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AS I LAY DYING frontman Tim Lambesis has reflected on having solicited murder by hiring a hitman in 2013 to try to kill his now-ex-wife.
The now-41-year-old singer was paroled in 2016 after serving two years of a six-year sentence, which followed his early 2014 guilty plea on a felony murder solicit…

CopperSound unveils a compact fuzz pedal and a boost that features a toggle switch for selecting three different mid-range types.Renegade Multi-Bias Fuzz | CopperSound PedalsIntroducing our latest potent sonic disruptor, in a pint-sized package! Renegade is a simple, no-frills fuzz device with a compact and straightforward interface; a complement to our growing line of Mini Pedals. Derived originally from the classic Tone Bender MK1.5, Renegade strays off the standard path, in part due to its integrated bias control. This toggle switch allows the player to easily select between two different bias voltages; resulting in a classic, full-bodied-fuzz tone in the “up” position, and a more modern and gated fuzz in the “down” position. A hallmark feature of this micro-sized pedal is its long sustain, and an “electric sizzle” as your signal fades (especially prominent in the “down” position). The single Master Volume knob has PLENTY of gain on tap, and powering Renegade at up to 18 volts can deliver even more headroom and clarity.Full-bodied, INTENSE fuzzMultiple bias modesMiniature Form Factor9-18V operationMechanical true-bypass switchingStreet Price: $149 USDGravity Bomb V2 Clean Boost & Mids Enhancer | CopperSound PedalsThis one goes to Eleven! Gravity Bomb V2 picks up where the original left off; delivering up to 20dB of clean boost over the sweep of its volume pot, similarly powered by an audiophile-grade Burr Brown Op Amp. With the addition of our Mid-enhance toggle, V2 allows the player to further dial in their boosted tone, by selecting from three different mid-range types. The center position – just like Gravity Bomb V1 – maintains a flat and neutral EQ curve. In the down position, V2 boosts Mids at 750Hz, while the up position boosts at 1kHz, making Gravity Bomb V2 a great tool to pair with other pedals to give them a fresh tone and feel. Powering Gravity Bomb at up to 18 volts can deliver even more headroom and clarity.20dB of clean volume boostAudiophile-grade Op-ampToggle switch for selecting three different mid-range types9-18V operationMiniature form factorMechanical true-bypass switchingStreet Price: $129 USDFor more information, please visit coppersoundpedals.com.

GRETA VAN FLEET has postponed three concerts this week in order to allow frontman Josh Kiszka more time to recover from a ruptured eardrum.
Earlier today (Monday, October 17), Josh released the following statement via social media: “To our fans in Raleigh, Greenville and Jacksonville, it’s with a he…

Just in time for Halloween, Omaze has teamed up with Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee and Grammy-winning singer and songwriter Ozzy Osbourne and SpeedKore Performance Group to give away a custom Dodge Demon to one lucky customer, while supporting Save The Music Foundation. Now through December 23…

