MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx will make a guest appearance on this Sunday’s (March 20) episode of “American Idol”. The episode will feature auditions on Los Angeles’s iconic Sunset Strip where CRÜE got its start during the 1980s.

In a statement to Billboard, Sixx said: “It was a lot of fun to team up with ‘American Idol’ upon the show’s return to L.A. After all, MÖTLEY CRÜE are also from L.A., and so many amazing songwriters call Los Angeles their ‘Home Sweet Home’.

“Because of ‘American Idol’, a lot of great, timeless, classic songs have not only been re-interpreted by the next generation of talented singers but have also been re-introduced to mainstream audiences and younger generations of music fans for the last two decades,” he continued. “As a songwriter myself, that’s something I really appreciate, so when I was invited to appear on this Sunday’s episode, I did not hesitate.”

In the sneak peek video, judges Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan drive up in a convertible on the Sunset Strip. Richie says he wants to see this season’s contestants “walking in the footsteps of major giants.” At that point, Sixx can be seen playing CRÜE’s song “Home Sweet Home” as the judges enter the audition room.

“If anybody wants to hear about the stories of the Sunset Strip…” Richie says, pointing at Sixx, who replies, “Don’t come to me.”

In the latest episode of auditions for the season, Bryan, Perry and Richie continue to look for America’s next singing sensation in Los Angeles, Austin, and Nashville.

After a two-year hiatus and switch in networks, “American Idol” returned in 2018 with a new set of judges, including Perry, Bryan and Richie.

“American Idol” started out on Fox, where it had a home up until season 15, then made a comeback thanks to ABC for season 16.

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In a new interview with Las Vegas Weekly, IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson was asked how he handled lockdown. He responded: “I had just done two spoken-word show in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and that was the weirdest experience, because they were doing simultaneous translation of a semi-comedic show. You’d say what approximates to a punchline and get no response. Then you go, ‘Anyway, on Tuesday,’ and they’d bust out laughing. There was a 30-second lag on the laughter.

“I went from there back to Paris where I was staying with my partner, Leana,” he continued. “I got back on Saturday, and then the president of France comes on the TV and says, ‘Tonight, midnight, all bars are shut.’ I went, holy cow, let’s go out and get a beer quick. So we all go out to all the bars and then we went home. We were like, this is weird. I guess this is lockdown.

“The weather was nice,” Bruce added. “I scrubbed our little balcony and started cooking and we would make breakfast on the balcony. It was sunny and we were doing little workouts and moving the furniture and watching TV, so life kind of slowed down. At first, I was, like, “I’m going to be bored,’ but then I was, like, ‘No. I kind of like life slowing down. It’s not so bad.’ Then, after a year of it, I was, like, ‘I’m done with this now.’ And now I’m really done with it. I’ve been vaccinated, had COVID, been boosted. Enough. Let’s get on with it.”

Dickinson, who tested positive for COVID-19 in August after being fully vaccinated, told the 103.5 The Fox radio station that he doesn’t believe “people should be forced to have vaccines. Maybe in hospitals and stuff like that — people who work there,” he said. “But honestly, it’s a personal decision. But I just think people are nuts not to take protective action against something that really could kill them.

“It’s not a nice bug,” Bruce added. “It’s not the flu — trust me. I’ve had it, and I had two vaccines, and I’m really glad I had the two vaccines. And I’m kind of glad I had [COVID-19] as well ’cause now I’ve got more antibodies and all the rest of it. But it is not a nice bug. And I know a lot of people who have had it and who’ve still got long COVID — like, 22, 23 [years old]. Fit people — none of this, ‘Oh, yeah, he died ’cause he was 85 and he was sick anyway.’ Well, yeah, there is that. But there’s a lot of people getting it. It’s not a nice bug. And it’s not the flu — it’s way more contagious than that.”

Long COVID is described as symptoms continuing for more than 12 weeks after an infection — severe or mild — which can’t be explained by another cause.

Dickinson previously told Rolling Stone magazine that he doesn’t personally believe that fans attending concerts should be required to get vaccinated, calling it “a personal choice,” However, he said that he hopes everyone will get the shot. “Personally, I think people are just very badly advised if they don’t go and get themselves double jabbed as quickly as possible, not for the reasons of going into concerts, but for their own health,” he said. “Having said that, even if you’ve had a double jab, you can still get COVID, and therefore you can spread it to other people who might not have been vaccinated and they might get very sick and die. Now you cannot legislate against mortality. There are many things in this world that kill people and they’re not illegal but are unfortunate. Cancer kills a lot of people. Heart attacks kill a lot of people. Obesity kills a lot of people. Malaria kills a shitload of people every year… So at some point, we have to just go, ‘We’re probably going to have to live with this. And if we’re going to live with it, then you have your vaccination.'”

