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Starting on April 2, concerts in New York state will be allowed to resume at 33 percent capacity, with a limit of 100 people indoors or 200 people outdoors, and a requirement that all attendees wear masks and be socially distanced. According to The New York Times, those limits would be increased — to 150 people indoors or 500 people outdoors — if all attendees test negative before entering.

Because of the state’s order that venues require social distancing and mask-wearing, some promoters and venue operators say that reopening simply isn’t economically feasible.

“Given that social distancing is still part of the metric, it brings us back down to an approximate 20 percent capacity, which is untenable,” Michael Swier, the owner of the New York City rock clubs Bowery Ballroom and Mercury Lounge, told The New York Times.

The New York announcement comes just a day after the governors of Texas and Mississippi said that they were lifting mask mandates and allowing businesses to reopen at full capacity.

Effective March 10, all businesses in Texas will be allowed to open at full capacity for the first time in nearly a year, Gov. Greg Abbott announced. Businesses may still limit capacity or implement additional safety protocols at their own discretion.

Mississippi on Tuesday issued a separate executive order to lift the state’s mask mandates and give all businesses the green light to reopen at full capacity.

More than 3.5 million Texans have so far received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, with 1.8 million fully vaccinated. In Mississippi, 14.1% of the state’s residents have had at least one dose, and 7.6% are fully vaccinated.

Iowa and Montana recently lifted statewide mask mandates, while Massachusetts is completely lifting capacity limits on indoor dining, and allowing concert venues to open at 50 percent capacity.

Alice Cooper has dismissed the notion that rock is dead, saying that “rock and roll is where it should be right now.”

While rock and roll has been king of the music world for decades, in the past few years, it’s been unseated by the growing popularity of hip-hop. This has caused many pundits to proclaim the genre “dead” from an industry perspective, noting that it has been eclipsed in all measures by pop, hip-hop, and EDM.

A few years ago, KISS bassist/vocalist Simmons told Esquire magazine that “rock did not die of old age. It was murdered. Some brilliance, somewhere, was going to be expressed and now it won’t because it’s that much harder to earn a living playing and writing songs. No one will pay you to do it.”

A number of hard rock and heavy metal musicians have weighed in on the topic in a variety of interviews over the last several years, with some digging a little deeper into Simmons’s full remarks and others just glossing over the headline.

Cooper, who is promoting his new album, “Detroit Stories”, spoke about rock’s supposed diminishing status during a recent interview with NME. Addressing the whole “rock is dead” debate, Alice said (see video below): “Gene Simmons — I would like him to do my taxes, ’cause he’s a businessman, and business-wise, [his claim that rock is dead is] valid. But I guarantee you right now, in London somewhere, in garages, they’re learning AEROSMITH, they’re learning GUNS N’ ROSES — a bunch of 18-year-kids are in there with guitars and drums, and they are learning hard rock. It’s the same with the United States — there’s all these young bands that wanna resurge that whole area of hard rock and outlaws. So, in some ways, rock and roll is where it should be right now. We’re not in the Grammys; we’re not in the mainstream. Rock and roll is outside looking in now, and I think that gives us that outlaw attitude. And I think that’s very good for rock and roll, ’cause that’s how rock and roll started; we were all outlaws at the time, and then we became mainstream. But now, hey, FOO FIGHTERS, GREEN DAY — a lot of great hard rock bands out there.”

He continued: “The one [kind of] music, if you think of it, that started and never ended was hard rock. Because it went to punk, it went to disco, it went to hip-hop, it went to grunge — it did all these things — but the one thing that went right to the middle of it was hard rock. THE ROLLING STONES were still THE ROLLING STONES; AEROSMITH was still AEROSMITH; Alice Cooper was still Alice Cooper. We survived those things because guitar-driven hard rock is the only thing that will still be going 30 years from now, 40 years from now. And I think music will go all over the place, but you’re gonna find those hard rock bands still there.”

The “rock is dead” argument has popped up again and again throughout the years, including in 2018 after MAROON 5 lead singer Adam Levine told Variety magazine that “rock music is nowhere, really. I don’t know where it is,” he said. “If it’s around, no one’s invited me to the party. All of the innovation and the incredible things happening in music are in hip-hop. It’s better than everything else. Hip-hop is weird and avant-garde and flawed and real, and that’s why people love it.”

