August 24 “in a London hospital surrounded by his family.”

Charlie’s death came just weeks after THE ROLLING STONES announced that Watts would be missing several U.S. tour dates while he was recovering from an unspecified medical procedure.

The 12-date “No Filter” tour will reportedly take place as scheduled, with Steve Jordan taking Watts’s place.

Although Watts wasn’t a founding member of THE STONES, he had been with the band since January 1963.

He battled throat cancer in 2004 but got the all clear after undergoing two operations.

Jordison’s family confirmed that he passed away “peacefully in his sleep” on July 26 of an unspecified cause. He was 46 years old.

SLIPKNOT announced its split with Jordison in December 2013 but did not disclose the reasons for his exit. The drummer subsequently issued a statement saying that he did not quit the group.

The same year that he exited SLIPKNOT, Jordison launched the band SCAR THE MARTYR and later, VIMIC. He also collaborated with former DRAGONFORCE and current KREATOR bassist Frédéric Leclercq in SINSAENUM.

IRON MAIDEN’s 17th studio album, “Senjutsu”, will be released on September 3 via BMG. It was recorded in Paris with longstanding producer Kevin Shirley and co-produced by bassist Steve Harris.

“Senjutsu” marks MAIDEN’s sixth album to be produced by Shirley, who has worked with MAIDEN for the past two decades.

During an appearance on a recent episode of “Stoke The Fire”, the alternative lifestyle and culture podcast hosted by musician Jesse Leach (KILLSWITCH ENGAGE) and DJ/presenter Matt Stocks (“Life In The Stocks”), KILLSWITCH ENGAGE guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz opened up about the depressive symptoms he experienced as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It started out almost as thinking it was gonna be a good thing for my headspace,” Adam said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “I remember we got on a conference call with management [at the beginning of the pandemic], and I’m, like, ‘Yeah! We get a break! We finally get a break! COVID forever!’ [Laughs] I was, like, ‘This is gonna be great. We’ll take some time and we’ll take care of ourselves, and when we get back we’ll be in an even more positive headspace. And we’ll tour non-stop when we get back to it.’ And then I think once the realization of ‘COVID’s not going anywhere’ hit, I was, like, ‘Oh, no. Oh, no.’ And then the loneliness. My girlfriend works, like, 12-hour days, so I never fucking see her. So the loneliness started eating me alive. Getting injured again — I hurt my back really bad again. Going to the hospital — all that shit. Fuck, I was [on a] downward spiral.

“I guess I never really realized how dependent I am on human interaction after all,” Adam continued. “I get so burnt out on it being on tour, because you’re always around other people, so I always just thought I preferred being alone. And then when I was alone for that long, just completely by myself, I fucking went crazy.”

Dutkiewicz went on to say that the coronavirus pandemic and restrictions had a more severe impact on him that he ever anticipated.

“This was, without a doubt, the worst year of my life — a hundred percent,” he said. “I’d never gone to such a dark place ever before. I’m glad that I’ve finally pulled out of it, and the promise of good things coming was really the catalyst for that. Being able to see people, getting vaccinated and then being able to go out and things opening again, and all the [coronavirus] rates dropping. Now life is pretty much back to normal where I’m living. And it’s just amazing to see people again. I was so scared to go home and see my family because of my grandmother — she was not doing well, so I didn’t wanna be the reason that somebody in my family got sick and then gave her something. It’s just so nice to have some sense of normalcy back, and I think that’s really helped me out a lot.”

According to Adam, nothing positive has come out of the pandemic in his life. “It’s kind of fucked up. The only thing I really took from it is that I never want to go through anything like that again,” he said. “And it’s so funny — I know Jesse talks about depression and anxiety all the time, which runs in my family. Every one of my siblings has had to deal with something. And they’re either on some form of medication or they have to do some form of crazy meditation to keep their thoughts at bay. I never truly experienced the depth of it until this last year and how controlling it can be. I always just assumed, like, ‘Just have a fucking beer and have a chat with a good friend, and it’ll help fix things.’ And from what I went through last year, I realized now nothing fixes it — nothing fixes it. It’s like the most hopeless feeling you could ever have. It’s really fucking crazy. And I truly know now what it means to be depressed.”

Last month, Dutkiewicz and Leach released the second album from their TIMES OF GRACE project, “Songs Of Loss And Separation”, via the band’s own imprint label, Wicked Good Records, distributed by ADA Worldwide.

KILLSWITCH ENGAGE will return to the road this fall, touring with SLIPKNOT, FEVER 333 and CODE ORANGE as part of the “Knotfest Roadshow”. The band will also appear at several key fall festivals.

DREAM THEATER drummer Mike Mangini has uploaded a “drum play-along” video of him performing the band’s new single, “The Alien”. According to Mike, the play-along was filmed at 110% speed for tour preparation purposes. The drum configuration matches the Pearl green chrome fade kit used on DREAM THEATER’s 15th studio album, “A View From The Top Of The World”, which is due on October 22.

