SHINEDOWN frontman Brent Smith spoke to Lou Brutus of HardDrive Radio about the lyrical inspiration for the band’s seventh album, “Planet Zero”, which will be released on April 22 via Atlantic Records. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “In the most point-blank way I can say it, this album was written for the people by the people. And there’s a lot to it. And I’m not even talking about just in this country when I say a statement like that. It’s the freedoms of the individual from a global standpoint.

“We all know what we’ve been through in the last two years, entering year three of what is going on. But I think that the good thing is now people are starting to become more educated on things, they are starting to ask questions. But when I rewind and go back to June of 2020 [at the beginning of the songwriting process], when I left California, got to South Carolina with Eric [Bass, SHINEDOWN producer and bassist] and then the question became, ‘Okay, what do we write about? How do we do it?’ And we even talked at a certain point in time about having kind of the crystal-ball method, which is you’re writing for three years from now. Because at the time, everything was in flux and it was intense. And when I got to South Carolina, that’s immediately following that… That’s when the height of protests had been happening, everything that had gone on with the injustice of what happened to George Floyd, but then how not just America but the world was rallying around this. And making the statement of… It comes down to a simple thing: what’s right and wrong. And the wrong thing happened.

“That, still to this day, is hard to digest for me personally, because it’s just gut-wrenching and heartbreaking to remember,” Smith continued. “I remember when we watched in real time a man get murdered on live television. And it still sticks with me. And it’s difficult, because you don’t wanna believe that that kind of evil still exists.

“The thing is that when we go back to June, July of 2020, when we were asking that question to each other, like, ‘Let’s talk about after we come out of this. Let’s talk about what it’s gonna be like when we come out of it.’ And we were trying to do that, but it just kept getting more and more intense,” Brent added. “And it kept getting more and more intense with the virus. And it kept getting more intense with how people were viewing each other and how things were being presented in this glass box here from certain media outlets and how that was becoming very divisive and how clickbait became this new way of selling or getting your media out there.”

This past December, Smith told 95.9 The Rat’s Carl Craft that the lyrical themes covered on the new SHINEDOWN album were inspired at least in part by the ongoing pandemic and resulting impact on the community, residents and businesses.

“Going through everything that the world went through last year, and we wrote the majority of the record [in 2020], and [in 2021], we couldn’t turn a blind eye to everything that was going on,” he said. “And we talk on this record, and we express on this record — we’re not trying to dance around certain subject matter. We’re trying to be very honest and very real. In a lot of ways, this is a very humanitarian record.”

Asked if SHINEDOWN will “piss people off” with some of the lyrical positions that are taken on the upcoming LP, Smith said: “Possibly. But the thing about it is I don’t necessarily think it’s about pissing people off; it’s about understanding what we all went through but where we need to go now. I think that it gets lost. It’s never supposed to be about… And I say this because I’m being very, very bold and very honest about it. This country, it’s not called the Divided States Of America; it’s called the United States Of America, and we want people to understand that that comes down to the people; that comes down to us. And us being able to not only work with each other, to grow with one another. But when you have certain people in power that do not have your best interests in mind, you have to stand up and make your voice heard. When I see what’s going on in regards to people’s freedom of speech and it being censored and people being pushed into a corner because of their opinions and what have you. You need to be able to have constructive conversations with each other in order to get actual action to happen for positive change.”

SHINEDOWN’s 2022 North American tour, “Shinedown Live In Concert”, kicked off on January 26 in San Francisco.

French death dealers Viande reach into the darkness for new track “Le Souffle Des Os.”
The post Track Premiere: Viande – ‘Le Souffle Des Os’ appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