When it comes to influential ’80s guitarists, it’s easy to fixate on the likes of Van Halen, Vai, Satriani, the Edge, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Marr, and Eric Johnson. But the chiming, simultaneously funky and moody rhythm work of Jamie West-Oram, from British synth-rock outfit the Fixx, is similarly singular. He isn’t just a rhythm ace, though. Highly compressed, often drenched in reverb and/or subtly swirling modulation, West-Oram’s syncopated Strat leads and quirky whammy flourishes melded like clockwork with big bass lines and atmospherically bastardized synth pads to define inescapable radio hits of the decade like “Red Skies,” “Stand or Fall,” “One Thing Leads to Another,” and “Are We Ourselves?” Thing is, he wasn’t even playing a Strat. It was a Schecter “partscaster” (with passive EMG pickups) put together for him by John Suhr during his days at Rudy’s Music in New York City. In fact, until a fateful concert made West-Oram an S-style convert, he was more a fan of Gibson single-cut rawness. The Fixx’s stellar debut, 1982’s Shuttered Room, was largely recorded with a P-90-equipped Les Paul Jr.Every Five SecondsBut a London-based jazz-fusion guitarist put him on a different tonal path. “There was a guy called Murphy who was just a brilliant guitar player,” he remembers. “I went to one of his gigs and was totally knocked out by his playing and sound. I said to my mate, ‘He’s getting a great sound out of that Fender.’ And he says, ‘It’s not a Fender, it’s a Schecter.’ I thought, ‘If I get one of those, I’ll sound like that.’ But of course, it doesn’t work that way.”Since then, West-Oram has expanded to similarly equipped koa-bodied Suhr “super strats” with Floyd Rose vibratos and active EMGs, as well as a trusty Fender ’62 Strat reissue with signature pickups by Dave Walsh at Eternal Guitars in Chichester, U.K. However, as evidenced on the band’s 13th full-length release, this year’s Every Five Seconds, he remains a fan of Gibson-built single-cuts. For rawer tones on tracks like “Cold,” he used a two-pickup ’61 Epiphone Olympic (a recent gift from his wife, Bibi) through a couple of “just blisteringly good” early-’60s Vox AC30s that were on hand at Panic Button Studios in West London.Cy said, “Less U2, more New York Dolls,” and I went, “Ah, that’s it. Now we got it!”Trans-Atlantic Tone TradesFor many of the Fixx’s early years, West-Oram relied on 50-watt tube combos from another famous British amp brand—Marshall. Then, as now, he was running a stereo-amp rig in order to make the most of the stompbox that’s been a secret weapon since he bought it new in 1981. “When I first joined the band, I had one of the [Marshall] combos, and then I got the [MXR] Stereo Chorus and went, ‘I’m gonna have to get another amp—because this doesn’t sound good with just one amp!’ I used those two combos on the first Reach the Beach [the band’s 1983 sophomore album] tour. The next year, our stage manager took the heads out and put them into a rack, along with various other things. I typically turned the master full up and the preamp up just enough for it to start getting interesting.” Despite his appreciation for classic British amps, West-Oram has been relying primarily on Fender Hot Rod DeVille combos since Fixx vocalist Cy Curnin turned him on to them roughly 20 years ago. “I like the tone of the Fenders—the clean sound.” He adds, “And I know I can always get the Fenders if we have to rent backline.”As you might expect, that means he depends on pedals to muck up his tones. Live, he’s recently been using an Xotic SL Drive for dirt—although for the Five Seconds sessions he used an Ibanez Tube Screamer. “Otherwise, I used pretty much the same gear that I use live. I’ve got the Suhr Koji Comp compressor, which is on probably 50 percent of the time. Back in the olden days, I’d have everything on all the time—it never occurred to me to bypass them! [Laughs.] Now, I bypass them so they sound more exciting when they do come in.” A Boss DD-500 delay is another go-to. “It can do a whole whack-crazy amount of things, though my presets are mainly based on tempo and varying the modulation of the delay. So, you can have a straightforward delay, or you can have a slightly seasick delay or change the actual tone of the delay signal. I’ve also got an old Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, which sounds really sick, but it’s too big to fit on my pedalboard. I use that for recording at home.”A First … and a Way to Last?Asked what he attributes the punch and vitality of the new Every Five Seconds songs to, West-Oram says it was a slight tweak to their recent songwriting approach. Whereas the synth-rock quintet had been sending each other song ideas across the miles for other recent LPs, most of the new album’s basic writing was done in person, in real time. “It was more like when we did ‘One Thing Leads to Another,’ where we were all in the room together and we just knocked it out in a couple of hours.”Five Seconds is also notable for West-Oram because the alternatingly lilting and primal “Woman of Flesh and Blood” marks his first time singing lead on a Fixx track. “We were having rehearsals and one day I showed up and went, ‘I’ve written a song and I’ve done a demo of it. Would you like to hear it?’ One of them probably said, ‘No, I want to hear you play it and sing it live.’ So, I went for it, and they all liked it and thought we should pursue it. I assumed Cy would end up singing it and maybe changing the words completely, but he said, ‘You should sing it,’ and he just added words it needed, because it wasn’t quite complete.”Jamie West-Oram’s GearGuitarsSuhr koa S-style (“Woody”) replica of ‘84 Schecter “partscaster”Suhr Classic TFender ‘62 Stratocaster reissue with signature pickups by Dave Walsh1961 Epiphone OlympicErnie Ball Music Man Axis Super SportEarly-’80s Ibanez Blazer (used on original “One Thing Leads to Another” tracks)Custom 1991 Ibanez S-styleAmpsTwo Fender Hot Rod DeVilles running in stereo1962 Vox AC30 (studio)Suhr Corso (studio)Cornell Plexi (studio)1964 Elpico 18-watter (studio)Effects1981 MXR Stereo ChorusSuhr Koji CompSuhr Shiba DriveSuhr RiotXotic SL DriveVemuram Jan RayBoss DD-500Boss SL-20 SlicerBoss volume pedalAssorted pedals (studio)Strings & PicksErnie Ball Burly SlinkysJim Dunlop 1 mm picksWest-Oram says the previous scenario’s humor, openness, and encouragement are indicative of what’s enabled the band to weather more than 40 years together. “I mean, there’s, y’know, five men of a certain age living together on a tour bus for a couple of months—a couple of us with wives or girlfriends—all getting up at different times of the day and crashing out at different times of the day … stumbling through the bus corridor and tripping over shoes and things like that. It’s like any dysfunctional family. We all have a good sense of the ridiculous, and we can make fun of each other and get away with it. That usually overcomes any personal things.“I think the key to staying together is just being really upfront and honest with each other, and being professional. Show up on time for rehearsals and soundchecks and gigs. Those are the obvious things. But also, just realizing that the whole thing is much bigger than that. What you have to offer as a band is a lot bigger than the minor personal things that come up. The enthusiasm from any one of us is going to rub off on the others. So, if one of us says, ‘I’ve got this experiment I want to conduct and it goes like this,’ and there’s an enthusiasm, we’re all gonna go, ‘Great! You’re really into that, so do it. Let’s all ride that wave of enthusiasm and see where it takes us.’”Still Riding New WavesTo illustrate how this collective openness plays into the band’s contemporary songcraft, West-Oram points to Five Seconds tracks “Suspended in Make Believe,” where gently swinging drums and pianistic bass lines undergird spare, trem-treated open-position chords, ethereal strings, and contemplative lyrics, and “Neverending,” which opens with “acoustic” guitars pounding out an insistent-but-open-feeling groove that’s tightly syncopated with the drums.Back in the olden days, I’d have everything on all the time—it never occurred to me to bypass them!“For a ‘typical’ Fixx song, you might expect a solid, sync’d rhythm section, chiming guitars, animalistic keyboard sounds, and strong vocals,” he begins, “but I don’t think we dismiss an idea because it doesn’t sound like ‘a Fixx song.’ We might actually lean more towards one that isn’t an obvious Fixx song. There’s a couple on the new album that aren’t what we’d normally do, and because of that, rather than despite that, they made it to the album. On ‘Suspended in Make Believe,’ there’s aren’t any chiming guitars, and I ended up with a very strange sound. I have this Music Man guitar, an Axis Super Sport, with a piezo pickup so you can make it sound like an acoustic. I plugged that straight into a Fender amp and cranked it up. It’s got quite a strange, slightly grating sound. There’s also one called ‘Neverending,’ which almost has this arena-rock thing. It was starting to get a little bit Bruce Springsteen and, I mean, he’s great—but that’s not us. And then it started to get a bit U2-ish and we didn’t want that either, even though they’re great as well. And then Cy said, ‘Less U2, more New York Dolls,’ and I went, ‘Ah, that’s it. Now we got it!’ It’s not really like the New York Dolls, the way it ended up, but little comments like that can knock you sideways in a good way. Then you end up following it down another rabbit hole.”The Fixx – Live In The USA (The Bayfront Theater, Florida, 27-11-1984)At 48:00, the crowd goes crazy as West-Oram and crew launch into “One Thing Leads to Another” in this live clip from 1984.

