Former FOZZY drummer Frank Fontsere has once again opened up about his decision to leave the band, saying he “had no real investment in what was going on.”

The 54-year-old musician’s exit from FOZZY was officially announced on January 3. The band simultaneously named his replacement, former THROUGH FIRE drummer Grant Brooks.

Frank discussed his departure from FOZZY in a new interview with the “Talk Toomey” podcast. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I’ve been doing it a long time, and I still love playing, and I still love playing live, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of the traveling. I’m not Dora The Explorer; I don’t really care about seeing exotic places or all that stuff. For me, it was always about the shows. I used to think, ‘Man, it would be nice if I could just teleport to every show.’ And especially having a kid — he’s seven years old — I was missing him. We weren’t spending tremendous amounts of time on the road, but still, it was just getting harder. And there were other factors too; there were other things I wanted to pursue. I kind of needed to figure out who I was, who Frank Fontsere was as opposed to Frank the drummer for FOZZY. That was the entirety of my identity, and I needed to figure out who I was and can I just go out there in the world and do something completely on my own.

“It had been years and years and years of ‘the kind of success that will sustain me is just around the corner’ or ‘the kind of success that will sustain us is just around the corner’ — it was always ‘just around the corner.’ And I couldn’t take that anymore,” he continued. “‘Cause the band is doing well, but it’s not like we flew around on private jets and stuff like that; there were still things to deal with. We would have tour buses and they were nice and everything, but there was still a lot of showering at truck stops and gyms and things like that. I’m not a snob — it’s not like that’s some kind of true hardship — but it just wears on you after a while when you get to be in your 50s, especially when you don’t have any skin in the game. I didn’t have any songwriting credits — I’m not a songwriter — and I had no control over what the band did at all; I had no say over what the band does. It was, like, when they say ‘jump,’ I say ‘how high?’ And it’s not like they were dictators or anything like that — we had a good relationship — but ultimately, I feel like I’m working toward something, or at least I was trying to work toward something and I didn’t have any real control over the outcome.”

Frank added: “They say, ‘Well, if you’re gonna fail, fail on your own terms.’ The band that follows their heart and does the music that means something to them, they think, ‘Well, if we sell no records, at least I have the records and at least I can be proud of that.’ And I didn’t really have that; I had no real investment in what was going on.”

Fontsere was a founding member of FOZZY, having formed the group in 1999 with singer Chris 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.”

In a separate statement on his personal Facebook page, Brooks said that he was “super excited” about his new gig. He wrote: “So thankful for this amazing opportunity! Huge shoutout to Rich Ward, aka The Duke and Chris Jericho for reaching out to me and offering me the gig.

“My first shows will be on the Jericho Cruise setting sail from Miami, Florida to Nassau, Bahamas on March 14-18!”

FOZZY will release its new album, “Boombox”, on April 15. The LP, which includes the top 10 singles “Nowhere To Run” and “Sane”, was once again produced by Johnny Andrews.

FOZZY’s “Save The World” 2022 U.S. tour, featuring special guests GFM, KRASHKARMA and THE NOCTURNAL AFFAIR, starts on March 31 in Detroit, Michigan and wraps on May 16 in Sauget, Illinois. Additionally, to celebrate the arrival of “Boombox”, FOZZY will play an album-release party on April 11 at Irving Plaza in New York City, where fans will be able to purchase and listen to the full album exclusively in advance of the release.

FOZZY debuted a brand new song, “Purifier”, during its September 2021 concert in Flint, Michigan and has been performing it live ever since. Back in July, FOZZY played another new song, “The Vulture Club”, during its concert in Iowa City, Iowa. The band also performed its latest single, “Sane”, live for the first time.

In May, FOZZY dropped a video for its first new song in two years, the aforementioned “Sane”, which hit one million views in its first two weeks. This first-of-its-kind video was filmed on the longest wooden roller coaster on the planet today.

In the summer of 2020, Chris revealed that FOZZY’s next LP would contain 12 songs, including one cover.

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

In addition to producing “Judas”, Andrews previously co-wrote FOZZY’s “Lights Go Out” track back in 2014. He has also written songs with the likes of ALL THAT REMAINS, THREE DAYS GRACE and HALESTORM.

In November 2020, FOZZY appeared in its first global live streaming event from Madison Studios in Atlanta, Georgia.

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

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Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest in our hometown of Philadelphia (June 10-11, 2022) is our fastest-selling event ever. Fence-sitters, leave the hall and get tickets now!
The post Don’t Be Left High ‘n’ Dry. Get Your Metal & Beer Fest: Philly 2022 Tickets NOW! appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

