Fan-filmed video of MAMMOTH WVH performing a cover version of ALICE IN CHAINS’ “Them Bones” during the band’s February 21 concert at The Depot in Salt Lake City, Utah can be seen below. The band also played an unreleased song called “I Don’t Know It All” which was apparently recorded during the sessions for MAMMOTH WVH’s self-titled debut album but was left off the LP’s final track listing.

MAMMOTH WVH and DIRTY HONEY kicked off their joint “Young Guns” tour on February 20 in Denver, Colorado. The 33-date co-headline North American trek will run through April 12, when it will wrap up in Atlanta, Georgia. The tour will make stops in Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; New York; and Orlando, Florida, to name a few cities, and will see the bands alternating the closing slot nightly.

MAMMOTH WVH’s debut album was released in June 2021 via Explorer1 Music Group/EX1 Records.

Writing all the songs and performing all the instrumentation and vocals for the debut album, Wolfgang Van Halen set out to establish his own musical identity. From the rocking opening guitar riff on album opener “Mr. Ed” to the driving bass and drums on album closer “Stone”, “Mammoth WVH” showcases the various musical influences that have inspired Wolfgang. Songs like “Resolve”, “The Big Picture” and “Think It Over” are all sonically different from each other but unique to what MAMMOTH WVH is.

MAMMOTH WVH made its television debut in February 2021, performing “Distance” on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and running through an exclusive acoustic arrangement on “Today”.

As we all remember, Covid hit the music industry hard in early 2020: music stores and concert venues were closed, guitar manufacturers shut down, and in-person instruction essentially disappeared almost overnight. Fortunately, lockdowns and the resulting surge of interest in playing music at home proved that even a pandemic couldn’t kill our love for the guitar. And thanks to YouTube tutorials and Zoom lessons, the number of hours that people actually played their instruments went from hardly-ever (for some) to all-the-time. Maybe you couldn’t find that new guitar model you’d been saving for, but at least you could play the guitar(s) you already had.For many players looking for a new instrument, 2021 began filled with hope but proved to be a year of waiting as Covid variants kept most North American guitar makers off balance. But with each new year, there’s new hope. Despite Omicron, 2022 has seen a breakthrough in guitar production, with more new instruments arriving in stores and online sources having actual instruments to ship. However, some of those new instruments aren’t exactly like the models depicted on the manufacturers’ websites: The tuners or the pickguard may be slightly different, for instance, and the case you saw with a favorite model last year is not the same as the case included today. Are guitar makers resorting to the old bait-and-switch? What gives?Welcome to Covid Wars, V2. We’ve more or less learned how to live with the virus, luthiers are back at their benches, and the machinery is humming. But now there’s a different problem: Getting the wood parts of a guitar machined, glued together, and finished isn’t much of an issue, but when rounding up the other parts—all the made-elsewhere stuff needed to make that beautiful wood sculpture into a functional and shippable musical instrument—there’s often something missing. Maybe the delivery of that subtle, vintage-look pickguard material is back-ordered, and where are those cases? Weren’t they supposed to have arrived weeks ago?Perhaps we’re learning how to live with Covid rather than run and hide from it, and maybe both the manufacturing facilities that build guitars and the myriad of factories and small machine shops that make parts for guitar companies are working full time or even overtime, but that doesn’t mean we’re back to normal. Whether it’s household appliances, new cars, or new guitars, the stumbling block—and one we’re sick of hearing about—is a seemingly confused and disorganized supply chain. Skyrocketing demand is thwarted by shipping delays and off-the-charts price increases, while some parts have been discontinued simply because the manufacturer switched to making something more profitable. And then there are the parts that go into making parts, such as handles and latches for cases and even the all-important components needed in the recipe for that lustrous finish.We’ve more or less learned how to live with the virus, luthiers are back at their benches, and the machinery is humming. But now there’s a different problem.It might seem like the right thing for guitar manufacturers to do would be to wait out these supply-chain delays and not ship those nearly completed instruments until all of the right components have arrived. But remember that at such a late stage in production, a lot of money has been invested in those beautiful unstrung hulks hogging climate-controlled storage space that’s in short supply. For small independent builders, waiting to deliver an instrument for more than a couple of weeks simply isn’t an option. Bills and salaries must be paid.For those who relish the historical angle, these latest parts swaps caused by supply-chain issues are a repeat of what guitar manufacturers faced 80 years ago, during WWII restrictions on the use of brass and steel, not to mention parts made overseas. Remember those 1940s Martins and Gibsons with cheesy lightweight tuners and necks with no steel reinforcement? The end of the war didn’t result in the immediate return to pre-war specs, and so it is with the war against Covid, which is still far from being over.There’s not much you can do if your long-awaited dream guitar shows up with a few parts that are different from what you were expecting, and it’s probably best not to complain too loudly to non-guitar-playing friends. If you’re healthy and still playing music, you are a fortunate survivor of the Covid Wars and chances are good those different tuners work just fine. Keep playing and enjoy all those tunes and licks you learned while in lockdown!

