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In a brand new interview with the “Breaking Absolutes With Peter Orullian” podcast, KING’S X frontman Doug “dUg” Pinnick spoke about the tension and polarization in the news and in social media and how people consume what they want to hear and reject what they don’t like.

“A lot that goes on in my mind all the time when it comes to my relationships with people is always to understand where they’re coming from so I can understsand what they’re doing instead of getting mad or upset and we can articulate how we feel so that we can learn to live with each other in a way that doesn’t have conflict,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “And I’m always searching for new ways to make peace — find out a friendship, I call it; I wrote a song about it a long time ago. And my whole life has been that, is how do you become good friends with people? You get to know ’em, you get to understand ’em, you get to love ’em.”

He continued: “I was comfortable being able to get with people and agree and disagree and everybody’s fine, and I felt like I was happy about it; I was having lots less drama and stuff. And all of a sudden, algorithm comes in, and all of a sudden all of us are watching our YouTube or our phones or whatever, and Big Brother, he’s watching everything that we do and then he feeds us everything that we keep looking at. And this is how many years — 10 years or so since all this started happening. So we got people to a point where there is not one person who is on the phone that has the same reality as you — not one person. And anything that you think of, you can find a community that will embrace you and ask you to come live with them and embrace their belief until you’re consumed with it. And then, all of a sudden, you don’t trust anyone and we’ve gone back to tribes. That’s what the Internet has done — it’s created tribes like when we were cavemen.”

Pinnick went on to say that the problem with social media — which amp up moral and emotional messages while organizing people into digital communities based on tribal conflicts — is unlikely to improve any time soon.

“I don’t know any way out,” he said. “At this point, I don’t see any way out. Even if they shut all our computers off, we’ve already got our tribes. And none of them are ever gonna be open to an outside influence. Let’s start with religion all the way down. It’s over. The only thing I believe that can change is a flood or an alien invasion, where we all drop our guard and go fight for humanity — some unifying crisis.”

Pinnick released his fifth solo album, “Joy Bomb”, on October 15 via Rat Pak Records.

Doug is known first and foremost as the soulful singer and bassist for hard rockers KING’S X. Throughout the band’s lengthy and legendary career, KING’S X released twelve albums and influenced the likes of PEARL JAM, SOUNDGARDEN, DREAM THEATER, PANTERA, and many more. Throughout the early 21st century, Pinnick remained the “go-to singer” of rock — as evidenced by his appearance on recordings by first-rate rockers including Jeff Ament, Eric Gales, George Lynch, Ray Luzier, and many more. Doug has issued other solo albums under his own name, including 2005’s “Emotional Animal”, 2006’s “Songs From The Closet”, 2007’s “Strum Sum Up”, and 2013’s “Naked”.

Vancouver duo Jisei healthy dose of deathcore doesn’t spoil their grindcore recipe on Bad Representation.
The post Blast Worship: Jisei appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Fresh N’ Lean, the number one ranked organic prepared meal delivery service in the United States, spoke to MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx about nutrition, his intense training regimen, and “The First 21: How I Became Nikki Sixx”, his new book which looks back at his formative years.

On the topic of how he stays in good physical shape, Sixx said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “My family is naturally, a lot of them, overweight. I’m 195 pounds [and] six [feet] one [inch tall]. When I go into full cardio and light, medium weight, I’ll go down to about 185, but actually put a little bit of weight on. So I have to work really hard. My body wants to go 200 — it wants to do that. And it’s not necessarily for vanity reasons — I just don’t operate well [at a heavier weight]; the machinery doesn’t operate well; I don’t think good; I don’t sleep good. So health and exercise has become such a part of my life.

“I think back, even around [CRÜE’s] ‘Shout At The Devil’ [album], I was drinking a lot of whisky back then, but I remember trying to get into sort of workout, training things to get ready for the tour,” he continued. “‘Cause it takes it out of you onstage. People come from everywhere to come see you play, and you just stand up there all tired with a beer belly. I mean, that’s irresponsible. There’s a million other bands that would like to have your job.

“[Exercise and health] has been a part of my life a lot,” Nikki added. “And now I try to eat right and try to get enough sleep. One of the things I love is I have this Whoop app that I use that monitors my sleep. I used to have an Oura Ring. I try to keep an eye on all that stuff for my energy, because I’m constantly wanting to create stuff and then I’m gonna go on tour. So you can’t go too far down the rabbit hole. I’ve gotta stay on top of it or it directly affects everything. And [when] you have a two-year-old [child], you get to the end of your day, and whether writing songs or doing interviews or being at work, and this little person needs your time, and I have four older children, and they need their time with their dad, and [spending] time with my wife and friends, you can’t run out of energy. So the working out and the fuel is super important.”