When “The Alien” was first released earlier in the month, guitarist John Petrucci stated about the track: “It’s the first one we wrote together. It gives people a window into what it was like when we initially met up after all of those months off. It has the adventure, the untraditional structure, the heaviness, and the hooks. It really set the tone for the album. James [LaBrie, vocals] wrote the lyrics about the idea of terraforming and looking beyond our Earth for alternative settlements. Since we’re going beyond our planet, ‘The Alien’ turns out to be us. I thought it was a cool and creative lyric by James.”

“A View From The Top Of The World” is DREAM THEATER at its musical finest expanding on the sound they helped create while maintaining the elements that have garnered them devoted fans around the globe. The seven-song album also marks the second studio album with InsideOut Music/Sony Music. The artwork was created by longtime cover collaborator Hugh Syme (RUSH, IRON MAIDEN, STONE SOUR). “A View From The Top Of The World” was produced by John Petrucci, engineered and additional production by James “Jimmy T” Meslin and mixed/mastered by Andy Sneap.

DREAM THEATER — comprised of James LaBrie, John Petrucci, Jordan Rudess, John Myung and Mike Mangini — was in the middle of a sold-out world tour in support of their last release “Distance Over Time” and the 20th anniversary of “Scenes From A Memory” when a global pandemic brought the world to a stop. The musicians found themselves at home, with LaBrie in Canada and the rest of the group in the States. As fate would have it, they’d just finished construction on DTHQ (Dream Theater Headquarters) — a combination live recording studio, rehearsal space, control room, equipment storage, and creative hive. With LaBrie in Canada, he initially wrote with the band via Zoom on a monitor in DTHQ. In March 2021, he flew down to New York, quarantined, and recorded his vocals face-to-face with Petrucci. The album ultimately threaded together lean and uncompromising hooks with tried-and-true technical proficiency.

“A View From The Top Of The World” track listing:

01. The Alien (9:32)
02. Answering The Call (7:35)
03. Invisible Monster (6:31)
04. Sleeping Giant (10:05)
05. Transcending Time (6:25)
06. Awaken The Master (9:47)
07. A View From The Top Of The World (20:24)

DREAM THEATER is also planning to hit the road in support of the new album. The “Top Of The World” tour of North America kicks off on October 28 in Mesa, Arizona and runs through December 14 where it concludes in St. Petersburg, Florida.

CANDLEBOX frontman Kevin Martin spoke to Sofa King Cool about what it has been like for him and his bandmates to tour during the pandemic. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Our fans aren’t happy about it, but we’re not doing meet-and-greets, we’re not doing VIPs, we’re not any backstage, there’s no comp tickets — which is the first time in my career that I’ve ever had to do that. We just can’t afford it. I can’t afford for someone in my band to get COVID, or for me to get COVID, and have to shut this tour down for 10 days to quarantine.

“We were in Wichita on this last run we did, and there were two tour buses parked next to ours in the morning, and it was THE AVETT BROTHERS who had to cancel two shows because someone either on their crew or the venues they were going to tested positive,” he continued. “And that’s two days of sitting in Wichita [with] two tour buses at a thousand dollars a day, not to mention what you have to pay your crew members per day — all those types of things. It’s heavy, heavy duty.

“So, we wear masks everywhere,” he explained. “We don’t interact with any of the crew at the venues, which is unfortunate, because I know a lot of these guys at these venues we’re playing. And we don’t go out. We play the show, we hang out at the dressing room, shower, clean up, whatever, and we go straight to the bus and head to the next town. So we’re being as overly cautious as we can.

“Frankly, we’ve had a couple of instances of people yelling at our crew guys onstage, ‘Take your fucking mask off. You don’t need to be fucking masking,’ which is rude. I haven’t worked in fucking 18 months. Can I have a moment to make some money, please?”

Last week, CANDLEBOX released “All Down Hill From Here”, a new single from its upcoming album “Wolves”. Martin co-wrote the song with Christopher Thorne of BLIND MELON. The inspiration behind the song came from the two longtime friends musing on the fleeting nature of fame.

CANDLEBOX’s seventh studio album, “Wolves” drops worldwide on September 17 on Pavement Entertainment. The album will be available on all formats (CD, vinyl, and through digital outlets). “Wolves” embraces a fresh modernity in terms of sound and explores new territory.

Two other songs from “Wolves”, “Let Me Down Easy” and “My Weakness”, are available to stream now. “Let Me Down Easy” is an aggro, blues-based rocker with a booming bass and edgy guitar riffing, co-written with old Seattle pal Peter Cornell, Chris Cornell’s older brother. “My Weakness” is a love song that melds the honesty of Bryan Adams’s “Summer Of 69” and passion of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run”.

Gene Simmons has once again apologized to David Lee Roth for implying in a recent interview that the VAN HALEN frontman was past his prime.

Roth performed as the opening act for the February/March 2020 North American leg of KISS’s farewell tour, but is not making any appearances on the rescheduled KISS shows which kicked off on August 18 in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Simmons explained Roth’s absence from the trek by telling Rolling Stone: “[Roth] took being a frontman way beyond anything. And then, I don’t know what happened to him … something. And you get modern-day Dave. I prefer to remember Elvis Presley in his prime. Sneering lips, back in Memphis, you know, doing all that. I don’t want to think of bloated naked Elvis on the bathroom floor.”

