ICED EARTH leader Jon Schaffer spoke to Brutal Planet Magazine about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected his group’s touring and recording activities. He said (hear audio below): “Our travel is very restricted right now, especially being an international band. We have a Canadian and a British guy in the band, and it’s not gonna be easy. And I think it’s gonna be quite a while before we can get together and do our next thing. It doesn’t make any sense to start planning anything right now, because I believe they are gonna launch the second wave of this and lock everything down again. They certainly will in most states, and as it is right now, Americans can’t even go to Europe.

“To me, it’s a ridiculous level of fear mongering,” he continued. “I’m not denying that we have a problem, but we’ve had plenty of these problems in the past. And what I don’t like is I feel like this reactionary decision to shut everything down is gonna do far more damage to people’s lives. And I think if you look at the actual death rate…

“I feel sympathy for the people that have lost loved ones during this — absolutely; I’m not cold-hearted — I’m just saying that the ramifications of shutting down the global economy are gonna lead to far more suffering than something which, it’s arguable whether it’s even as bad as the flu in terms of the actual death rate. And the way they’re testing, that needs to be questioned heavily, and the way they’re counting [coronavirus-related deaths]… If you have a heart attack, they’re gonna call it COVID. They’re being pressured by the federal government to do this kind of garbage so they can get the numbers up.

“There’s a lot of fraud and corruption, obviously, in this country and all over the world, but it’s rampant right now. And I just think that the people are gonna suffer a lot more from these decisions than from the virus itself.”

As of Friday morning (July 24), the CDC reported there’s been 3,952,273 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and that 142,755 people have died from the illness.

CDC data from the 2018-19 influenza season estimates about 35 million people in the U.S. contracted the flu and roughly 34,200 died from it.

Earlier in the month, Schaffer raised eyebrows when he voiced his controversial views on the coronavirus crisis during an interview with MetalSucks’s “The Quarantinecast”, claiming that COVID-19 is “a psychological warfare campaign on the people more than it is a serious pandemic.” Implying that a shadowy cabal of elites is using a global crisis as a cover to profiteer and entrench their power, Schaffer said: “I think there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye here — in fact, I know there is. Legitimate doctors and scientists are being censored and banned on YouTube constantly. It’s unbelievable levels of fraud.”

Schaffer recently announced the release of his first book, “Wicked Words And Epic Tales”. The book is the debut release from Schaffer’s new publishing company Wicked Words, LLC and is the first of many original concepts planned for future release by Schaffer.

“Wicked Words And Epic Tales” is a collection of lyrics, interviews and pages of artwork that Schaffer’s work has inspired throughout the years. The book is an anthology of lyrics from Schaffer that span his 35 years in making music in various projects, including ICED EARTH, DEMONS & WIZARDS, SONS OF LIBERTY and PURGATORY.

During last night’s episode of “Saturday Night Special”, FOZZY frontman Chris Jericho’s weekly live series which airs on his YouTube channel and Facebook page, he spoke about the progress of the recording sessions for the band’s follow-up to 2017’s “Judas” album. He said: “We are working now. I actually have the track listing of the new FOZZY record right here. There’s 12 songs. There’s 11 originals. One of them is ‘Nowhere To Run’, our last Top 10 hit. One of them is a cover song, which I’m not gonna tell you. So there’s 10 [new] original killer tracks on here.

“It’s our best album ever by far, and I can’t wait for you guys to get a chance to hear it,” he continued. “And we’re gonna start recording vocals… We did four songs of vocals already. And one of the songs is called ‘Ugly’. There you go. U-G-L-Y. You ain’t got no alibi. That’s all I’m saying.”

This past May, Jericho told Australia’s Triple M radio station that FOZZY has “so many great songs” written for the new LP that “it’s gonna be hard to pick the singles.”

Guitarist Rich Ward and producer Johnny Andrews are once again “doing the lion’s share” of the songwriting for the new LP, which is being recorded primarily in Atlanta, Georgia.

Released last August, “Nowhere To Run” was FOZZY’s third single to hit Top 10 on rock radio, following “Judas” and “Painless”.

In addition to producing “Judas”, Andrews previously co-wrote FOZZY’s “Lights Go Out” track back in 2014. He has also written songs with the likes of ALL THAT REMAINS, THREE DAYS GRACE and HALESTORM.

Earlier in the month, FOZZY announced the rescheduled “Save The World” tour dates, starting October 3 in Dallas, Texas and ending on November 22 in Nashville, Tennessee.