In a new interview with “The Rhino Podcast”, Tony Iommi reflected on his time recording and touring with Ronnie James Dio as his bandmate in both BLACK SABBATH and HEAVEN & HELL. The guitarist said (hear audio below): “It was really amazing. And it was going so good — the last [HEAVEN & HELL] album we did with Ronnie. We talked about doing another album. We were really focused, all of us, then. With any kind of egos or anything anybody had, it had all gone, and we could work together. And it was great fun — we had a great time doing that album, and we had a great time doing the tour. And we never put pressure on each other as far as, ‘We’ve gotta do another album; we’ve gotta do this.’ It was, ‘If we wanna do it, we’ll do it.’ And we did talk about doing another album, and we would have done another album if Ronnie hadn’t passed away. But at least we had that opportunity of being able to do that tour. And it was great.”

Iommi went on to call Dio’s 2010 death “a tremendous loss — absolute tremendous loss. He [had] such a unique voice, and the way he presented his voice was fantastic,” he said.

Dio replaced Ozzy Osbourne in BLACK SABBATH in 1980, recording the “Heaven And Hell” and “Mob Rules” albums, plus “Live Evil”, before leaving in 1982. He rejoined the group 10 years later for an album called “Dehumanizer”, and again teamed with the group under the HEAVEN & HELL banner in 2006. HEAVEN & HELL released an album called “The Devil You Know” in 2009.

Ronnie passed away of stomach cancer on May 16, 2010 at the age of 67.

Dio was renowned throughout the world as one of the greatest and most influential vocalists in heavy metal history. The singer was diagnosed with cancer in late 2009. He underwent chemotherapy and made what is now his final public appearance in April 2010 at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards in Los Angeles.

Ronnie’s long-awaited autobiography, titled “Rainbow In The Dark: The Autobiography”, will be released on July 27 via Permuted Press.

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

Norfolk, Virginia’s Demons have got your metal-tinged noise groove fix right here with a smoldering new track “Play Acting Virtue.”
The post Track Premiere: Demons — “Play Acting Virtue” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

SCORPIONS’ Mikkey Dee has just returned to Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany to resume recording the band’s upcoming studio album. Tentatively due in 2021, the disc will mark the German-Polish-Swedish hard rock legends’ first release since 2017’s “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads”, which was an anthology of SCORPIONS’ new and classic material.

Earlier today, Dee shared a Twitter video message recorded in his Hannover hotel room, where he is quarantining for a week before rejoining his bandmates in the studio. The Swedish drummer said in the clip (see below): “We are gonna finish up the album, and we are working really hard on that. And it’s coming together; we’re almost done. So, I’ve got one more little run to go here, and that’s about it. The other guys have been working while I’ve been in Sweden, of course, but there’s a few more little things to do on the drums.”

SCORPIONS originally intended to record the new album in Los Angeles with producer Greg Fidelman, whose previous credits include SLIPKNOT and METALLICA. However, because of the pandemic, most of the work so far has been done remotely, with Fidelman taking part via Zoom.

Singer Klaus Meine recently told Talking Metal that the goal with using Fidelman to produce the new LP is to bring “the old vibe from albums like ‘Blackout’, ‘Love At First Sting’ or even ‘Lovedrive’. We try to focus on those albums and this attitude,” he said. “If we get there, who knows — it’s so many years later. But it’s the spirit and it’s the whole vibe around this album. This time, the focus is on the harder songs.”

According to Meine, SCORPIONS’ new LP will feature “no outside writers at all,” unlike 2015’s “Return To Forever”, which was largely co-written by the album’s producers, Mikael Nord Andersson and Martin Hansen.

Fidelman began his career as the guitarist and songwriter for RHINO BUCKET before launching his career as a producer, engineer and mixer, finding an early mentor in Rick Rubin.

SCORPIONS’ last full-length collection of new recordings was the aforementioned “Return To Forever”, partially comprising songs the band had in the vault from the ’80s. It was the final recorded appearance of SCORPIONS’ longtime drummer James Kottak, who was dismissed from the band in September 2016. He has since been replaced by Mikkey Dee, formerly of MOTÖRHEAD.

Video update from Germany! pic.twitter.com/b0BPc9nbAX
— Mikkey Dee (@themikkeydee) March 3, 2021

Swedish metallers GHOST have released a new music video for the song “Life Eternal”. The black-and-white clip, which can be seen below, features footage filmed at the final show of the band’s “Prequelle” tour, which concluded exactly a year ago — on March 3, 2020 — at Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City, Mexico.