THE BLACK CROWES guitarist Rich Robinson spoke to Australia’s The Rockpit about his reunion with his brother Chris for a tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the band’s classic debut album, 1990’s “Shake Your Money Maker”. Joining Chris and Rich in the new BLACK CROWES lineup are returning bass…

SERJ TANKIAN will be forever best known as the charming, quirky, circus ringmaster of SYSTEM OF A DOWN, but his creative output reaches well beyond. Whether his expression manifests itself through film score composition, poetry, multimedia art or a vast array of musical collaborations, Tankian is al…

If Suffocation-meets-Origin-type brutal death metal is your jam, than take note of the many notes of Philly faves Existentia.
The post Track Premiere: Existentia – ‘Hyphae Reign’ appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Day #17 has our fourth and final Revv Stompboxtober giveaway. Enter below for your shot at a G8!Revv G8 Noise Gate Pedal

The Revv G8 Noise Gate is the new, simple, zero-compromise, solution to taking control of your rig. Noise comes from so many places – the room you’re in, your guitar, your amp, pedals, other pieces of gear in the signal chain. Dealing with that gets in the way of music live & in the studio. None of us like the noise, but we usually just deal with it because the solutions aren’t ideal. That’s why we had to build a flexible noise gate to keep your entire rig quiet with zero downside. G8’s controls will let you dial in that sliced & diced metal rhythm tone when you need it – but most importantly it is designed to maintain the sonic integrity of your guitar tone. You will feel the same & sound the same – all you’ll be wondering is where the noise went. Hear the silence!Stompboxtober Day 17 Revv G8