SMASHING PUMPKINS have announced the dates for their spring 2022 “Rock Invasion 2 Tour”. The 18-date trek will kick off at Memphis’s Beale Street Music Festival and will include stops in such cities as Tucson, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Birmingham, Greensboro, and Columbus before concluding on May 29 at Chillicothe, Illinois’s Summer Camp Music Festival.

Tickets for the new shows go on sale Friday, February 25 at 10:00 a.m. local time, with the pre-sale launching on Wednesday, February 23.

SMASHING PUMPKINS spring/summer 2022 tour dates:

Apr. 29 – May 01 – Memphis, TN @ Beale Street Music Festival
May 02 – San Antonio, TX @ Tech Port Arena
May 05 – Mexico City, MX @ Teatro Metropolitan
May 06 – Mexico City, MX @ Teatro Metropolitan
May 07 – Mexico City, MX @ Teatro Metropolitan
May 13 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl *
May 14 – Redondo Beach, CA @ BeachLife Festival
May 15 – Tucson, AZ @ [to be announced] *
May 17 – Oklahoma City, OK @ [to be announced] *
May 18 – Camdenton, MO @ Ozarks Amphitheater *
May 19-22 – Daytona Beach, FL @ Welcome to Rockville
May 20 – New Orleans, LA @ Champions Square *
May 21 – Birmingham, AL @ Avondale Brewing Co. *
May 24 – Portsmouth, VA @ Atlantic Union Bank Pavilion *
May 25 – Greensboro, NC @ White Oak Amphitheatre *
May 27 – Newport, KY @ PromoWest Pavilion at OVATION *
May 28 – Columbus, OH @ KEMBA Live! *
May 29 – Chillicothe, IL @ Summer Camp Music Festival

* With special guest BONES

SMASHING PUMPKINS’ latest album, “Cyr”, was released in November 2020 via Sumerian Records. The 20-song follow-up to 2018’s “Shiny And Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun.” was produced by Corgan. It features founding members Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin and James Iha, along with longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder.

Billy told Apple Music about “Cyr”: “I think this is the music that’s coming out now is the things that have taken root. We’ve gone back to just being ourselves. We’re good pop assassins, and I think as long as we’re sort of in that space, we’re good. Anybody can ascribe anything they want to it as far as stylistically, but it bears repeating that what most of the general public knows of the band is really only one small slice of the band’s music. The band’s sort of width was a lot wider. So this falls quite comfortably in the music that we’ve made through the years.”

Invading select U.S. cities this May, The Smashing Pumpkins Rock Invasion 2 Tour!
Tickets on sale Friday Feb 25 10am local time

Posted by The Smashing Pumpkins on Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Grammy-nominated band SUM 41 will join forces with SIMPLE PLAN for the “Blame Canada” tour, their upcoming two-part, full U.S. co-headline run. This sure-to-be-epic trek marks the first time both bands will be touring together. Fans will be able to join in as the bands commemorate their debut records, with SUM 41 performing “All Killer No Filler” in full and SIMPLE PLAN performing “No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls”. The first leg kicks off on April 29 and features special guest SET IT OFF.

“We have known the guys in SIMPLE PLAN for a very long time and know these shows are going to be great,” states SUM 41 vocalist Deryck Whibley. “We cannot wait to hit the road with them!”

