ARCH ENEMY guitarist Michael Amott spoke to Knotfest.com about the musical direction of the band’s 11th studio album, “Deceivers”, which will arrive on July 29 via Century Media Records. He said: “We have a style that we’ve established in our 25-plus-year careers, but music is something that we still feel very passionate about. That is the driving force. There’s always something that we haven’t tried. Either ‘We’ve never started a song like that,’ or ‘we’ve never used this kind of melody or chord structure,’ there’s always little new things you can try out. Music is pretty much endless. But we still stay true to the ARCH ENEMY sound. We don’t want to stray too far from our roots. And I say that, but recently I listened to our first album, and it’s so different compared to what we do now. So there has been a progression, but I think it’s been an organic one. Something that has happened naturally. I think we, and maybe me in particular, think about that a lot. You want to have some new elements in every album, I think it’s important. We want to do that, but we don’t try to do too much in one go.”

Amott went on to say that he and his ARCH ENEMY bandmates “are trying something different for this album: we are releasing more singles than we ever have before. It was an idea that came from our record label,” he explained. “They wanted to do it this way, and it’s a new way of working for us. Usually we release a maximum of two singles, and then the album’s out and we’re on tour, but these are different times. We haven’t been able to tour, and, of course, people listen to music in a different way now, more on a single-based approach.

“All the songs on the album are a bit different and that’s what makes it so hard to pick singles,” he continued. “Some bands are great at writing the same type of song always. They’re great songs, but they have a formula in a way. But there’s so many different things that we do. We try to create varied albums with different emotions, different colors, and it makes it difficult when you pick the singles.”

Last month, ARCH ENEMY released the official music video for its latest single, “Handshake With Hell”, directed by Patric Ullaeus. Before “Handshake With Hell” arrived, fans were also able to check out the previously released album tracks, “Deceiver, Deceiver” and “House Of Mirrors”.

This spring, ARCH ENEMY and BEHEMOTH will return to the states to co-headline “The North American Siege 2022” tour with NAPALM DEATH and UNTO OTHERS as special guests, before ARCH ENEMY appears at select summer festivals; the rescheduled “European Siege 2022” tour (with ARCH ENEMY, BEHEMOTH, CARCASS, UNTO OTHERS) will kick off in the fall.

In a new five-and-a-half-minute video from SiriusXM, KORN guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer tries to identify his band’s songs when they’re played in reverse. Check out the clip below.

KORN’s latest album, “Requiem”, was released on February 4 via Loma Vista Recordings. The band celebrated the LP’s arrival with a special record-release event on February 3 at the Hollywood United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, California. “Requiem Mass” saw the Southern California heavy music pioneers perform an intimate set in front of a 300 attendees.

“Requiem” was produced by Chris Collier and KORN.

“Requiem” entered Billboard’s Hard Rock Albums chart at No. 1. The band sold 23,000 equivalent album units in the February 4-10 tracking week, according to Billboard. Of that sum, 20,000 units are from album sales. “Requiem” also landed at No. 2 on the Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums charts. On the all-format Billboard 200, it arrived at No. 14.

KORN kicked off a short run of shows with SYSTEM OF A DOWN on January 31 in Phoenix, followed by dates in San Diego (February 1) and Los Angeles (February 4 and February 5). KORN’s headlining tour with CHEVELLE and CODE ORANGE launched on March 4.

In a recent interview with Colombia’s Radioacktiva, Munky spoke about what he would like KORN’s legacy to be. He said: “I think this band — well, I don’t think; I know this band — in the past, like early ’90s and the 2000s, we were not concerned about tomorrow so much. We were living in the moment. We were young. All we cared about was the party. ‘We don’t care about what happens tomorrow; we just care about today.’ And that was fun. But now, with us all in our early 50s — it’s hard to say [that we are that old]… it’s hard to take that in [we are in our 50s]. But we don’t feel like [we are that old] because the music keeps us so young. But at the same time, we have a lot of wisdom that we’ve collected along the way, and one of those things is we do care about how we’re remembered; we care about what our children are gonna think of us; how we act now and how that’s gonna carry on for a generation or two generations; how people remember our music; what we leave behind. All these things are just these new — it’s a new insight and it’s a new outlook for us. I guess, as seasoned songwriters, and we’re all fathers now, we wanna be remembered as a band that helped people, not a band that couldn’t help ourselves.”

Death metal veterans JUNGLE ROT will release their new album, “A Call To Arms”, on May 13 via Unique Leader. The LP’s first single, “Total Extinction”, can be streamed below.

