In a new interview with Darren Paltrowitz, host of the “Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz”, FOZZY guitarist Rich Ward spoke about his love of legendary VAN HALEN singer David Lee Roth. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I think David Lee Roth is the best frontman that rock and roll has ever seen, and I think you could easily make that argument. And I think Bruce Dickinson [IRON MAIDEN] is in the argument in the Top Five. ‘Cause there’s people who they’re just… There’s five incredible or four incredible musicians but you can’t stop looking at the one person. That’s when you know…

“I did a band called ADRENALINE MOB for, like, a year. And I consider myself an A-lister entertainer on guitar; I grew up with my heroes… And I love Flea [RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS bassist]; I love these people that when you see it, it’s like you’re watching just chaos in the form of a musician. And when I was in ADRENALINE MOB, it was almost as if I was invisible; they [the fans in the audience] were looking at [drummer] Mike Portnoy the whole time. It didn’t matter how crazy I went or what I did, it was like I was a screen door [laughs] that was looking straight to Mike. And I just realized there are people that just have a gravitational pull — that are just such a special artist, not just musically but just what they are or what they bring to the performance that’s so powerful. Of course, I got some peripheral vision love, but when it came down to it, it’s the same thing.”

Rich continued: “I think Steve Harris [IRON MAIDEN bassist] is an incredibly magnetic entertainer and he’s such an incredible force of nature, but he’s on stage with Bruce Dickinson. And the same with Eddie Van Halen. It’s hard to say a guitar player that had more charisma and had more magnetism — except for he’s standing next to David Lee Roth. And it’s unfair for those of us who consider ourselves… Same as [GUNS N’ ROSES guitarist] Slash. Slash is an apex predator, and he’s next to the apex predator, Axl Rose. And it’s the same thing with me and FOZZY. Again, I’m standing next to Chris Jericho. He’s one of the best frontmen in whatever he does; he’s incredible. And so you start to learn your role is, like… Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being the number two guy. Randy Rhoads [late OZZY OSBOURNE guitarist] was a number two guy. He stood next to Ozzy. It’s, like, he was always gonna be a number two guy. But you start to learn, like in every band, there’s a pecking order and where is your place. And that’s what makes a great band. Not everybody can be the quarterback; not everybody can be the pitcher. A great team learns where everyone’s positions lie and they learn to accept that position and be the best they can at it. Like, there’s a lot of supporting actors and actresses. They can’t all be Tom Cruise; they can’t all be The Rock. But if you’re an amazing supporting cast, it makes the movie better. And I think that’s the lesson in life, is that when David Lee Roth’s on stage, your best role you’re gonna find is number two.”

FOZZY’s new album, “Boombox”, is due on May 6. The LP, which includes the top 10 singles “Nowhere To Run” and “Sane”, was once again produced by Johnny Andrews.

FOZZY recently announced the “Save The World” 2022 U.S. tour. The trek, featuring special guests GFM, KRASHKARMA and THE NOCTURNAL AFFAIR, will start on March 31 in Detroit, Michigan and wrap on May 16 in Sauget, Illinois.

Ward and Andrews once again did “the lion’s share” of the songwriting for the new FOZZY album, which was recorded primarily in Atlanta, Georgia.

This past January, FOZZY parted ways with longtime drummer Frank Fontsere and replaced him with Grant Brooks (THROUGH FIRE).

Fontsere was a founding member of FOZZY, having formed the group in 1999 with Jericho and Ward.

When FOZZY announced Fontsere’s departure, the band said that he was “stepping down to focus on his family and other projects.”

FOZZY is Chris Jericho (vocals), Rich Ward (guitars, vocals), Grant Brooks (drums), Billy Grey (guitars) and P.J. Farley (bass).

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STAIND frontman Aaron Lewis has seemingly embraced the popular belief among conspiracy theorists that Russian president Vladimir Putin is attacking Ukraine to destroy the Deep State, a secret part of government they believe is on a mission undermine former U.S. president Donald Trump.

The 49-year-old Lewis, an outspoken conservative rocker who reinvented himself as a solo country artist in the last decade, voiced his views on the war in Ukraine before performing his single called “Am I The Only One” during his March 17 concert at at Vern Riffe Center in Portsmouth, Ohio.

He told the crowd (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “So, I’m not gonna go into some big, get-myself-in-trouble dissertation. All I’m gonna say is this: question everything. Everything that they’re telling you right now is a lie. Everything.

“We need to come to grips with something, people. This is our country. We own the most corrupt country in the world. So my question is, what are we gonna do about it? Because we put these people where they sit, to become corrupt and to sell us out all for their gain and not for ours. They’re supposed to represent us, not themselves. And they’re all guilty of it — 90 percent of ’em.