Last October, GHOST mastermind Tobias Forge told Sweden Rock Magazine that he was planning to enter the studio in January to begin recording GHOST’s fifth album. “The actual recording will last around six weeks and then there’s two to three weeks of mixing and mastering,” he said. “So sometime in March the record should be finished, but it won’t be released until after the summer. As it looks now, knock on wood, we will then go on tour. We won’t release an album until we know that we are actually going on tour. The album release will coincide with the start of a tour. Of course, we could announce an album release date and then, for some reason, it might not be possible to tour, but that’s a whole other matter.”

In March 2020, at the aforementioned GHOST concert in Mexico City, the band introduced the new character who will front the act for its next LP phase: Papa Emeritus IV.

Forge performed as a “new” Papa Emeritus on each of the band’s first three LPs, with each version of Papa replacing the one that came before it. Papa Emeritus III was retired in favor of Cardinal Copia before the release of 2018’s “Prequelle” album.

In October 2019, Forge confirmed to U.K.’s Kerrang! magazine that there would be a new character fronting GHOST by the time the group’s next LP sees the light of day.

“Prequelle” debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and features the chart-topping singles “Rats” and “Dance Macabre”.

In December 2018, GHOST nabbed two Grammy nominations, “Best Rock Album” for “Prequelle” and “Best Rock Song” for “Rats”.

Five years ago, GHOST became the first Swedish rock band ever to win a Grammy — 2016’s “Best Metal Performance” for the song “Cirice”.

DREAM THEATER guitarist John Petrucci spoke to Metal Injection about the writing and recording process for the band’s upcoming follow-up to 2019’s “Distance Over Time” album. He said: “There’s definitely a lot we learned from ‘Distance Over Time’. And having said that, this is definitely something new and different as well. I can say this, we’re hard at work. We still have a bunch to do. It’s going to come out later this year. We’re actually in the midst of tracking keyboards right now. I don’t know if it’s just, like, people are home and you can’t tour, but it’s, like, everybody just came to the table to play. Everybody is on fire. The best ideas and best playing. And so the album, it’s lit up. There’s definitely a lot of energy and excitement to it. I’m really pumped about it.”

Petrucci also reflected on DREAM THEATER’s 35-year career so far, saying: “I mean, it’s unbelievable. It’s not something that many bands could say and we’re just so, so fortunate to have this extensive of a career and fans that were not only there from the beginning, but the new ones that we gain with each album that comes out, which is so encouraging. The fact that we’ve been able to do this type of music at the level that we’re at is mindblowing. The fact that I’m still in the same band with [bassist] John Myung, who I met when I was 12 years old, blows my mind. The things that we’ve been able to do, the accomplishments and places we’ve been, it’s just unbelievable… It’s, like, we have just as much fun and excitement with every record that we do. Thankfully we have fans that look forward to new music just as eagerly as we did. It reminds me of the way that I felt when I was growing up and listening to RUSH, mostly like in the ’80s during all those those classic albums, from ‘Permanent Waves’ and ‘Moving Pictures’ and ‘Signals’ and ‘Power Windows’ and all that stuff. I looked forward to every album when it came out, every new album, every new material. I couldn’t get enough. So I love that we have that that similar type of mindset in our fan base. It’s really encouraging. We just love doing it.”

“Distance Over Time” marked DREAM THEATER’s first album for for Sony Music’s progressive imprint InsideOut Music. The group spent the past 25 years recording under various labels in the Warner Music Group system, most recently Roadrunner Records, which released five albums by the band between 2007 and 2016.

DREAM THEATER recently released its ninth career live album, “Distant Memories – Live In London”. Recorded at DREAM THEATER’s sold-out show at the Apollo Theatre in London, the live release documents the band’s popular world tour in support of “Distance Over Time” and the 20th anniversary of their seminal concept album “Metropolis Part 2 – Scenes From A Memory”.