This past Thursday (July 23), SEPULTURA guitarist took part in a question-and-answer session with fans at Nuclear Blast’s “Comic-Con@Home” event on Twitch.

Speaking to a Polish fan about how the current global political situation can be used as a source of musical and lyrical inspiration, Kisser said: “The whole world, pretty much, is going through this right-wing type of point of view, whatever you wanna call that, for our society and politics and stuff. In Poland, they are going through the same kind of situation — I guess in the [United] States and here in Brazil as well. It’s really a very sad situation, because it seems that we are going backwards.

“There were a lot of gains historically in human rights and the battle against racism and the women movement and feminism and all that, so it’s really insane that we are going through this again, and more insane that there’s a lot of people who still believe and really support that type of point of view or type of idealogy,” he continued.

“But music’s here and metal saves. [Laughs] We have tons of stuff to talk about, and it really inspired us. You see around the ’80s, when Ronald Reagan was the president of the United States and also very right wing, conservative and stuff, and all the battle and the war against drugs, which was a complete failure and a complete stupidity. But you see thrash metal and punk music, it really grew up a lot during those days. You see DEAD KENNEDYS and even METALLICA, you had the political themes that really inspired the musicians and they made great albums, which inspired me to be a musician and be in a band. So I think we have to take advantage of situations like that and be a little more positive and not really go down. The news is really depressing — it’s really hardly some good news that we hear nowadays during this whole quarantine and everything. So it’s really something that music really helps you to go through this kind of situations.

“It is a transitional period in our life, and we are going through this,” Andreas added. “It’s very difficult, but things will go back — we’re gonna have shows, we’re gonna have concerts, we’re gonna have sports events and stuff, but in a different way. We don’t know how exactly it’s gonna be, but I think in the end, something positive — a lot of things positive — will come out of it.”

SEPULTURA’s latest LP, “Quadra”, was released on February 7 via Nuclear Blast Records. It is a concept effort created at Sweden’s Fascination Street Studios with renowned producer Jens Bogren.

SEPULTURA comprises Kisser, vocalist Derrick Green, bassist Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. and drummer Eloy Casagrande.

SEPULTURA was formed in Belo Horizonte by brothers Max and Igor Cavalera, who are no longer with the band.

“Quadra” is the follow-up to “Machine Messiah”, which was SEPULTURA’s fourteenth studio album and the eighth since Green joined the ranks.

Legendary punk rock band MISFITS has dropped its lawsuit against a publisher over the advertising and sale of a photobook titled “Scream With Me – The Enduring Legacy Of The Misfits”.

On March 9, Misfits A.D. — the limited liability company established by MISFITS founding members Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only to own and manage intellectual property, including trademarks and copyrights, associated with the MISFITS — filed a lawsuit against Abrams, claiming the publisher “willfully infringed” MISFITS’ famous “Fiend Skull design” trademark and unlawfully copied and used MISFITS’ copyrighted artwork in connection with the book.

On July 21, MISFITS’ attorney provided notice of the voluntary dismissal of the civil lawsuit in a court document filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. The filing says the dismissal is made “with prejudice,” meaning the lawsuit cannot be filed again, and indicates that “each party shall bear his, her, or its own attorneys’ fees and costs.”

“Scream With Me – The Enduring Legacy Of The Misfits” is no longer being advertised on the Abrams web site, but appears to still be available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other leading book stores.

After MISFITS’ lawsuit was filed four months ago, Abrams issued a statement to BLABBERMOUTH.NET via the publisher’s legal representation, saying that it intended to “vigorously defend the lawsuit.”

The statement read: “As the plaintiff admits, the parties corresponded about this matter last July through their counsel. At that time, Abrams pointed out to the MISFITS’ counsel that the book’s publication was permissible under well-established trademark and copyright precedent. We are surprised to now see this baseless lawsuit nearly eight months later.

“We are confident that the limited use of content that is alleged to be original to the MISFITS in the ‘Scream With Me’ book is well within the parameters of fair use. This same issue has been litigated in the recent past and courts have consistently held that such works are permissible, including in a well-known New York federal court case concerning a GRATEFUL DEAD visual book that documented the history of that band. In that 2006 case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the pictorial history of the GRATEFUL DEAD was a permissible fair use.

“Rather than having a sound legal basis, this lawsuit against Abrams seems to be mostly about the MISFITS’ desire to publish their own book. Just as there can be multiple books about the GRATEFUL DEAD, there can be multiple books about the MISFITS.”