MÖTLEY CRÜE’s “The Stadium Tour” was originally scheduled to take place in the summer of 2020 but ended up being pushed back to 2021, and then to 2022, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In December 2019, CRÜE manager Allen Kovac told Fox Business that “some of” the bandmembers had enlisted outside help to get in shape for the trek. Kovac was referring to criticism of singer Vince Neil for his supposed diminished singing ability and weight gain, as well as the health status of guitarist Mick Mars, who has been dealing with a chronic form of arthritis that led him to undergo a hip replacement.

Kovac explained: “Some of them are working with a trainer, some of them are working with a nutritionist to make themselves the best they can be. The greatest insecurity for an artist is: Is anyone going to care about my music? Is anyone going to buy a ticket? We were in November [2019] when the discussions were happening, and these guys were already into regimens of how they get ready for a tour.”

Speaking specifically about Neil, Kovac added: “Let’s see what Vince sings like and looks like when the tour goes out.” Sixx also said last year that Vince was “killing it” while working with “trainers” and “nutritionists” in preparation for “The Stadium Tour”.

Last month, Vince revealed that he was trying out a new toning machine in an apparent effort to get in shape for “The Stadium Tour”. The singer said he was using Emsculpt Neo, a revolutionary new treatment which supposedly builds muscle and reduces fat using both radio frequency and high-intensity electromagnetic energies.

Five months ago, Neil made headlines when he struggled to complete his solo concert at the Boone Iowa River Valley Festival in Boone. Based on fan-filmed video footage of the May 29 gig posted on YouTube, the 60-year-old rocker, who hadn’t performed in more than a year and a half due to the COVID-19 pandemic, began losing his voice several songs into his set, which consisted exclusively of CRÜE classics and cover songs previously recorded by the band.

Ukrainian nuclear thrash attack Mortal Vision launch their debut full-length this Friday, but bang your head to Mind Manipulation in its entirety right now via this exclusive premiere!
The post Album Premiere: Mortal Vision – Mind Manipulation appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

In a new interview with Australia’s Heavy, ALICE IN CHAINS co-founder Jerry Cantrell, who is promoting the upcoming release of his solo album “Brighten”, was asked if songwriting gets easier or harder over time. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I think it’s always hard. Some things [come relatively easy] — it’s really rare, actually, and it happens. There’s a couple of records on this record that are like that, and you’ll have a few of those per project that happen pretty quickly and really spontaneously. Most of the time, it’s a grind, and it’s a grind with looking at an abyss, like, ‘What the hell am I gonna come up with now?’ [Laughs] And that’s kind of the challenge. I think that’s what I like about it — because you’re not sure if you can pull it off again. It’s just a very human look at it.

“I’ve always operated, and the guys in ALICE have always kind of come at it in a way, and I think it’s a really healthy way, and we’ve heard this expressed by other artists, and we’ve taken that leap: you cannot rely on previous success; you cannot re-write a song or re-write a record,” he continued. “So it is done. So every time you start, it’s gotta be from an absolute zero. You have to trust in the fact that you’re gonna be you and you’re gonna come through, and if you’re lucky enough to have some sort of identifiable sound that people have enjoyed in the past, you can trust in the fact that that’s gonna be there. So what it really comes down to is what it’s always been about for us, which is pleasing ourselves — like, is this something we’re excited about? Are we making something that if we weren’t in this band we would listen to and go, ‘That’s fucking good.’ That’s who we’re trying to please. Obviously, we want people to listen to it and want it to connect to a larger audience than just ourselves. But it’s gotta start there first; it’s gotta cross that bridge before it gets to anybody else.”

“Brighten” will be made available on October 29. The LP was co-produced by Jerry over the past year with film composer Tyler Bates and Cantrell’s longtime engineer Paul Figueroa. They welcomed a dynamic cast of supporting players, including drummers Gil Sharone and Abe Laboriel, Jr. (Paul McCartney), pedal steel master Michael Rozon, Vincent Jones on piano, Wurlitzer, and organ. Other rock legends added to the fun of this LP, including Duff McKagan (GUNS N’ ROSES) on select bass tracks, Greg Puciato (THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN) handling all of the background vocals and Joe Barresi (TOOL, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE) overseeing the mixing of “Brighten”. Together, they recorded eight originals and the LP closes with an approved-by-Elton John cover of his classic “Goodbye” as the finale.