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Micki Free is not a less-is-more kind of player—at least when it comes to amps. His setup is all reissue Marshalls: two JMP 2061X heads perched on 4×12 stacks, a pair of 1974X combos, and double SV20C 1×10 combos. They look great together and, of course, sound even better.“I’m a Marshall purist,” Free explains, “but not the modern high-gain models that sound more harsh and brash. Lower wattage heads overdrive quicker and better than 50- or 100-watt heads. They get you to the sweet spot right away. I like the old sound, like the Bluesbreakers—amps that break up right where you want them to and are very controllable, with a lot of midrange in the sound and some bass, but not too much.”Free fell for Marshalls even before he played guitar—the night his sister took him to see Jimi Hendrix when he was just 9. “From that moment on, I knew what I wanted to do with my life,” he says. In short order, he was experienced, ingesting the music of Cream, Robin Trower, Jeff Beck, and other giants of late-’60s rock guitar. Over the decades, Free has made his own bones as a songwriter and player. “Lower wattage heads overdrive quicker and better than 50- or 100-watt heads. They get you to the sweet spot right away.”He’s been a protégé and guitar-slinging pal of Gene Simmons, Prince, Billy Gibbons, Carlos Santana, and Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen. He’s also been immortalized in a popular Chappelle’s Show episode of “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories,” as part of Prince’s team in a now-legendary basketball game. And as a key member of R&B hitmakers Shalamar, he scored a top 20 hit with “Dancin’ in the Streets” and won a Grammy for “Don’t Get Stopped in Beverly Hills” from the Beverly Hills Copsoundtrack. “But through it all,” he says, “I’ve really been a blues-rock player. That music runs through my veins.”And pours out through his sound. Free began building his full-blooded six-amp wall in 2009, when he was provided a pair of 1974Xs during rehearsals for his gig at the Hard Rock Cafe Calling Festival in London’s Hyde Park. It was love at first note. “They sounded like the Bluesbreakers amps”—Marshall’s legendary JTM45-inspired combos, the 4×10 1961 and 2×12 1962—“but louder,” he notes. So, he a bought a pair.The 1×12 1974X is an 18-watt beast, with two channels: a tremolo channel with speed, intensity, tone, and volume dials, and one with just tone and volume. They have three ECC83 tubes (one working as a phase splitter), two EL84 power tubes, and an EZ81 rectifier tube, and sport Celestion Heritage G12M-20s. The next addition was his JMP 2061X heads—20-watt brutes originally produced for guitar and bass from 1967 to 1973. They have two channels with two controls each, for tone and volume. And, yes, there are two EL84s in the power amp and two ECC83s in the preamp. The heads pump 100JH 4x12s with 25-watt Celestion Greenbacks. All that was missing, to Free’s ears, was a little high end, so he acquired his two SV20C 1x10s. These 20/5-watt switchable treble makers have a unique control set: with normal and high treble channels with dual input, 3-band EQ, and presence. Essentially, it’s a take on the plexi Super Lead, featuring Celestion VT juniors.Micki Free – Heavy MercyTo get an earful of exactly what Mt. Marshall sounds like cranked, check out the online version of this story, where you’ll find Free’s song “Heavy Mercy,” from his new album Turquoise Blue. The tone is pure Jimi, and righteously so. Of course, the guitar’s a Strat. He has two of these Fenders and favors a 1959 reissue in sea foam green. He also has a fleet of Teye guitars with a signature model on the way. And his effects chain also slants toward the classic palette: a Pedal Pawn Gypsy Vibe, an Eventide H9 he uses for delay, a Vox wah, an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress, an MXR Carbon Copy, a Fulltone Octafuzz, a Pedal Pawn Fuzz, and a DigiTech Bad Monkey that was a gift from the Rev. Gibbons.Free explains that his amplification amalgamation is all in service of a higher goal—whether in the studio or onstage, where his flamboyant performances mirror the power of his sound. “It helps me get to the core of what I do in a way that I hope people connect with, because making music is about a connection so strong that it transcends language.”

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Swedish occult rockers GHOST will release their fifth album, “Impera”, on March 11 via Loma Vista/Concord. The band’s leader, Tobias Forge, worked on the follow-up to 2018’s “Prequelle” with producer Klas Åhlund and Swedish co-writers Salem Al Fakir and Vincent Pontare, whose credits include Madonna and Lady Gaga.

Forge discussed the “Impera” songwriting process in a new interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He said: “In every band I’ve ever had, every song I’ve ever written, I was always called a dictator, a control freak who couldn’t work with anyone else. And I am a dictator and control freak. But I can work with people.”

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 said: “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.”

Back in 2017, Forge was sued by four former members of the band after being dismissed by the group’s founder the previous December. They accused the singer of cheating them out of their rightful share of the profits from the band’s album releases and world tours. The lawsuit was filed in the district court of Linköping, Sweden, where GHOST was originally based. It claimed that a partnership agreement existed between Forge and the four former members, all of whom performed anonymously in the band as Nameless Ghouls. As a result of the lawsuit, Forge was forced to reveal his identity after years of performing in a mask as Papa Emeritus. He has maintained that “no legal partnership” ever existed between him and the other members.

GHOST kicked off its co-headlining tour with VOLBEAT on January 25 at the Reno Events Center in Reno, Nevada. The 26-date trek, which includes special guests TWIN TEMPLE, will conclude on March 3 in Anaheim, California.

The official music video for “Impera”‘s latest single, “Call Me Little Sunshine”, was lensed by iconic director Matt Mahurin and stars Ruby Modine.

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 will front the act for its next LP 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”.

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