In a new interview with Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station, GHOST mastermind Tobias Forge discussed his songwriting process. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I usually write bits and pieces and snippets. It varies a little. Nowadays, because we spend so much time on tour, when there’s time off, what I usually do is I get together with friends of mine. It’s usually different ones — basically other songwriters. Because I like going into an environment, a situation where I need to — I guess the word is ‘impress.’ I wanna come in and just, like, ‘Here’s a song idea I have. And this is another song. Would you like to work on one of these? Which one do you feel most excited about? Which one moves you the most?’ And more often [than not], that person says, ‘I like that one. That sounds really cool. I think that could be this or that.’ And then you just start sort of putting it together, make a demo. And throughout the last at least five years — from ‘Meliora’ [on], [so for the past] six [or] seven years; something like that — that has been sort of the process, where basically you make an embryo, but then you sort of realize it with someone. And the way I do it with various people that aren’t necessarily… They are in other bands, I guess, or they have other projects and stuff. But that way it’s not on your plate to make a record together; it’s on your plate to make the best out of this song. So you always get the best out of people, basically. So you feel super excited. And if I do that during an album cycle when people don’t expect me to do anything, I just feel so much better about it. That’s how a lot of the tracks on our last three albums have come out. I just stay somewhere and write a song with someone. Then you carry that with you for a year, not showing it to anyone — except for my wife and my kids and a best friend or something. But you sit on it. That was the same thing with [the new GHOST single] ‘Hunter’s Moon’. Obviously, we knew that it was gonna transform into something, but that was also not peddled around a whole lot before. Which, I like that process — it’s fun.

“Nowadays, most bands don’t… What we used to do — I and everybody else that was in bands — what you used to do back in the day was you wrote the song at home, and then you came into a room with all live gear that was really loud and then you had to teach everyone how to play the track,” he continued. “And you were always up against their temperament and their attention span. So you had to be very, very, very meticulous and, like, ‘This is how the bass line goes’ and ‘This is how the guitar plays’ and ‘No, no, no. Don’t play that’ and’ Please, drummer, please stop fucking playing.’ And then at the end of the night, you’re so deaf because of the exhaustion of teaching a group of people a song, whereas nowadays you go into a studio where you have a recording setup. And usually the first time you hear the song, it sounds pretty fucking full — it sounds pretty fucking rad.”

Released last week, “Hunter’s Moon” is featured in the latest blockbuster installment of the legendary film franchise “Halloween Kills”. The “Halloween Kills” soundtrack is set to arrive October 15 via Sacred Bones, with the film hitting theaters (and Peacock) the same day as well.

Produced by Klas Åhlund and mixed by Andy Wallace, GHOST’s “Hunter’s Moon” will play as the “Halloween Kills” end credits roll, and will be released January 21, 2022 as a collectible seven-inch single by Loma Vista Recordings. “Hunter’s Moon” can be streamed, purchased, and/or pre-ordered in its vinyl incarnation. The retail version of the seven-inch will feature the special B-side “Halloween Kills (Main Title)”, performed, produced and engineered by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

“Hunter’s Moon” features OPETH’s Fredrik Åkesson on guitar and THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES founder Martin Hederos on the piano. Producer Max Grahn and “A Ghoul Writer” are listed as the song’s composers and lyricists.

The official music video for the infectious first new track from GHOST since 2019’s “Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic” was directed by Amanda Demme.

Last month, GHOST announced a 26-date co-headlining U.S. arena tour with VOLBEAT and special guests TWIN TEMPLE, coming to cities including Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix.

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 2018’s “Prequelle”.

Richie Faulkner is now resting at home in Nashville following emergency heart surgery at Rudd Heart and Lung Center at UofL Health – Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. On September 26, the JUDAS PRIEST guitarist suffered an acute cardiac aortic dissection during a performance at the Louder Than Life festival, just a short distance from the hospital.

“He was only four miles away, but miles equal minutes and he did not have many to spare,” said Dr. Siddharth Pahwa, cardiothoracic surgeon with UofL Health – UofL Physicians. “Mr. Faulkner is alive today because the stars aligned. He had an outstanding emergency care team, he was close to a world class heart center, and he was quick to recognize he needed help.”

The UofL Health – Jewish Hospital cardiothoracic surgery team, led by Dr. Pahwa, also included Drs. Brian Ganzel and Mark Slaughter. It took more approximately 10 hours to complete the surgery, an aortic valve and ascending aorta replacement with hemiarch replacement, that saved Faulkner’s life.