Jerry recently told Kerrang! magazine that “Brighten” contains “a lot of influence from the stuff I grew up listening to, like classic rock and singer-songwriter stuff of the ’60s, ’70s and even some of the ’80s. I also used a lot of voices and instruments that I don’t traditionally use in a heavy way and it’s really fucking cool,” he said.

Finnish heavy metal monsters LORDI will release no less than seven new studio albums in the fall. The LPs will mark the first new music from LORDI since the arrival of 2020’s “Killection”, a fictional compilation album which contained songs that LORDI would have written had the band existed between the early 1970s and the mid-1990s.

The “Lordiversity” box will be available on November 26 as seven-CD box set and as seven-vinyl box set in three different color editions. Each album has a different genre approach: hard rock, disco, progressive rock, heavy metal, AOR, thrash/speed metal and industrial metal.

In a new interview with 213Rock Harrag Melodica, LORDI leader Mr. Lordi stated about the band’s decision to simultaneously release seven albums: “In reality, what I wanted to do was to release 10 albums, and it was just the record label who said, ‘Okay, that’s too much. Seven is okay, but 10 is too much.’ But the funny thing here is that we could have easily done the 10 albums — easily, with no problem. Because what we managed to do is we recorded the seven albums in nine months. So we could have easily done the 10.”

He added: “I don’t think there is [an artist] in any genre of music that has done this. I think this is the first time any band released seven full-length studio albums at the same time.”

Asked if it was a difficult task to write and record so much music in such a short period of time, Mr. Lordi said: “It was, but it wasn’t. Let me put it this way: without the corona, this wouldn’t have been possible, obviously. Of course not. But because, all of a sudden, you have all this time, and nobody really knows how much time you actually have, because nobody knows when this pandemic will end, I already knew a year and a half ago when our tour got stopped because of the corona, I already knew that this is not gonna go away in a year; it’s gonna take, like, two years. And it’s almost two years already — like, more than a year and a half now. So I knew that we’re gonna have to use the time somehow. And without the corona, this couldn’t have been possible, of course. Because now you have the time, because you didn’t have any gigs, you didn’t have any tours, didn’t have anything else.”

When “Lordiversity” was first announced earlier in the year, Mr. Lordi explained how he got the idea to record the seven albums, with each LP focusing on a different style: “Within a week when the ‘Killectour’ was cut short in March 2020, I realized we’re gonna have to use the sudden extra time somehow. It was clear that it is the time to start planning the new album, even though ‘Killection’ was released not even two months before. I was thinking that the most boring thing we could do after ‘Killection’ is to do another basic LORDI album. And I was very much enjoying the different styles of songwriting, recording and production on ‘Killection’, but another boring idea would have been to do a part 2. Since ‘Killection’ is a fictional compilation album from a fictional back catalog that doesn’t exist, I got the idea that the only thing that could top that is to record and release that fictional back catalog. And until Halloween 2021 the fictional back catalog will be no longer fictional, it actually will exist… at least for the most part.”

The seven albums contained within “Lordiversity” are:

* Skelectric Dinosaur
* SuperFlyTrap
* The Masterbeast From The Moon
* Abusement Park
* Humanimals
* Abracadaver
* Spooky Sextravaganza Spectacular

LORDI won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006 with the song “Hard Rock Hallelujah” and remains the first and only winner from Finland in the history of the competition. Since then, the band has gone through several lineup changes. The original members who are still active with the band are Mr. Lordi and guitarist Amen.

TESTAMENT’s Alex Skolnick will perform with the CODE RED QUINTET on Friday, November 5 at 9:30 p.m. at Chelsea Table + Stage, Hilton Fashion District Hotel (152 W 26th St.) in New York City.

In a one-night-only performance, Skolnick — the lead guitarist from one of the most important thrash metal bands on the planet, TESTAMENT, and equally acclaimed for his work in jazz, world music and progressive rock — has assembled a bunch of superstar musicians, who together equal the CODE RED QUINTET. They will be featuring electronic jazz/funk improv and adding some fresh originals. The quintet will also be showcasing 1970s jazz and rock from greats, including Tony Williams, Jeff Beck as well as modern takes on standards and more.