Once again co-produced by Chris Djuricic and JUNGLE ROT, “A Call To Arms” was mixed and mastered by Dan Swanö. It’s the band’s newest record since their acclaimed self-titled 2018 release, praised by Loudwire, Decibel, Revolver, Metal Hammer and a host of celebrated publications.

Forever looking to push death metal groove with attitude, JUNGLE ROT is highly regarded globally. Jaded death metal purists looking for fresh kills need to add the band to their must-listen list — not just “A Call To Arms” but the band’s impressive and extensive back catalog, including the 2013 reissue of the classic 1995 release “Skin The Living”.

Shots firing overhead, out of breath, thankful to be alive, an exhausted, courageous soldier takes cover in a nearby trench. Overcome with tragedy, the cadet looks down to carefully remove his worn-down combat boots to discover his feet numb and blue, knocking him back with an overwhelming smell of decay and gangrene. This phenomenon is known as “jungle rot.” With a little imagination, visualize this horrifyingly grotesque predicament as it would be in heavy metal form — teeming with despair, brutality, darkness and volatility. The sinister picture you have just painted comes to life in four-piece death metal act JUNGLE ROT, which has been triumphantly destroying the metal scene since 1994.

Hailing from Kenosha, Wisconsin, JUNGLE ROT has steadily collected fans by the thousands since their 1995 demo release “Skin The Living”. Critics, blown away by their chillingly explosive live shows, rewarded the band with stellar reviews and were offered their first record deal with Pulverized Records. Through new representation, the men released their first full-length project, “Slaughter The Weak” (1998), and were greeted by a tremendous amount of support from both the metal community and critics everywhere. Responding to a flood of new fans, the band rearranged their lineup, adapted their sound, produced new material, and began to dominate the Midwest tour circuit.

The following decade saw the band sign with Olympic Records in 2001, releasing “Dead And Buried”, and then in 2009 signing with Napalm Records, and their “What Horrors Await” LP.

JUNGLE ROT has toured relentlessly across the world, including with DEICIDE, ENTOMBED, VADER, CATTLE DECAPITATION and many more. Inspired and motivated by their fans’ continued support, JUNGLE ROT went on to release 2011’s “Kill On Command” and eighth studio album “Terror Regime” (2013).

“A Call To Arms” track listing:

01. A Call to Arms
02. Asymmetric Warfare
03. Beyond the Grave
04. Death Squad
05. Genocidal Imperium
06. Haunting Future
07. Maggot Infested
08. Population Suicide
09. Total Extinction
10. Vengeance And Bloodlust

This month’s Question & Obsession (“Have You Ever Met One of Your Guitar Heroes?”) gave me a Crank-like jolt of gratitude. Such encounters are one of the gifts of this music journalism gig, and it conjured a riptide of joyful memories. A few: traveling with Metallica in the Netherlands and Italy; gift shopping with Billy Gibbons; smoking weed with blues legend Robert Lockwood and counterculture legend John Sinclair along the banks of the Mississippi; interviewing Robert Fripp at his ancestral home in Cranborne, Dorset, and meeting his delightful mother, Edith; being introduced to Leo Fender by Les Paul; nearly getting tossed out of a hotel bar in Akron with Scorpions (we were hammered, disorderly, and on the first Monsters of Rock tour); many conversations with B.B. King; trading jokes with the wonderful Sonny Sharrock; instigating a jam with Danny Gatton and Billy Sheehan (after Billy and I were nearly ejected from Trader Vic’s in Chicago … alcohol again!); and trading bootleg tapes with Carlos Santana.A few encounters with my heroes even changed my life, and none more profoundly than meeting R.L. Burnside at Junior Kimbrough’s rural juke joint in the hills outside of Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1993. I’d been immersed in blues for about a decade when I saw Robert Mugge’s amazing documentary Deep Blues, which introduced R.L., Junior, and a host of other obscure artists, from Memphis to the Delta, to the mainstream. I had no idea such unvarnished music still existed in America, and I had to meet them. Plus, R.L. was the most intense rhythm guitarist I’d ever heard. So, through luck and another meeting—with the great musicologist and journalist Robert Palmer, an idol who instantly became a friend—I found myself at Junior’s Place on a Sunday afternoon, with Junior and his band shaking the shack’s floorboards while R.L. nursed a can of Busch and watched from a lawn chair across the room.I was dumbstruck. I was in an off-the-path juke joint with plywood-patched walls, a toilet cracked in half from seat to floor, bare lightbulbs for illumination, the grape-Nehi smell of kudzu in the air, a bare fan from a cotton gin offering cool breeze and potentially serious injury, and a smattering of patrons day-drunk on moonshine—one doing a cartwheel by the pool table, another grooving in his overalls and shit-caked shoes, straight off the farm. For the first half-hour, my jaw was on the floor. I’d found Never Never Land.By the time my mandible was reattached, R.L. traded seats with Junior and took over. When he played “Poor Black Mattie,” I had a vision. I saw a silvery-gray web appear in the air and it connected all the music I love. In that instant, I came to understand that the sounds R.L. and Junior controlled were the nexus of jazz, blues, primal rock, heavy metal, folk, funk, soul, African music, Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, improvised skronk, and all else that fed my soul. And at that moment, I resolved to do whatever I could to bring more attention to these keepers of the keys to the heart of music. I still keep that promise, decades past their deaths.As luck had it, a few months after I returned to Boston, where I lived at the time, I paved the way for R.L. and Junior to make an extended stay at the original House of Blues in Cambridge. While they were there, I put myself at their service, and by the time they left we were fast friends. Especially R.L., who had a reservoir of joy and charisma that nourished everyone he met. It’s hard to convey how merely spending time with R.L.—hearing his stories and jokes, his insights and concerns, his tales of growing up in the Jim Crow South, learning his preferences—enriched my thinking about life and music. But they did, greatly.And then there was the music—so ripe with everything. I have no idea why he decided I should try to play it—and I demurred, because I revered it and him. But the night he literally made me get my ass onstage alongside him for the first time, something happened. When we finished the concert, I stepped down and my knees buckled, almost dropping me to the floor. Instantly, I knew I had to absorb everything I could about North Mississippi hill country blues, so I delved into fingerpicking, open tunings, one-chord fantasias, and slide with total commitment.That began yet another odyssey: 15 years touring the U.S. and Europe with my hill-country-inspired blues duo Scissormen. Which, of course, led to meeting more heroes, and many more stories.