Apparently irked at Gene’s comments, Dave took to Instagram last weekend to share an image of a young boy wearing shades and extending the middle finger to the camera along with the words “Roth to Simmons:” Dave posted the image 18 times.

Now Simmons has once again clarified his original statement, telling Marci Wiser of the 95.5 KLOS radio station that his words were misconstrued.

“It doesn’t matter if somebody misunderstood what I meant; it only matters if I hurt somebody,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “So I’m deeply sorry I hurt Dave’s feelings. Obviously, that was not my intention, because privately and publicly I’ve always said nobody touched David in his prime — not [Mick] Jagger, not Robert Plant. Nobody. He changed what a modern frontman was. And then the subject went onward to other subjects, and Elvis came up.

“The point was if a truck runs you over, it doesn’t matter if the guy says, ‘I’m sorry I ran you over,’ because what’s the difference? You’ve been run over. So Dave’s feelings were hurt. I’m profoundly sorry I hurt his feelings. That was certainly not my intention.”

Asked if he has been in contact with Roth in the past week in an effort to smooth things over, Simmons said: “I haven’t. I’ve tried to reach out. I haven’t been able… I never had Dave’s contact info, but historically speaking, I’m the guy that put the band originally on the map — signed them to my deal, produced a 24-track demo. And with that I’m told how that’s how they got their deal with Warners. I never asked for a dime. That was out of my pocket, and I forgave them whatever they owed me contractually. I just tore up the contract and said, ‘God bless.'”

As for whether it was David that bowed out of the KISS tour or it was KISS that dismissed him from the latest run of shows, Gene said: “Neither. The tour ended because of COVID — we all went home — and then we all made different plans. We didn’t know when we were gonna go out on tour [again], and so we decided this time to go back out with [David] Garibaldi, who’s a painter.”

In a January 2020 interview with Eric Blair of “The Blairing Out With Eric Blair Show”, Paul Stanley was asked what the best part was of having Roth opening for KISS. Stanley said: “Well, Dave’s got so many great songs. All the VAN HALEN catalog is terrific, and that’s what he’s doing. So, people get to hear all those great songs, and it was something that really appealed to us.”

Simmons has repeatedly taken credit for “discovering” VAN HALEN and flying the band to New York to record demo at Electric Lady Studios, with Gene at the production helm. But he ended up not working with the group after his KISS bandmates and manager, Bill Aucoin, expressed little interest in his demos.

In March 2020, Roth postponed the final six shows of his Las Vegas residency due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Corey Taylor says that the new SLIPKNOT album will include some songs which are “really outside the realm” of what he and his bandmates have done before.

The singer, who spent the last few days quarantining at a Denver hotel after testing positive for COVID-19, discussed SLIPKNOT’s follow-up to 2019’s “We Are Not Your Kind” LP while chatting with fans as part of this year’s GalaxyCon. Speaking about the progress of the album’s recording sessions, Corey said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I was actually supposed to finish my vocals this week. I got screwed, man, [by the COVID diagnosis]. I actually only have really three songs left to do. I’ve done all the other tracks because I’ve been doing ’em in between tours, just fucking hitting it.”

As for the musical direction of the new SLIPKNOT record, Taylor said: “I actually like this one better than the last one. I loved the last one. It’s really good. There’s some darker, heavier shit on it. There’s some tunes that are actually really outside the realm of what we’ve done before. But it all fucking coheses together — it all works together. And there’s some fucking savage heavy shit, which I’m really stoked on. So it’s gonna be rad.”

Last month, Corey told Consequence Of Sound about SLIPKNOT’s next LP: “I think I talked about it somewhere else where this is the first time in a long time on a SLIPKNOT album where I’m not just talking about things from my point of view; I’m trying to look at things from other people’s point of view and tell different stories again. I’m kind of getting back to that, and it feels very freeing. It’s very liberating, man. And it’s gonna be rad. There’s a couple of songs on here that people are gonna be, like… There’s definitely some pit openers that are gonna fucking freak people out. It’s gonna be rad.”

“We Are Not Your Kind” came out in August 2019. The disc sold 118,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Furthermore, the album made an impact worldwide with No. 1 debuts in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Australia, Canada, Japan, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and Finland, as well as Top 5 debuts in Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain and New Zealand.

“We Are Not Your Kind”‘s sales in the U.S. were boosted by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with SLIPKNOT’s summer 2019 tour.

In June, SLIPKNOT announced the 2021 incarnation of the “Knotfest Roadshow”. Support on the trek will come from three Grammy-nominated heavy music luminaries, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, FEVER 333 and CODE ORANGE. The 28-date run, produced by Live Nation, kicks off following the band’s previously announced Knotfest Iowa hometown show in Des Moines on September 25. The “Knotfest Roadshow”‘s first official date happens at Tinley Park, Illinois on September 28, with the tour then snaking its way across the U.S., wrapping up in Arizona in early November.