In the MISFITS complaint, Danzig and Only claimed Abrams’s photobook “is rife with large-scale, repeated, and unlicensed reproductions of Misfits A.D. intellectual property. For example, the cover of the photobook prominently displays, without authorization, the Misfits A.D. ‘Fiend Skull design’ trademark and, in doing so, misleads consumers into believing that the photo book has been approved by, or is associated with, Misfits A.D., which is indisputably false,” the lawsuit read. “The photobook also unabashedly copies wholesale copyrighted artwork associated with the MISFITS’ musical recordings and releases. The MISFITS’ copyrighted artwork is an integral part of the band’s extensive and highly successful line of officially licensed merchandise and its world famous lifestyle brand. In addition, the named authors of the infringing photo book have been falsely affiliating themselves with the MISFITS in connection with advertising and promoting the publication and release of the book, further harming Misfits A.D.”

The complaint added: “In addition to the infringing cover of the Book, the Book is structured around the MISFITS Artwork with chapters that consist entirely of unauthorized uses of the MISFITS Artwork, with each of the MISFITS Artwork reproduced multiple times on multiples pages of the Book and using both exact copies and variants of the MISFITS Artwork.”

According to the lawsuit, Abrams conceded that the purpose of the book is to “usurp the value” of the MISFITS artwork, having advertised the book as a “visual history” of the MISFITS that “spotlights the band’s iconic and influential album and single art, fan club merchandise, original posters, [and] show flyers.”

Upon learning of Abrams’ planned release of the book, Misfits A.D.’s counsel wrote to Abrams to demand that Abrams cease and desist from promoting, advertising or selling the book. In response, Abrams admitted that it obtained clearances from other copyright holders for the foreword, interviews, quotes, and certain photographs contained in the book, the lawsuit claimed. Nonetheless, Abrams categorically denied that it needed clearance or authorization to use the Fiend Skull mark or to use and/or make derivative works of the MISFITS artwork in the book, according to the lawsuit.

The initial comeback performance by MISFITS members Danzig, Only and Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein took place at the 2016 Riot Fest. The estranged bandmates played together for the first time since 1983 and were backed by former SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo and guitarist Acey Slade.

Since then, the original lineup of the MISFITS has reunited for scattered dates, with the most recent one taking place in December in Philadelphia.

Prior to the Riot Fest concerts, Glenn, Jerry and Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein last performed together on October 29, 1983.

The original MISFITS band broke up in 1983, and Only brought forth a new version of the MISFITS in 1995. Various members have come and gone, but Only, along with BLACK FLAG’s Dez Cadena, has kept some form of the MISFITS in the recording studio and on the road for most of the last two and half decades.

Marilyn Manson appears to be working on a recording project with A$AP Ferg.

Late Saturday night (July 25), Manson shared a photo of him hanging out with the hip-hop star, captioning the picture: “MM & A$AP Ferg in the studio tonight.” Meanwhile, A$AP Ferg posted a short video of him and Manson in the vocal booth and wrote in a caption: “Running it up @marilynmanson”

The social media posts come a little over a week after Manson shared a new selfie alongside the mysterious words “Never-ending Astral Vampire. Prepare…”

Marilyn Manson recently completed work on his highly anticipated new studio album. The project’s status was revealed by collaborator Shooter Jennings, who took to his Instagram to say that the follow-up to 2017’s “Heaven Upside Down” was “finished,” also calling it a “masterpiece.” Manson replied to Shooter’s post, writing in the comments “Finished masterpiece album” and “Shit is gonna get real.”

In April 2019, Manson said that his upcoming album was nearly done, later adding that he wouldn’t compare his new record to his past work.

“I’m in a mode in life where I wanted to tell stories with this record, and it’s sort of like a wax museum of my thoughts, a study of the chamber of horrors in my head,” he said. “All the romance and hope you can have in the world, here in the End Times where it can be a different kind of apocalypse for each person listening to the record. I tried to paint it with words, and Shooter with sounds, so you can see and hear all of your longing, your passion and despair. That’s sort of a dramatic explanation of it. But it is full of drama. I wouldn’t compare it to any of my other records, but you hear a bit of everything. It’s like I’ve focused everything into one spot, finally.”

Manson’s guitarist Paul Wiley will also appear on the new disc, as will his new drummer, Brandon Pertzborn (of BLACK FLAG, DOYLE and HO99O9).