In a new interview with Shawn Ratches of Laughingmonkeymusic, URIAH HEEP guitarist Mick Box spoke about the progress of the recording sessions for the legendary progressive rockers’ 26th album. “[We worked with] the same producer, Jay Ruston, who did our last album, [2018’s] ‘Living The Dream’, that was accepted by our fans and media alike, saying it was one of the best of our career,” he said. “So we used Jay again. It was fantastic. He came over to England. We recorded it in the same studio — same thing. Band in the studio playing together. We hardly used a click track — just go for it as a band. We’ve just okayed the mixes, so we’ve got that done now. And of course now we’ve gotta do the cover, all the artwork, which takes a long time anyway. The process is I usually come up with the title — normally — and then once everyone’s agreed, then we’ll give it to an artist and then we’ll start [exchanging] ideas and sending it back and forth. And then we’ll do the booklet and everything and give it to the record company. Then, to be honest, it’s in their hands. Because it’s the music business, and we’ve done the music, and they’ll do the business — they’ll decide when best to release it to get the benefits they’re looking for, for their investment.”

Last month, Box told Danny Stoakes that URIAH HEEP won’t play any new songs on tour before the upcoming album is released. “We’d not be allowed to by the record company, as much as we would be tempted,” he explained. “In today’s market, let’s put it this way, if we play a [new] song on stage, before I’ve got the jeans off and showered and poured a drink, it’s recorded and up on YouTube and Facebook and everything else… So it’s highly unlikely — for those reasons. I mean, for us, we’d play them all. But sometimes your hands are tied for a reason. And the record company, they come in and allow us to go in and record and do that, so you have to play ball with them.”

“Living The Dream” was released in September 2018 via Frontiers Music Srl. The LP was helmed by Ruston, who has previously worked with ANTHRAX, STONE SOUR and STEEL PANTHER, among others.

Box is the original guitarist and sole remaining founding member of URIAH HEEP. He, vocalist Bernie Shaw and keyboardist/vocalist Phil Lanzon have formed the nucleus of the band for more than 35 years and released 17 albums together.

URIAH HEEP debuted in 1970 with the release of one of hard rock’s milestones, “Very ‘Eavy, Very ‘Umble”, and has since sold in excess of 40 million albums worldwide. They constantly tour the world, playing up to 125 shows a year to more than 500,000 fans. The band’s live set features the classic tracks from the ’70s and is a musical journey from the band’s beginnings to the present day.

URIAH HEEP is:

Mick Box – Lead Guitar/Vocals
Phil Lanzon – Keyboards/Vocals
Bernie Shaw – Lead Vocals
Dave Rimmer – Bass Guitar/Vocals
Russell Gilbrook – Drums, Percussion