Bruce’s two-month North American spoken-word tour kicked off on January 17 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and will run through the end of March.

Dickinson, who had a golf gall-size tumor on his tongue and another in the lymph node on the right side of his neck, got the all-clear in May 2015 after radiation and nine weeks of chemotherapy.

Bruce will hit the road with IRON MAIDEN for a new North American leg of the band’s “Legacy Of The Beast” tour in September.

TESTAMENT singer Chuck Billy discussed the return of drummer Dave Lombardo to the group’s ranks during an interview earlier this week with the WSOU 89.5 FM radio station.

An original member of thrash metal legends SLAYER, Lombardo was the guest drummer on TESTAMENT’s 1999 studio album “The Gathering”, which also marked the first time the band worked with then-up-and-coming British producer/engineer Andy Sneap.

Asked about the possibility of Lombardo being involved in the writing and recording of TESTAMENT’s next studio album, Chuck said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It all depends on Eric [Peterson, TESTAMENT guitarist]; he’s the starting point of what we do. So, talking to him, he’s, like, ‘Man, I’ve got so many riffs.’ He’s ready to write another record, which is good. And I think hopefully bringing Dave in and just some new blood and someone to push him a little bit… ‘Cause I think Dave, actually, when we did ‘The Gathering’ record… Eric’s always been the one who’s programmed the drums on a drum machine and really worked out the songs and then presented them to the drummers, where I think on that particular record Dave just said, ‘Dude, just play.’ And he just jumped in and they just started jamming and started just creating like that. So there was something to that where Eric really focused on the guitar work instead of having to worry about the drums. And I think hopefully him and Dave can start creating some cool magic by just jamming again and see what happens.”

Chuck continued: “When we first got [Dave] back and talked about getting back on tour and blah blah blah, [we said] ‘What about doing another record?’ And the first thing, he’s, like, ‘Dude, could you imagine another record that we wrote together?’ And I’m, like, ‘Yeah.’ [Laughs] ‘So let’s do that.’

“I think [Dave is] down [for doing a studio album with TESTAMENT],” Billy added. “I’m not holding my breath that Dave just is in TESTAMENT only but we’re gonna have to kind of maneuver around what happens. But then again, this is the beginning of the relationship. We might be busy enough and he might just be happy enough just working with us and it works out. So we’re just kind of taking it one day at a time, one tour at a time. We know he’s gonna be with us for the next three tours — we know that for sure — so we’ll see what happens after that.”

Earlier this month, Lombardo told SiriusXM’s Liquid Metal that he reached out to the TESTAMENT camp the same day that the band announced it was splitting with its longtime drummer Gene Hoglan.

“I was still asleep, and my wife, she just said, ‘Hey, Gene just left TESTAMENT,'” Dave recalled. “And she’s been always telling me, ‘Man, I can’t wait for you guys to get together for that ‘Gathering’ reunion.’ ‘Cause we had been talking about this two and a half, three years ago — before the pandemic. And so I immediately — I didn’t even get my other eye open and I was texting Chuck. I said, ‘Hey, man, what’s going on?’ I don’t know exactly what I mentioned in my text, but it was very simple, ‘Hey, what’s happening?’ And he immediately called me back. And I remember Tiffany [Chuck’s wife] was on the phone; Chuck was on the phone. We were, like, ‘Hey.’ It was a great come-together moment, like, ‘Hey, here we go. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for.'”

Dave went on to say that the timing was right for his return to TESTAMENT.

“‘The Gathering’ reunion didn’t have to happen putting Gene out, separating Gene and saying, ‘Gene, we’re gonna go with Dave for a while now.’ Nothing like that happened,” he said. “This happened organically. And it happened at a time where my other bands, two of the bands that I have, MR. BUNGLE and DEAD CROSS, [Mike] Patton sings in them and he’s trying to get healthy and is taking a little hiatus. And SUICIDAL TENDENCIES hasn’t been touring much lately. So that leaves me with a lot of little odd projects here and there that I work on in my free time. So it just felt like the right moment.

“I know it can be deceiving because I am in so many different bands, but there’s 24 hours in a day and I only sleep eight hours, or seven to eight hours, so that leaves me 16 other hours,” he explained. “And I don’t take Saturdays and Sundays off. So it was a no-brainer.”

Chuck said that he was surprised to hear from Dave so quickly after TESTAMENT made the news of its split with Gene public.