During a new appearance on “The Mistress Carrie Podcast”, GODSMACK frontman Sully Erna spoke about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band’s new studio album. He said (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We are working hard this year and isolating and locking ourselves in the studio to not write one record but to write two records. We always listen to our fans and we pay attention, and although we write the kind of music that we love and that we wanna write that satisfies us, we still like to hear and try to honor the fanbase that’s stuck by us for the last 26 years. So one of the things they’ve always asked us, ‘When are you gonna do another acoustic record? That was so cool that one you did.’ But that acoustic record [2004’s ‘The Other Side’ EP] really was nothing more than our own songs stripped down into acoustic cover version of ’em with a couple of originals on it. So this year, what we wanna do is create a full-length rock record, but we also want to go back and create a really cool vibey acoustic album, or EP, so we can launch a couple of records, or at least have ’em in the can. And that’s our goal. We’re gonna be in there all year just writing music. And if it’s a big fat rock song, it’s gonna go in one folder, and if it’s kind of a cool piano piece or acoustic track, it’s gonna go in another folder, and then we’re gonna record everything and then pick our favorites and put out a couple of albums’ worth. So we have no [intention] of slowing down whatsoever right now.”

Asked if GODSMACK has brought in any outside songwriters this time around to help inspire the band’s creativity, Erna, who recently moved to Florida, said: “Not yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I do at some point. ‘Cause the last record, I really enjoyed the process of not only writing by myself or writing with my band, but then I ventured out too, and I worked with some other writers who are just really great songwriters, like [John] Feldmann, who writes for BLINK-182 and 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER and a really weird list of bands that no one would ever make the connection of GODSMACK and those kind of artists. Great artists, but just a different style of music. Or Erik Ron. Or even Clint Lowery from SEVENDUST; I did some writing with him. And I enjoyed the process a lot, and out of that process, I got some great songs. And so, yeah, it does inspire me, and it makes me think outside the box.

“I’m way past the ego side of this business and who writes it and trying to hero everything myself,” he explained. “If I write it, great. I enjoyed it. I wrote ‘Unforgettable’, I wrote ‘Under Your Scars’ — those are two big songs that became No. 1s on the last album. But I co-wrote with ‘Bulletproof’ and ‘When Legends Rise’, and I’m not embarrassed to say that or shy about it. I have no ego when it comes to that.

“I have always been someone who has endorsed the thought of ‘do what’s best for the song,'” Erna added. “And whoever needs to get credited for that is the person that gets credited for it. But for me, it’s just about writing the best music I can write and continuously evolving into the best songwriter I can be. And that’s my goal. I look up to — Elton John is my favorite all-time artist for songwriters. And I would like to be able to just have the music live on and be able to evolve into being a timeless songwriter one day. ‘Cause that’s gonna be my legacy — that’s the only thing I have on this planet to leave behind and do my small little miniscule part on this planet to help people.”

Last September, GODSMACK’s “Bulletproof” single was certified platinum by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America) for accumulating one million certified units. According to the RIAA, one equivalent song unit is equal to a single digital song sale, or 150 on-demand audio and/or video streams.

“Bulletproof” was released February 28, 2018 as the first single from “When Legends Rise”; the track was previously certified gold in the U.S. and was also the most-played song at rock radio in 2018.

Originally released April 27, 2018 via BMG (the band’s debut on the label), “When Legends Rise” marked GODSMACK’s first album in four years. The album earned career milestones for the group: four No. 1 rock tracks (an accomplishment that makes GODSMACK one of only four rock acts to achieve this), and a record 11th No. 1 singles in the band’s career with the album’s fourth single “Unforgettable”.

“Unforgettable” followed three previous No. 1 singles from “When Legends Rise”: “Under Your Scars” and “When Legends Rise” plus “Bulletproof”. “When Legends Rise” entered the Billboard Top 200 album chart in the top ten (No. 8), with four No. 1 placements on other charts: Top Rock Albums, Top Hard Music Albums, Top Independent Albums and Top Alternative Albums.

Last June, GODSMACK’s music publishing catalog and master royalty stream was acquired by Primary Wave Music Publishing. The deal includes the Grammy nominee’s publishing and master income stream for its compositions and masters across its entire career to date. Titles include their debut album “Godsmack”, “When Legends Rise”, “Awake” and “1000hp”, as well as their Billboard No. 1 albums “The Oracle”, “IV” and “Faceless”, which features the Grammy-nominated single “I Stand Alone”. Erna, who formed GODSMACK in 1995, wrote the single, which shot to No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart upon release. It went on to sell over a half million copies, helping “Faceless” to quickly go platinum. Also included in the deal are EPs and compilations, including “The Other Side” and “Good Times, Bad Times”.

Epic blackened doom wraithbringers Abigorum open hell’s gates with the lyric video for their new track, “Der geheimnisvolle Käfig.”
The post Track Premiere: Abigorum – “Der geheimnisvolle Käfig” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.