Decibel subscribers already read about the making of Philly metallic punk trio Backslider‘ and the making of their new album, Psychic Rot, in issue #209. Nearly 15 years into their time as a band, it feels like the trio—bassist Jake Smith (Eye Flys), guitarist/vocalist Logan Neubauer and drummer Jake Cregger (Triac)—hit their stride with the most varied,…
The post Full Album Stream: Backslider – “Psychic Rot” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

KnuckleBonz, creator of the Rock Iconz music collectible series, has announced the production of a new bundle of KISS figures (set of four or separately), available for pre-order now at this location. The statues are based on the costumes the four members of KISS wore during the band’s “Dynasty” period in 1979.

This is a limited edition, hand-cast statue. Only 3000 will be cast for KISS superfans worldwide.

These exclusive KISS statues are hand-painted and numbered and come with a certificate of authenticity printed on the base of each collectible statue.

Shipping is estimated for late spring/summer 2022.

All KnuckleBonz statues are officially licensed with KISS.

Each statue sells for $159 and ships worldwide.

KnuckleBonz has been creating high-end statues since 2003 and continues to be dedicated to honoring music’s greatest performers through master artistry in the limited-edition statue series called Rock Iconz. The company’s goal is to capture a “live performance” moment in each limited edition.

Last year, KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons was asked for his thoughts on “Dynasty”. At the time of its release, the controversial 1979 album was described as a “hit-or-miss” affair which displeased some fans by the inclusion of “I Was Made for Lovin ‘You”, a song that featured a disco beat.

“Well, when people talk about that record [being] hit-or-miss, it was a multi-platinum record, so that’s called a hit,” Gene told “Good Day Sacramento”. “There are some songs that are pop[-flavored] — yeah, by definition it’s called a hit. ‘You know, I don’t like the way that guy hit that baseball, that home run that he hit.’ Idiot, it was a home run. So that’s called a home run. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it. These are semantics, but I’m not anti-semantic. You see what I did there?”

“I Was Made for Lovin’ You” was released as the A-side of KISS’s first single from “Dynasty”. It was the band’s second gold single, selling over 1 million copies. The single reached No. 11 on the U.S. Billboard singles chart. The song also became a Top 10 hit in Australia, reaching No. 6 on the ARIA charts in 1979. The song fared the best in Western Europe (Where it became a Top 20 hit in Sweden, a Top 10 hit in Norway, made it to the No. 2 position in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and in Holland it became a No. 1 smash).

In 2018, Simmons said that he hated performing “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” because he is forced to sing like his grandmother. Asked in an interview with OK! magazine to name a song that he wasn’t initially crazy about that ended up becoming a hit, Gene said: “Well, Paul Stanley comes in and he says, ‘Did you write any songs?’ I go, ‘Oh, yeah. I’ve got one called ‘Almost Human’.’ ‘Yeah? How does it go?’ ‘I’m almost human. I can’t help feelin’ strange.’ ‘Yeah, that’s cool. That’s a Gene song.’ ‘How about you, Paul?’ He goes, ‘I’ve got one. [It goes] ‘Tonight.” “Ooooh. That’s cool. What’s the next line?’ ‘I’m gonna give it all to you.’ ‘Oh, yeah. I know what ‘it’ means — I know exactly what you mean.’ ‘In the darkness.’ [Claps] ‘Love that!’ ‘There something I wanna do.’ ‘Yeah, I know what that ‘something’ is. Wow! That’s a cool song. Okay, what’s my part?’ [Sings] ‘Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.’ ‘You’re killing me. Really? I’m gonna sing like my grandmother?’ [Sings] ‘Do, do, do…’ I hate playing that song to [this] day. Stadiums full of people jump up and down like biblical locusts — they go nuts — with tattoos and grills on… ‘Ahhhh!’ They’re all jumping up and down, and I’m going, ‘Do, do, do, do, do, do… Kill me now.’ Still — still to this day I hate that song.”

After the female interviewer pressed him on whether the song ever grew on him after performing it for the last four decades, Gene said: “Well, how about you sing that song? You’re a girl. I wanna sing guy stuff.”

Stanley admitted in 2017 that the success of “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” was “a double-edged sword, because it became such a massive hit but it was also so contrary and contradictory to what we had done before.” He added: “The funniest thing is when we do festivals sometimes in Europe where it’s very much… the bands are quite heavy, well, when we do an encore of ‘I Was Made For Lovin’ You’, you suddenly have all these people with spikes in their eyeballs or bones through their noses singing along. So it’s a song that seems to transcend everything — although it went through a period, certainly, of a big backlash against it.”

Zakk Wylde says that he is open to producing the next line of guitars from late PANTERA guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott.

Last August, Dimebag’s longtime girlfriend and trustee of his estate, Rita Haney, announced that she was cutting ties with Dean Guitars after 17 years with the company. She also revealed that she had filed a lawsuit against Dean, alleging fraud, breach of written agreement and false endorsement, among other claims.