As part of the upcoming tour, $1 of each ticket sold will help raise funds for the Simple Plan Foundation and Sweet Relief. Since 2011, the Simple Plan Foundation has donated over $2 million to various charitable causes in Canada to help young people in need. In 2020, Sweet Relief started the COVID-19 Fund to provide emergency financial assistance to music industry professionals who have been devastated by the pandemic.

SUM 41 is an uncompromising and honest rock band with no intention of slowing down. The group’s storied 24-plus-year career includes over 15 million records sold worldwide, multiple Billboard-charting releases, a Grammy Award nomination, two Juno Awards (seven nominations), a Kerrang! Award in 2002, as well as multiple Alternative Press Music Awards.

“Blame Canada” tour dates:

Apr. 29 – Raleigh, NC @ Ritz
Apr. 30 – Myrtle Beach, SC @ House of Blues
May 02 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore
May 03 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
May 04 – Silver Springs, MD @ The Fillmore
May 06 – Worcester, MA @ The Palladium
May 07 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Stone Pony
May 08 – New York, NY @ Pier 17 – The Rooftop
May 10 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore
May 11 – Cleveland, OH @ House Of Blues
May 13 – Cincinnati, OH @ Andrew J Brady ICON Music Center
May 14 – Milwaukee, WI @ Eagles
May 15 – Chicago, IL @ Radius
May 17 – St. Paul, MN @ Myth
May 18 – Kansas City, MO @ Uptown
May 20 – Council Bluffs, IA @ Harrah’s Stir Cove
May 21 – St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
May 22 – Nashville, TN @ Marathon
May 24 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
May 25 – Tampa, FL @ Seminole Hard Rock
May 27 – New Orleans, LA @ Orpheum
May 28 – Dallas, TX @ So What?! Music Festival
Jul. 29 – Tulsa, OK @ Cains Ballroom
Jul. 30 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater
Jul. 31 – Houston, TX @ House of Blues
Aug. 03 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
Aug. 05 – San Diego, CA @ SOMA
Aug. 06 – Anaheim, CA @ House of Blues
Aug. 09 – San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic
Aug. 10 – Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades
Aug. 12 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theatre
Aug. 13 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
Aug. 14 – Spokane, WA @ The Knitting Factory
Aug. 16 – Garden City, ID @ Revolution
Aug. 17 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
Aug. 18 – Denver, CO @ The Fillmore

SUM 41 photo credit: Ashley Osborne

SIMPLE PLAN photo credit: Ellenor Argyropoulos

The music world’s most intriguing storytellers COHEED AND CAMBRIA have shared their anthemic new single “The Liars Club”. The follow-up to the top 10 Active Rock single “Shoulders” will be featured on their widely anticipated new album “Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind”, and is available today on all streaming platforms. “The Liars Club” is joined by an official animated video which follows the opening chapter of the story in “Vaxis II”.

Expanding on the “The Liars Club”, COHEED AND CAMBRIA vocalist/guitarist Claudio Sanchez remarked: “When the truth is such a mess, who doesn’t want to live out a different reality? Who doesn’t want to embrace a lie?”

COHEED AND CAMBRIA has also announced details of a massive 2022 North American summer headline trek. Dubbed “A Window Of The Waking Mind Tour”, it’s the band’s first major headline run of shows in five years. The upcoming trek will kick off on July 12 and see the band performing at some of the largest venues of their career in major cities across the continent, including Boston, Philadelphia, Nashville, Denver, Queens, Toronto, Los Angeles and more. Featuring support from DANCE GAVIN DANCE and MOTHICA, artist pre-sale tickets for the summer tour will be available beginning tomorrow (Wednesday, February 23) at 9:00 a.m. local time, with all remaining tickets going on sale to the public on Friday, February 25 at 10:00 a.m. local time. COHEED AND CAMBRIA is currently out on “The Great Destroyer Tour”, a U.S. headline run with special guests SHEER MAG, which is set continue through mid-March, giving audiences an opportunity to see the band live in intimate clubs across the U.S.