Aside from Skolnick, who is considered to among the world’s most respected guitarists in multiple genres, CODE RED QUINTET also includes Nathan Peck, who plays bass with the ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO, GIDEON KING & CITY BLOG and NATHAN PECK & THE FUNKY ELECTRONIC UNIT. Brian Reeder, who will be playing the keyboard, is a pianist and composer working in jazz and classical music. Steve Kortyka on tenor sax, is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, composer, and full-time performer. Lastly, Erik Kalb on drums is a devotee of all R&B and soul who enjoys playing improvisational aesthetics.

CODE RED QUINTET is:

Alex Skolnick (TESTAMENT) – Guitar
Nathan Peck – Electric Bass
Brian Reeder – Keyboards
Steve Kortyka (Lady Gaga) – Tenor Sax
Erik Kalb (John Scofield, Sharon Jones) – Drums

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METALLICA has given away a rare autographed copy of “The Black Album” remastered deluxe box set. This rare band-autographed copy of the black album remastered deluxe box set is raising funds for the METALLICA’s All Within My Hands foundation as it works to create sustainable communities by supporting workforce education, the fight against hunger, and other critical local services.

Fandiem is a digital fundraising platform that harnesses the power of the fan community to do good in the world. With their donation to a selected nonprofit, fans are entered to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences with their favorite artists, festivals, athletes, and creators. These are the opportunities that were previously available only to a select few but through fandiem are awarded to the everyday fan at the heart of the community.

The Fandiem foundation is a project of the giving back fund, a national 501c3 organization that encourages and facilitates charitable giving. the giving back fund grants donation proceeds to each campaign’s partner nonprofit.

Says Fandiem: “Where were you when you first heard one of rock’s greatest albums of all time? probably headbanging to songs like ‘Enter Sandman’ and ‘Sad But True’. Now you can do it again with an extremely rare METALLICA autographed copy of the limited-edition Black Album remastered deluxe box set. the set is signed by James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo. This epic collector’s item includes previously unreleased content, behind-the-scenes photos in a hardcover book, cool merch, and more! One superfan will get a chance to keep this signed memento forever. We know. It’s awesome.

“What’s just as awesome? Supporting causes that make lives better around the world. that’s why each entry to win is also a donation toward METALLICA’s own All Within My Hands foundation. The organization was started by members of the band and is dedicated to creating sustainable communities by supporting workforce education, the fight against hunger, and other critical services.

“Enter here to win a piece of METALLICA history and support lives nationwide.

This exclusive fundraiser ends on Monday, November 1, 2021.

TikTok announced today that the music of LED ZEPPELIN is now available to its community. The band has also launched their own official TikTok account (@ledzeppelin) that will feature LED ZEPPELIN artwork and graphics, classic live performances, and other video content.

TikTok users can now create videos soundtracked to any song from LED ZEPPELIN’s full discography, encompassing over 100 total songs across their landmark studio and live albums, including some of their most legendary tracks such as “Whole Lotta Love”, “Stairway To Heaven”, “Immigrant Song”, “Rock And Roll”, “Black Dog”, “Ramble On” and “Kashmir”.

LED ZEPPELIN remains one of the most groundbreaking and popular groups in modern music, having sold more than 300 million albums worldwide. The band was founded in 1968 by Jimmy Page. Along with Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones, they began a 12-year reign during which the group was widely considered to be the biggest and most innovative rock band in the world. November 8 marks the 50th anniversary of their milestone fourth album “Led Zeppelin IV”, produced by Page, which continues to be one of the most artistically influential and commercially successful albums in the history of music and the sixth best-selling album of all time in the U.S. LED ZEPPELIN continues to be honored for its pivotal role in music history, counting a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Polar Music Prize among its many accolades.

LED ZEPPELIN released only eight studio albums and no singles over the course of its 12-year career, but to date there are more than 1,000 singles and 2,000 LPs in the market.

LED ZEPPELIN’s December 10, 2007 performance during the Ahmet Ertegun tribute concert was chronicled on the band’s 2012 “Celebration Day” CD and DVD. The set, which featured Jason Bonham subbing for his late father John Bonham on drums, marked Plant, Page and Jones’s first full-scale show together since John Bonham’s 1980 death.

Check out LED ZEPPELIN on TikTok here.