“I don’t know who’s worse — the Democrats that are trying to destroy this country or the Republicans that sit idly by while they do so,” he continued. “They all need to be removed. We need to start voting for people that aren’t lifetime politicians because those are the most lecherous, snake-in-the-grass pieces of shit that you can ever possibly put into power.

“The next governor needs to be you. The next senator needs to be you. We need to pick from our peers, people — people that have good ideas that we can stand behind; not these fucking snake oil salesmen that tell us everything we wanna hear. And until we wake up, this country is going off the cliff, people.

“We have no order. We have no president. Every single day that goes by, we lose standing in the world. Everyone’s laughing at us. Everyone is positioning themselves against us. And it’s not us — it’s the government that we put in power. These are the people that are making us look bad throughout the entire world — the same people that have you convinced that we all need to support Ukraine even though all of their money laundering systems, all of their everything, the way that they get all their kickbacks and they wash everything is all through the Ukraine.”

When somebody in the audience screamed “Fuck Joe Biden”, Lewis responded: “Listen, it’s bigger than ‘Fuck Joe Biden.’ It is. It is. It’s the media. It’s the Internet and the people that control it. Everything is against us in this room — everything. Because when we lose, they win. Look what happened over shutdown. Look how many small businesses got bankrupt and closed forever. And look how the big corporations made billions and billions of dollars. They just took all that wealth out of our hands and they put it in theirs. They took your jobs. They made you believe lies. They made you believe that a vaccine was gonna keep you safe. They made you think that a fucking mask was gonna keep you safe. They made you think that avoiding your friends and your family and staying locked up in your house was gonna somehow keep you safe. But guess what — didn’t we all get COVID? Didn’t every single of us in this fucking room get COVID and live to tell the tale? We’re okay. I survived. I didn’t stick that poison in my fucking body. I did just fine. I had it twice. I’m not fucking dead.

“Don’t believe a word they fucking tell you — not one word.”

Aaron then circled back to the war in Ukraine, repeating the conspiracy theory that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is somehow tied to billionaire philanthropist George Soros and Klaus Schwab, who is the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that holds a yearly economic symposium in Davos, Switzerland.

“You know, as fucked up as it sounds, maybe we should listen to what Vladimir Putin is saying,” Lewis said. “Maybe, just maybe, when Klaus Schwab and George Soros and every other dirty fucking earth-destroying motherfucker all jumps on the same bandwagon, maybe, just maybe we should fucking take a good look at that. Why are they trying to protect Ukraine so much? What do they all have to lose?

“It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit,” he repeated. “Have you seen the pictures with wooden guns and all the bodies in body bags laying in the background, and all of a sudden one of the bodies starts moving and fucking sits up and fixes its fucking body bag while the reporter is reporting?” he added, apparently referring to an intentionally miscaptioned video of a news reporter in front of multiple body bags has gone viral on several major social networks, and has been spread widely by pro-Kremlin accounts. [After a few seconds, one of the body bags starts moving and a man removes the cover. Widely shared on social media platforms, the text accompanying the video says, “More propaganda by west: A corpse came back to life during live reporting of human catastrophe by a Polish channel.” But the video is actually from a climate change protest organized by “Friday For Future” in Vienna in February.] “People, if you haven’t seen that, you’d better start fucking looking elsewhere,” Aaron said. “If you haven’t seen Vladimir Putin actually say that he’s fighting the ‘Deep State’ right now, which is the same people we’re fighting, which is the same people everywhere on the face of this earth that people are fighting for freedom.

“You know, we need to reassess and think about who it is, who these people are, what makes them worthy of us putting all of our faith and all of our trust in these fucking snake oil salesmen.”

Apparently realizing that he would be quickly fact checked and criticized once video of his rant emerged online, Lewis said: “That should be good tomorrow. And you know what, though — fuck ’em if they can’t handle the truth. It seems like nobody wants to hear the truth these days. They just wanna put their masks on and walk around like fucking zombies.”

Lewis made headlines last September when he urged his fans to chant “Fuck Joe Biden” during a STAIND concert in Pennsylvania.

Aaron told the Anchorage Press in a January 2020 interview that he considered the first Donald Trump impeachment by the House Of Representatives as the clearest representation of what’s wrong with America these days.

Lewis was a staunch critic of President Barack Obama, telling a crowd at one of his solo concerts in 2016: “Barack Obama should have been impeached a long fucking time ago. Every fucking decision he makes is against the Constitution, it’s against what’s good for our fucking country, and he is truly the worst fucking president that we have ever had in the history of this fucking country.”

That same year, Lewis told Billboard that he would support Trump in the U.S. presidential race, even though he was “disappointed” by the real estate mogul “with the bickering and the name-calling.” Lewis added that he voted for Senator Ted Cruz, Trump’s closest competitor in the Republican nomination race, in the Massachusetts primary.

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