“A Window Of A Waking Mind Tour” dates with special guests DANCE GAVIN DANCE and MOTHICA:

Jul. 12 – FPL Solar Amphitheater at Bayfront Park – Miami, FL
Jul. 13 – MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre – Tampa, FL
Jul. 15 – 713 Music Hall – Houston, TX
Jul. 16 – Whitewater Amphitheater – New Braunfels, TX
Jul. 17 – The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory – Irving, TX
Jul. 19 – Coca-Cola Roxy – Atlanta, GA
Jul. 23 – Nashville Municipal Auditorium – Nashville, TN
Jul. 24 – Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre – Charlotte, NC
Jul. 26 – The Anthem – Washington, DC
Jul. 27 – The Liacouras Center – Philadelphia, PA
Jul. 29 – Agganis Arena – Boston, MA
Jul. 30 – Forest Hills Stadium – Queens, NY
Aug. 01 – Stage AE Outdoors – Pittsburgh, PA
Aug. 02 – Crofoot Festival Grounds – Pontiac, MI
Aug. 03 – RBC Echo Beach – Toronto, ON
Aug. 05 – Armory – Minneapolis, MN
Aug. 06 – SeatGeek Stadium – Bridgeview, IL
Aug. 07 – Saint Louis Music Park – St Louis, MO
Aug. 09 – Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre – Denver, CO
Aug. 10 – The Lot at The Complex – Salt Lake City, UT
Aug. 12 – Shrine LA Outdoors – Los Angeles, CA
Aug. 13 – Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre – San Diego, CA
Aug. 14 – Greek Theatre – Berkeley, CA
Aug. 16 – Marymoor Park – Seattle, WA
Aug. 17 – Edgefield – Troutdale, OR

“Vaxis II: A Window Of The Waking Mind” will be released worldwide on May 27. The LP welcomes us back to “The Amory Wars” as the second installment of the five-part “Vaxis” arc about a couple on the run from tyrannical forces and their mysterious new addition. The album’s limited-edition deluxe box set includes the exclusive 96-page illustrated hardcover novel “A Window Of The Waking Mind” which was developed by Sanchez and written by his wife Chondra Echert with strikingly realistic color artwork by Chase Stone. The 9″ x 12″ box set also houses an exclusive Quintillan Speaker Containment Unit Lamp (approximately 8″ diameter), a three-panel fold out poster of expanded album cover art, and the “A Window Of The Waking Mind” black card which will allow all card holders early access to tickets and early entry to COHEED AND CAMBRIA headline dates. All box sets will also come with a CD copy and download of “Vaxis II: A Window Of The Waking Mind” along with an official Certificate Of Authenticity.

Named one of Revolver’s “Most Anticipated Albums Of 2022,” “Vaxis II: A Window Of The Waking Mind” includes the recently released singles “Rise, Naianasha (Cut The Cord)” and “Shoulders”, the latter of which vaulted into the Top 10 at Active Rock Radio, marking the group’s career highest radio chart position to date. “(It) masterfully pairs heavy metal-infused riffs with sweeping, melodic vocals in a way that only COHEED can,” declared MTV who placed “Shoulders” in their 2021 Favorites round-up. “COHEED AND CAMBRIA are back, and they’re heavy as ever,” asserted Billboard, with Guitar World attesting “COHEED AND CAMBRIA have come out swinging.” Brooklyn Vegan observed, “It finds the band embracing their love of classic heavy metal riffage, before exploding into the kind of soaring chorus that COHEED have been churning out since day one… they sound pretty damn inspired.”

For the last 20 years, COHEED AND CAMBRIA have continuously broken the mold of what a rock band can be, forging their own path and building a universe around their music unlike any other. Whether it is in the way their genre-spanning approach to songwriting has allowed them to bridge worlds without being contained to one, or the multifaceted story arc of their albums and comic book series which mark the longest running concept story in music, COHEED AND CAMBRIA have consistently shaped new standards, never conformed. Comprised of Claudio Sanchez (vocals / guitar), Travis Stever (guitar), Josh Eppard (drums) and Zach Cooper (bass), the band has gripped listeners and press around the globe with their visionary compositions and conceptual mastery. In 2018, COHEED AND CAMBRIA made a stunning debut with their album “Vaxis I: The Unheavenly Creatures”, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hard Rock Albums chart, No. 6 current sales and Top 15 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Photo credit: Alexandra Gavillet