You could WIN a ZIO Analog Front End + Boost from Source Audio in today’s I Love Pedals giveaway! Ends Feb. 22, 2022.ZIO Analog Front End + BoostThe goal in creating the ZIO Analog Front End + Boost was simple yet ambitious: “Make Everything Sound Better!” ZIO is an all-analog preamp/boost pedal that includes a choice of four distinct preamp circuits, each with up to +20dB of additional output boost. ZIO is Source Audio’s first all-analog effects pedal and designed in collaboration with Christopher Venter, the owner and sole engineer at SHOE Pedals.ZIO is a deceptively flexible unit that can serve many different purposes at various places in your signal path. Use it at the front of your chain of effects to shape the rest of your outgoing tone, after your drive pedals as an overall tone sweetener or clean volume boost, or at the the end of your pedalboard to drive a long cable run or as a restorative device to recreate the sound of your guitar going directly into the input of your amplifier. You can also use the ZIO in your amp’s effects loop if you want to drive your power amp even harder, or to compensate for a level mismatch between two channels.The word “ZIO” is an acronym for Impedance (“Z” is the electrical symbol for impedance), Input (“I”), and Output (“O”). The pedal is designed to take a guitar’s high impedance signal, sweeten the tone with any of its four preamp circuits, and output a strong, low impedance signal that won’t be altered by the buffered dry tones of effect pedals further down the signal chain. High fidelity, noise-free Burr-Brown op amps help give ZIO extreme clarity and responsive pick dynamics, while maintaining ideal body and warmth. ZIO has four distinct preamp circuits. JFET offers a completely transparent signal boost with zero coloring or distortion. LOW-CUT reduces “tubby” bottom-end for a tighter sound with added headroom. STUDIO finds inspiration from the time-honored “Pultec Trick,” a studio technique that adds clarity by cutting the “mud frequencies” and adding mid-range articulation. E-PLEX captures the focused and subtle grit of the preamps found in vintage Echoplex Tape Delay units. The ZIO’s TONE toggle offers three different levels of capacitance (or simulated cable length) to brighten or darken the tone.I Love Pedals Day #20: Maestro Pedals Delay

Fan-filmed video footage of SOULFLY performing a cover of FEAR FACTORY’s “Replica” (after the intro to “Body Hammer”) on February 15 at Goldfield in Roseville, California can be seen below.

FEAR FACTORY’s Dino Cazares is once again playing guitar for SOULFLY on the Max Cavalera-fronted outfit’s current U.S. tour. He previously performed with SOULFLY on the group’s last U.S. run of dates, which took place in August and September of 2021.

SOULFLY kicked off its 35-date U.S. tour on February 7 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The trek will make stops in Seattle, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Baton Rouge before concluding in Gallup, New Mexico on March 19. Joining the band for select dates are SHORT FUSE and 200 STAB WOUNDS.

Prior to the launch of the tour, Cavalera commented: “SOULFLY would like to welcome back our brother/legend Dino Cazares to share the stage once again with us! Round One was amazing! The Tribe in other cities will now get the chance to see this epic lineup, playing classic trax and some surprises from our new record!”

Cazares added: “I will reenter the riff vortex with the SOULFLY Tribe! I look forward to rejoining Max and La Familia on their U.S. tour, destroying stages with an avalanche of classic anthems and brand new songs.”

Last month, Max told Zippo Encore’s “Art Of Rock” livestream series: “It’s so cool that we have amazing friends like [Dino] in the industry. That you can call Dino up and he’s available. So [it’s] just really great… [Touring with him last year] was so much fun, man, because Dino… We grew up together. I was a huge FEAR FACTORY fan. I helped them get signed [to Roadrunner]. And then, of course, he plays on ‘Eye For An Eye’ on the first SOULFLY [album]; he plays guitars on it. So when we invited him to do that tour, it was a perfect match. And the fans, they lost their shit. It was so cool. Sometimes I would stay on the bus and I’d watch Dino get out of the bus and he’d just get mobbed; 10 kids would just surround him. I was, like, ‘Oh, this is cool, man. This is what’s up. This is some true metal shit right here.'”

In August, SOULFLY parted ways with longtime guitarist Marc Rizzo due to personal differences.

Rizzo joined SOULFLY in 2004, and appeared on all of the band’s subsequent records, including “Prophecy” (2004), “Dark Ages” (2005), “Conquer” (2008), “Omen” (2010), “Enslaved” (2012), “Savages” (2013), “Archangel” (2015) and “Ritual” (2018). In 2007, Rizzo became a member of CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, the side project of SEPULTURA co-founders, brothers Max and Igor Cavalera, and has performed on all CAVALERA CONSPIRACY releases including “Inflikted”, “Blunt Force Trauma”, “Pandemonium” and the critically acclaimed 2017 LP “Psychosis”.

Max and his bandmates have spent the last few months working on the follow-up to 2018’s “Ritual” at Platinum Underground in Phoenix, Arizona with producer Arthur Rizk, who has previously worked with CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, POWER TRIP and CODE ORANGE.