“Right when it happened, it was within minutes after the announcement,” Billy recalled. “And Dave doesn’t remember, but [his text message to me was] simply ‘Lombardo?’ That was the text. I’m, like, ‘You’re shitting me. Tiffany, Lombardo just wrote me, ‘Lombardo?” I called him right away. I said, ‘Hey, dude, what’s happening?’ He was, like, ‘Dude, I heard the news.’ I’m, like, ‘Dude, I would have called you right away, but I just thought it was kind of far-fetched for you to kind of jam because I know you’re probably pretty busy with all the other projects going on.’ And he was, like, ‘No. I’ve got a big opening and I’d love to get back.’ And we talked about ‘The Gathering’, doing that again. And here we are — it could be a reality to get to play ‘The Gathering’ like we spoke of.”

“The Gathering” was widely considered to be an improvement over 1997’s “Demonic”, an album that saw Billy employ a more guttural style of vocals and was released at a time when thrash acts as TESTAMENT had fallen out of favor.

Hoglan originally played drums on “Demonic”, but didn’t stick around long enough to do any touring with the band. He officially joined TESTAMENT in 2011 and played on the group’s last three albums: 2012’s “Dark Roots Of Earth”, 2016’s “Brotherhood Of The Snake” and 2020’s “Titans Of Creation”.

TESTAMENT, EXODUS and DEATH ANGEL played the sole 2021 date of “The Bay Strikes Back Tour” last November at the Fox Theater in Oakland, California. The gig took place less than two months after the three bands shared the stage at the Aftershock festival in Sacramento.

“The Bay Strikes Back Tour” was originally scheduled to kick off on October 6 at the Fremont Theater in San Luis Obispo, California and make stops in Austin, New York, and Detroit before concluding in Oakland. The tour has since been rescheduled to take place in April and May 2022.

Photo credit: Stephanie Cabral

Cave In’s Adam McGrath on seeing his go-to axe engulfed in flames. Plus, Stephen Brodsky’s best Xmas gift ever.

“Impera”, the fifth album from Swedish occult rockers GHOST, has registered the following first-week chart positions in Europe, according to the band’s record label, Loma Vista Recordings:

* Germany: #1 (the band’s highest-ever position in Germany)
* Sweden: #1
* U.K.: #2 (the band’s highest-ever position in the UK)
* Netherlands: #2 (the band’s highest-ever position in Netherlands)
* Belgium: #2 (the band’s highest-ever position in Belgium)
* Norway: #2
* Australia: #3 (the band’s highest-ever position in Australia)
* France: #5 (the band’s highest-ever position in France)
* Ireland: #5 (the band’s highest-ever position in Ireland)
* Italy: #20 (the band’s highest-ever position in Italy)

“Impera” was released on March 11. The 12-song effort was produced by Klas Åhlund and mixed by Andy Wallace.

In a recent interview with El Paso Inc., GHOST mastermind Tobias Forge spoke his decision to record “Impera” with Åhlund, who also sat behind the desk for 2015’s acclaimed “Meliora” effort. Asked why he chose to end his streak of working with a different producer on each new GHOST LP, Tobias said: “The thing is you need to keep moving so that you don’t get stuck in friendly comfortable mode. ‘Meliora’, the record I made with Klas, was really good, but the recording and the production itself left a few things to be improved. When time came to record ‘Impera’, the writing and demoing had been done in 2020. But in early 2021, the American producer who was supposed to make the record couldn’t come because of the travel restrictions, and I couldn’t go to America. And because Klas is also a very scheduled person, he had a project lined up that fell through. All of a sudden, he had a few months off, and I was, like, ‘That is well-timed, because I don’t have a producer. Would you like to produce the record?'”

Forge worked on the follow-up to 2018’s “Prequelle” with Åhlund and Swedish co-writers Salem Al Fakir and Vincent Pontare, whose credits include Madonna and Lady Gaga.

Regarding his collaboration with Åhlund, Al Fakir and Pontare, as well as OPETH’s Fredrik Åkesson who was brought in to sharpen the album’s guitar attack, Forge recently told St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “I found that I can work really well with someone I respect, who is always pushing for the best. They make me want to write better, to get my game up a little.”

GHOST’s co-headlining tour with VOLBEAT kicked off on January 25 at the Reno Events Center in Reno, Nevada and concluded on March 3 in Anaheim, California.

In March 2020, at final show of GHOST’s “Prequelle” tour in Mexico City, Mexico, the band officially introduced Papa Emeritus IV, the new character who is fronting the act for its “Impera” album phase.

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 “Prequelle”.

Photo credit: Mikael Eriksson

congrats @thebandGHOST fans everywhere. impera is their biggest album yet. we cannot do it without you! pic.twitter.com/kaUxkX2mvD
— Loma Vista Recordings (@LomaVistaRC) March 18, 2022