Asked in a new interview with Australia’s Wall Of Sound if he would be interested in working with Haney on a new line of Dimebag guitars through his Wylde Audio company, Wylde said: “I remember when [the news of Rita’s lawsuit against Dean] first came out, whenever I saw that, but I didn’t know the whole skinny on that. But I mean, it’s just, like, yeah, ’cause, I mean, Dime’s always been associated with them. I mean, actually, he brought them back into business when they were out of business; he brought them back into business just because of his popularity and him playing that guitar. But if we were to ever do something like that, obviously we’d talk with Rita and whatever she wanted to do, you know.”

Dimebag’s affiliation with Dean goes back to when he was 14. He played Dean guitars throughout PANTERA’s heyday in the mid-1990s. He switched to Washburn Guitars late in the decade, a time when Dean Guitars had practically disappeared from the American market. But when Dimebag’s contract with Washburn ended, he inked an endorsement deal with Dean, which Elliot Rubinson had revived. Dimebag died three weeks later at the age of 38.

In a 2014 interview with Billboard, Zakk stated about Dimebag as a person: “If he didn’t play guitar, he’d still be one of your best friends, just because he was a sweet guy. He genuinely loved life: He was like Blutarsky in ‘Animal House’; you could just be having the most crap day, and then Dime would walk into the room and the party would begin! [Laughs] He was always like, ‘I ain’t got time to be depressed — let’s have a good time.’ He was like the Rat Pack all in one guy — he was Dean, Frank, Sammy, the whole Rat Pack in one human being! [Laughs]”

Asked what it was about Dimebag’s playing that set him apart, Zakk said: “He was as groundbreaking with his riffs as [BLACK SABBATH guitarist] Tony Iommi was with his — he was the architect of the template for that style of music.

“I always say that PANTERA were the LED ZEPPELIN or BLACK SABBATH of that genre of music — THE BEATLES and STONES of that music. It’s not even an argument. You have great bands and then you have bands that changed the game. All the bands that have come after — like MESHUGGAH or LAMB OF GOD — the template for it is PANTERA. Production-wise, you can use those PANTERA records as a Model-T Ford for extreme metal.”

Zakk introduced the first three guitars offered by Wylde Audio at the 2016 NAMM show in Anaheim, California. The guitars were the initial offering from his company, which at the time was also said to be planning to build amplifiers and effect pedals, with distribution provided by Schecter Guitar Research.