Manson and Jennings previously teamed up in 2016 to record a cover version of “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” for Jennings’s “Countach (For Giorgio)” LP, a covers collection featuring songs by electronic-music pioneer Giorgio Moroder.

View this post on Instagram

MM & A$AP Ferg in the studio tonight.
A post shared by Marilyn Manson (@marilynmanson) on Jul 26, 2020 at 1:39am PDT

View this post on Instagram

Running it up @marilynmanson
A post shared by Flip Phone Shorty (@asapferg) on Jul 26, 2020 at 7:12am PDT

FAITH NO MORE keyboardist Roddy Bottum has released a new solo song called “People Power” via Bandcamp.

Earlier today, Bottum tweeted out a link to the track, and he wrote in an accompanying message: “I miss you people. I’m starting a daily music share on my bandcamp account. it’s real casual but here’s track one. LOVE YOUS.”

This past May, Bottum released the official music video for “Daddy”, the first single from MAN ON MAN, his collaboration with his boyfriend Joey Holman. The song is taken from MAN ON MAN’s debut album, which is expected to arrive this summer.

Bottum was one of the first openly gay famous rockers, casually announcing his homosexuality in a 1993 interview for The Advocate with the iconic gay journalist Lance Loud.

“It was preposterous to me that people would have issues with it, but it was a difficult time,” Bottum told Tidal in a 2019 interview. “I was in a band [FAITH NO MORE] that was being embraced by bands like METALLICA and GUNS N’ ROSES. Really hetero vibes and really over-the-top, sexist, clichéd camps of musical dinosaur vibes.”

FAITH NO MORE opened for METALLICA and GUNS N’ ROSES on their 1992 stadium tour — a few years after GN’R released the song “One In A Million”, featuring the Axl Rose-penned lyrics “immigrants and f****ts/they make no sense to me.”

“It was definitely awkward. I don’t know if I would be able to do that today,” Bottum told Tidal. “If a band like that asked a project I was involved in to open up for them, I think I would be a lot more politically in-tune with being able to say, ‘No, thank you.'”

Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, FAITH NO MORE was supposed to return to the road in the spring, five years after the release of the group’s acclaimed reunion album, “Sol Invictus”.

I miss you people. I’m starting a daily music share on my bandcamp account. it’s real casual but here’s track one. LOVE YOUS. https://t.co/XNkiaeZ6Be
— Roddy Bottum (@roddybottum) July 26, 2020

Tommy Lee has once again said that 2019’s Netflix biopic “The Dirt”, about MÖTLEY CRÜE’s formative years, sparked a renewed interest from younger fans who wanted to see them live, contributing to the band’s decision to renege on its infamous “cessation of touring” contract.

After vowing in 2015 never to play together again, CRÜE announced last December that they would be touring in 2020 with fellow hard rock veterans DEF LEPPARD and POISON.

Speaking to “Never Meet Your Heroes”, the SiriusXM show hosted by ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian, about how the success of “The Dirt” affected the CRÜE’s planned comeback as part of “The Stadium Tour”, Lee said: “I stay in touch with fans all the time; I’m pretty active. Imagine being a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old kid, [and] you’re, like, ‘Woah! Was that what it was like back then?’ Not to make us feel old — it wasn’t that long ago — but that was a time when anything went. People weren’t even wearing condoms. It was just like a free-for-all. And I think a lot of younger kids see that and go, ‘Man, we missed that. We missed out on crazy town.’ So I have a feeling that that does have a lot to do with it, where people wanna come and see what that shit was all about. It ain’t out there now, you know what I’m sayin’?”

According to Tommy, MÖTLEY CRÜE didn’t have a “master plan” when it completed its farewell tour in December 2015 to reunite several years later and stage a comeback run that would see the band playing to bigger audiences that ever before.

“For real, 2016, I think it was like New Year’s Eve, at the Staples Center, that was it,” he said. “We were, like, ‘Dude, let’s just go out like…’ We don’t wanna just continue this thing on and end up playing fairgrounds and shit we see so many of our bands we grew up on doing that. We were, like, ‘We don’t wanna do that.’ We wanna go out on top, be, like, ‘Mic drop. We’re out. We’re done.’ And that was it, man. We all said goodbye and we didn’t hardly even speak — I mean, we spoke to each other here and there, but literally, that was it. And then, what is it, four or five years later, Live Nation calls us and says, ‘We’d like to do a stadium tour,’ and all of us were, like, ‘Hold up. That’s the last thing on our mind.’ We were done, and we were all moving on to other things. And that’s the one thing… Yeah, we’ve all played stadiums, festivals here and there, but never your own stadium tour. Fuck! We were, like, ‘Hold on. Let me think about this. Okay.’ It was a no-brainer. And I wish I could say there was some weird master plan, because if there was, that would have been really smart, but that’s just not how it happened at all.”

