SADUS Announces First Album In 16 Years, ‘The Shadow Inside’

San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal legends SADUS will make their long-awaited return this fall with the release of their first album in 16 years, “The Shadow Inside”, on November 17 via Nuclear Blast Records.
Reunited in 2017, the band spent the last several years writing the record at their own pa…

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Code Red

Almost exactly one quarter of a century ago, PRIMAL FEAR began their noble quest. The late ’90s appeared to be a prolonged lean period for traditional heavy metal, but German metal stalwarts Mat Sinner and Ralf Scheepers had other ideas. Unapologetic in their debt to “Painkiller”-era JUDAS PRIEST, P…

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AMORPHIS Guitarist TOMI KOIVUSAARI Launches Solo Project BJØRKØ

Best known as the driving force behind Finnish metal icons AMORPHIS, guitarist Tomi Koivusaari steps into his own spotlight with BJØRKØ, his long-awaited solo project. A journey 15 years in the making, “Heartrot”, the project’s debut album, will be released this December through Svart Records.
The a…

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METALLICA Shares Pro-Shot Video Of ‘Leper Messiah’ Performance From Montreal During ‘M72’ Tour

Professionally filmed video of METALLICA performing the song “Leper Messiah” on August 11 at Stade Olympique in Montreal, Quebec, Canada can be seen below.
As previously reported, METALLICA drew nearly 80,000 fans to the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on August 25 at the first of the band’s two shows a…

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SHINEDOWN To Perform On ‘Live With Kelly And Mark’

SHINEDOWN will perform its mainstream radio hit “A Symptom Of Being Human” on “Live With Kelly And Mark” on Labor Day, this Monday, September 4 as the show heads into its season premiere week. Check your local listings for air time or visit livewithkellyandmark.com.
SHINEDOWN is also kicking off the…

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Crazy Tube Circuits Stardust V3 Review

The Stardust V3 from Crazy Tube Circuits is yet another pedal surfing the wave of popular amp-in-a-box overdrives. It manages to be a very streamlined take on the concept, but offers a lot of options, too. And though it has fewer knobs than the classic Fender amps it imitates, it offers three distinct amp types in one pedal. The Stardust has been in the Crazy Tube lineup since the early aughts, but where previous iterations offered a single, generic black-panel overdrive tone, the all-analog Stardust V3 derives its inspiration from three different black-panel Fenders from the ’60s—namely, the Bassman, Vibrolux Reverb, and Deluxe Reverb. It’s an excellent, flexible means of injecting the spirit of those amps into any signal chain and works great as a set-and-forget overdrive, allowing your guitar’s controls to take you from sparkling clean to crunchy mean.Paint It BlackIf you’re new to this maker from Athens, Greece, it bears mentioning (and may be obvious to state) that there are no tubes inside the Stardust V3. But Crazy Tube’s name hints at their considerable knack for distilling the essence of classic tube amps into pedalboard-friendly boxes, and that knack is on display here. The Stardust’s simple control complement offers gain, volume, and tone, while a 3-way toggle selects between BSM/VLX/DLX voicing. The very nice soft-action electronic relay footswitch is true bypass. An internal voltage doubler, meanwhile, takes the 9V DC input up to 18V for increased headroom and output. As such, the Stardust should not be used with a supply of more than 9V DC, which Crazy Tube tells us in the product literature but fails to indicate on the enclosure itself—something we’d like to see to help prevent user error. California Dreamin’Whether I paired the Stardust V3 with humbuckers, single-coils, and tweed- or Vox-style amps, it was a tasty tone enhancer and a useful low-gain overdrive pedal in the right applications. Impressively, it can inject three flavors of ’60s-black-panel voicing into amps with a totally different tonal foundation.Though it might seem pedantic to amp-savvy readers, it’s worth pointing out that the biggest differences between the three Fender amps that inspired the Stardust V3 are found in their output stages and speaker selections. There are two 6L6s and two 10s in a Vibrolux, two 6V6s and one 12″ speaker in the Deluxe, and two 6L6s and two 12s in most Bassman piggyback rigs. Each amp, however, uses a similar preamp. That means their respective personalities are dictated less by front-end differences. That also means the Stardust can accomplish reasonable impersonations of their target personalities via shifts in its core EQ characteristics. And between the three basic voices and the tone control in the Stardust V3, you can achieve many convincing variations on Bassman, Vibrolux, and Deluxe themes.“Impressively, it can inject three flavors of ’60s-black-panel voicing into amps with a totally different tonal foundation.”The other primary control for altering the pedal’s character, the gain knob, has a nice, gradual taper that suits its purpose well and enables you to dial-in nuanced shades of clean, semi-clean, and overdrive without sliding too far, too fast. Because none of the Fender amps that served as inspiration here are considered all-out gain machines, the lower-gain overdrive it achieves leaves a lot of headroom to utilize its revoicing and tone-shaping capabilities. That means you can recast the sound of amps that just need extra sparkle and a little grind, even if the transformation isn’t dramatic. I suspect many players will use the Stardust as an always-on OD—particularly because the responsiveness to volume, tone, and touch dynamics is excellent.The VerdictThe Stardust works its magic best when set for subtle tone and gain transformations. But its capacity for injecting ’60s-black-panel character and low-gain overdrive into amps designed for completely different tonalities is impressive. If black-panel tones aren’t your bag, the Stardust V3 might be little use to you. If they are, you’ll love the simple, straightforward way it can add a dose of ’60s Fullerton feel and tone to almost any rig

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U.D.O. Announces Fall 2023 North American Tour

U.D.O., the German metal band fronted by former ACCEPT singer Udo Dirkschneider, will embark on a North American tour this fall. The 22-date trek will kick off on November 3 in Frenchtown, New York and make stops in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Columbus, Montr…

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Watch Pro-Shot Video Of MARTY FRIEDMAN’s Appearance With MEGADETH At Germany’s WACKEN OPEN AIR

Wacken TV has uploaded professionally filmed video of MEGADETH’s August 4 performance at the Wacken Open Air festival in Wacken, Germany. Check it out below.
Featured songs:
00:00 À Tout Le Monde
04:46 Symphony Of Destruction
09:18 Holy Wars… The Punishment Due
Marty Friedman rejoined MEGADETH on…

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Watch: PEARL JAM Plays First Show Of 2023 In Minnesota

PEARL JAM kicked off its short U.S. tour last night (Thursday, August 31) at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. The band’s first live performance of 2023 saw the Eddie Vedder-fronted outfit play the first five songs seated, opening with “Indifference”, the last song on the band’s sophomo…

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THE BLACK CROWES Announce Deluxe Reissue Of ‘The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion’

A deluxe reissue of THE BLACK CROWES’ second album, “The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion”, will arrive on December 1. The set will include previously unreleased studio recordings, rare B-sides and a live performance from 1993 at Houston’s Sam Houston Coliseum.
“The Southern Harmony And Musica…

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