Three abnormal basses, two loopers, and one warping Whammy help Kristian Dunn maximize, multiply, and morph his tones for a buoyant post-rock balancing act.Pedals can be a source of inspiration. But can they be the catalyst to start a band? The argument could be made that without a looper bassist Kristian Dunn and drummer Tim Fogarty would’ve never taken flight as El Ten Eleven. (The band is named after the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar airplane.)“I knew I wanted to start a band—in my mind it was probably going to sound like El Ten Eleven—but I didn’t know exactly how I’d do it. I got Tim [Fogarty] to play drums and I thought I’d get a third person for keyboards,” recalls Dunn.Fogarty wondered if Dunn had ever heard of a looper pedal. He hadn’t, so Dunn borrowed one from a friend and brought it to band practice. “We tried it, and right out of the gate our eyes lit up and we thought out loud, ‘Oh my god! Could we just do this with the two of us?!’”Since 2002, the live-looping masterminds have taking to the skies performing their organic, net-free, high-wire act. (Even Fogarty loops electronic drum parts through Dunn’s Boomerang that runs into a Gallien-Krueger MB Fusion 800 and a GK 115 RBH cabinet that sits near Fogarty.) And to celebrate two decades of their clever, playfully poetic, post-rock instrumentals, they’ll release their ninth album, New Year’s Eve, on March 4, 2022 via Joyful Noise.Before El Ten Eleven’s headlining show at Nashville’s Exit/In on January 29, juggling, tap-dancing, bass-playing Dunn gave PG’s Chris Kies 30-plus minutes to detail his cockpit. He explains how a late-night Genesis video influenced his doubleneck duality, illuminates why he always carries a marker, and then unlocks some expressive cheat codes with his pedalboard and signal chain.[Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard: https://ddar.io/xpnd.rr]Two Instruments, One Musician“I’m a bass player,” declares Dunn. “I’m a terrible guitarist [laughs].” Late one night while watching VH1 Classic, Dunn saw a Genesis video where Mike Rutherford used a guitar/bass doubleneck. Up to that point, he was crudely looping by putting on and taking off various instruments. (He still uses several instruments during one song.) This doubleneck would alleviate all that rigmarole. So Dunn pivoted to eBay and immediately found this 1977 Carvin DB630 Doubleneck that has a 6-string top and 4-string bottom (30″ scale length). It features a bird’s-eye maplebody, a bolt-on, hard-rock maple neck, APH-6S pickups (guitar), and APH-8 pickups (bass). Each set has master volume and tone controls, plus phase switches and coil splitters. Dunn uses Ernie Ball 2221 Slinkys (.010–.046) for the guitar and Ernie Ball 2852 Short Scale Regular Slinkys (.045–.105) for the bass. The guitar neck is tuned to E-A-D-G#-B-E, while the bass neck is tuned to D-A-D-A.A Head Above the RestHere are the matching headstocks for the doubleneck, revealing both have a zero fret.A Wal of a Good Time“For me, Wals are the best basses in the world,” contends Dunn. “I’ve never heard a better-sounding bass.” This 1988 Wal Mk1 was bought from Rig Rundown alumnus Tim Lefebvre. It has a Brazilian mahogany core that’s masked by a bird’s-eye maple cover. The fretboard is made from Indian rosewood. The humbuckers are controlled by a master volume that can pulled out to engage “pick attack” circuity that Dunn describes as having “a brighter sound.” The pickup selector is actual a knob that dials in each pickup for maximum blending control. And each pickup has a low-pass-filter knob.On their upcoming album, New Year’s Eve, Dunn rides the bridge pickup’s low-pass filter at about 4 and kicks on his Marshall Guv’nor for the nasty groove in “Meta Metta.” He did use roundwound strings on this instrument for years, but after having the fretboard sanded down from the wear they caused, he’s since opted for Ernie Ball 2813 Hybrid Slinky Flatwounds (.045–.105) that are kinder to the wood and still give a brighter tonal sheen.Hungry Like the Wolf“When I was a teenager, one of my bass heroes was John Taylor of Duran Duran, so I’ve always wanted an Aria like his,” states Dunn. This is an Aria Pro II SB-1000 with an ash body, a 7-ply maple/walnut neck (with thru construction), an ebony fretboard, a 34″ scale length, a MB-1E Double Coil pickup, a 6-way low-pass filter preset, and Gotoh hardware. Varying the low-pass filter allows Dunn to loop several parts atop each other, providing tones to handle bass, guitar, and keyboards. This one takes Ernie Ball Hybrid Bass Slinkys (.045–.105).Captain HookEl Ten Eleven has had the pleasure of opening for Peter Hook and his various outfits several times. Hook is known to perform with custom Shergold Marathon 6 basses. (The difference with this instrument are the extra two strings are higher-tuned, allowing it to creep into a guitar’s range. Most standard models have the standard four bass strings plus one higher and one lower.)With the help of Hook’s son, Dunn was able to secure one of the beasts. He did several tours with it, but has since retired the unique instrument because supposedly only about 100 of the 6-string models were made. Luckily, in 2019 Eastwood struck a partnership with the famed New Order and Joy Division bassist and released the Hooky Bass 6 Pro. Dunn admits to trying several other 6-string models from Fender and Schecter, but says those are designed more for guitarists, whereas the Shergold and the Hooky have bassists in mind—with wider string spacing that allows Dunn to play fingerstyle as he would on a normal 4-string.Its ingredients are a solid alder body, bolt-on maple neck, maple fretboard, an Eastwood custom humbucker, and a 30″ scale length. Dunn tunes his D-A-D-A-B-E and uses a custom range of Ernie Balls that starts with Hybrid Bass Slinkys (.045–.105), and the 5th-string is a .042 and the 6th-string is a .030.With a Little Help from My MarkerTo help him see the upper register for more precise picking, he added in some Sharpie inlays to give guidance when the lights go low during the show.Growling With the GallienDunn only plugs into this Gallien-Krueger MB Fusion 800. He gooses the treble control to help the guitar and keyboard sounds push through the other layers. He swore by GK’s 4×10 extension cab for years, but after doing a shootout with different configuration and speakers, he surprisingly favored the ported GK 115 RBH cabinet that has a ceramic driver and tweeter. He loves this setup’s hi-fi sound.At one point, Dunn had three pedalboards and would have to crouch down and manipulate settings all night. Most of the swatches coloring his sound come from the Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler. The two Boomerang III Phrase Samplers are what make an El Ten Eleven show (or record) happen. In line, they’re separated by the DigiTech Bass Whammy. Dunn routes his signal this way so he can use the Whammy to shift octaves or keys on entire loops in Phrase Sampler one. The second Phrase Sampler, after the Whammy, allows him to pitch-shift specific loops without impacting the whole song or other loops (which can be done by the first Boomerang). The Strymon TimeLine sees the spotlight for precise repeats and specific delay settings not in the M9. The Electro-Harmonix Superego is a secret weapon harnessed by Dunn for sleek, reverse-sound bends. When he holds down the freeze function, it holds the original note. Then he continues holding down and plays the next note (which is not audible), but once he releases the switch, the ongoing audible note bends into the second note. The remaining two pedals are more standard fare: a Nu-X NFB-2 Lacerate FET Boost and a Marshall GV-2 Guv’nor Plus. A Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner keeps his instruments in check.Bradshaw BreakthroughSimplifying scene changes and making life a little easier for Dunn is this Custom Audio Electronics RS-T MIDI Foot Controller. The unit talks with the M9 and Strymon, alleviating some tap dancing for Dunn to pull off an El Ten Eleven performance.