“The Dirt” currently has a 38% critic score from 72 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, the online review aggregation service that allows both critics and the public to rate movies. The same site has an 94% audience score for “The Dirt” from 6,678 reviews.

The movie, which was helmed by “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa” director Jeff Tremaine, was picked up by Netflix after being previously developed at Focus Features and before that at Paramount.

Last month, MÖTLEY CRÜE, DEF LEPPARD, POISON and JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS announced the rescheduled dates for their “The Stadium Tour”.

“The Stadium Tour” was slated to kick off on June 18 at TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, Florida and run through September 5 in Los Angeles. The bands reportedly also booked time at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville to rehearse for the tour.

As of January 30, “The Stadium Tour” had already grossed $130 million from one million tickets sold, plus another $5 million worth of VIP seats, according to Billboard.

Tickets ranged from $150 to $400, not counting some varied pricing that reflected demand as part of “dynamic pricing.”

When it happens, “The Stadium Tour” will mark the CRÜE’s first live dates since wrapping its 2014/2015 farewell tour. CRÜE toured with POISON back in 2011 and DEF LEPPARD teamed up with POISON for a string of road dates in 2017 — but the upcoming jaunt marks the first time all four acts have hit the road together for an extended tour.

BUTCHER BABIES singer Carla Harvey spoke to the “Appetite For Distortion” podcast about how she and her bandmates have been spending their coronavirus downtime. She said (hear audio below): “We canceled our whole touring here, like everyone else did. Out of necessity, we had to do it. I’m not happy about it. But we do have some really, really cool stuff coming up. We’re doing an online festival in Europe [in early August as part of the European Metal Festival Alliance] that’s gonna be awesome. We have some big surprises for you guys for that. It’s gonna be an hour-long show from us. We have a show that had been previously unreleased that we’re releasing, and three quarantine-style videos that we’ve done that are fan favorites, so we’re really excited about that. And we have really, really big news coming in the next couple of weeks.”

BUTCHER BABIES recently completed work on their fourth studio album. The LP will be the band’s first since its split with Century Media over a year ago.

This past April, BUTCHER BABIES singer Heidi Shepherd told ELUVEITIE’s “Corona Talk” that “it was a hard decision to part ways with Century Media. Here in the U.S., the label doesn’t exactly exist much here anymore,” she said. “And so it was a really difficult decision. We were with them for our entire career; we’ve been a band for 10 years. It just wasn’t working here in the States. But we do love our Century Media family.”

BUTCHER BABIES’ latest album, 2017’s “Lilith”, was produced by Steve Evetts (THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, SEPULTURA, SUICIDE SILENCE) and marked BUTCHER BABIES’ recording debut with drummer Chase Brickenden, who replaced Chris Warner in 2016.

In July 2019, longtime BUTCHER BABIES bassist Jason Klein announced his departure from the band. He has since been replaced by Ricky Bonazza.

Los Angeles natives THROWN INTO EXILE have released a new single and music video, “The Mourning”. It is the first taste of what’s to come as the band prepares for its sophomore release later this year.

Prior to the world being put on pause, 2020 was shaping up to be a great year for the five-piece, with an active 2019 playing festivals from the Mexico Metal Fest to Psycho Las Vegas and supporting some of today’s metal heavyweights, including IN FLAMES, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, ARCH ENEMY and AT THE GATES.

Guitarist and main songwriter Mario Rubio says: “While ‘The Mourning’ is a step in a more aggressive direction for THROWN INTO EXILE, the song has a very somber atmosphere to it musically and lyrically that anyone can relate to at any point and sets the mood for what’s come.”

THROWN INTO EXILE’s music has been described as aggressive, fast and moody. Drawing influences from such bands as SLAYER, FEAR FACTORY, SOILWORK and MACHINE HEAD, the band’s name comes from the members’ belief that, at some point in life, everyone has felt singled out based on their views or opinions, hence being thrown into exile.

THROWN INTO EXILE’s lyrics tap into feelings of pain and loneliness.