Aortic aneurysms are “balloon-like bulges in the aorta, the large artery that carries blood from the heart through the chest and torso,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Dissections happen when the “force of blood pumping can split the layers of the artery wall, allowing blood to leak in between them.”

Earlier in the week, Faulkner described his medical emergency, writing in a statement: “As I watch footage from the Louder Than Life festival in Kentucky, I can see in my face the confusion and anguish I was feeling whilst playing ‘Painkiller’ as my aorta ruptured and started to spill blood into my chest cavity.

“From what I’ve been told by my surgeon, people with this don’t usually make it to the hospital alive,” he added. “Five parts of my chest were replaced with mechanical components. I’m literally made of metal now.

“The amazing Heart & Lung Center was 4 miles away from the gig site — if it had been further away … We can always drive ourselves crazy with these things, but I’m still alive thankfully. Whatever the circumstances, when watching that footage, the truth is, knowing what I know now, I see a dying man,” the 41-year-old said in his statement.

Faulkner also encouraged fans to learn from his experience and closely monitor their heart health.

“This came totally out of the blue for me — no history of a bad heart, no clogged arteries etc. … My point is I don’t even have high cholesterol and this could’ve been the end for me. If you can get yourselves checked — do it for me please,” he said.

Last month, JUDAS PRIEST postponed the remainder of the U.S. dates on its rescheduled 50th anniversary tour, dubbed “50 Heavy Metal Years”. The trek kicked off on September 8 in Reading, Pennsylvania and was slated to run through October before concluding on November 5 in Hamilton, Ontario.

Faulkner joined PRIEST in 2011 as the replacement for original guitarist K.K. Downing.

Richie was once the guitarist in the backing group for Lauren Harris, daughter of IRON MAIDEN bassist Steve Harris.

Californian rockers BUCKCHERRY have released the music video for the track “Gun”, taken from their latest album, “Hellbound”, which came out in June via Round Hill Records. This is the fourth clip from “Hellbound”, following videos for “So Hott”, “Hellbound” and “Wasting No More Time”.

“Gun” is an homage to the exploits of the legendary 1930s bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde. The video, edited by Stephen Wiggins, features live band performance footage shot at this year’s Summerfest in Milwaukee, as well as historical newsreel footage of Bonnie and Clyde shot in the 1930s.

The follow-up to 2019’s “Warpaint”, “Hellbound” was recorded last fall in Nashville, Tennessee with producer and songwriter-for-hire Marti Frederiksen, who has previously collaborated with AEROSMITH, DEF LEPPARD, Jonny Lang and Sheryl Crow, among many others.

BUCKCHERRY singer Josh Todd told “The Roman Show” about “Hellbound”: “Whenever there’s a lot of adversity, this band really writes its best records, I have to say. ‘Hellbound’, our new record, it’s gotta be the best BC record, and I’m not saying that just ’cause [it’s new]. It’s really amazing. We worked really hard on it. We just channeled all that energy into writing songs. Yeah, we wrote a lot of songs. We wrote about almost 30 songs for a 10-song record. So it just goes to show you how thorough we were, and it really paid off.”

As for what will happen to the remaining 20 or so songs that didn’t make the cut this time around, Todd said: “I think some of ’em are good enough to make a record — maybe two or three. Sometimes songs, they never get to that point where they’re good enough to be on a record. That’s why you’ve gotta write a lot of them. We don’t wanna put out just filler. That’s really important to us. So that’s why we write a lot of songs.”

Regarding how he and his bandmates go about deciding which songs to put on an album, Josh said: “You kind of know. The cream rises to the top. We create a little playlist — we’ll have password-protected playlists while we’re writing demos — and it only goes out to the band and our manager and our producer. And then we just continue to write and add songs and write and add songs. And before you know it, when it gets closer and we feel like we’ve exhausted the songwriting process, there’s usually always eight songs that are undeniable, or seven, and then you’ve kind of gotta start really finetuning the last three or four. That’s kind of how we do it. We know when we’ve got it.

“On BUCKCHERRY records, you wanna have a lot of dynamics — you don’t wanna have just all rock songs; you don’t wanna have all just super-fast-tempo songs; you don’t wanna have all ballads; you don’t wanna have all midtempo songs,” he explained. “So when you’re writing songs, sometimes you’ll have five midtempo songs, and you only want one or two for the record. And then you’ll have a few slow songs, and you only want one for the record. And then you’ll have a bunch of rockers. Like I said, there’ll be good ones and then there’ll be mediocre songs; maybe it’s a good chorus, but the rest of the song isn’t good. Stuff like that. Sometimes you go back and rewrite stuff.

“We just were in a zone on this record,” he added. “We co-wrote a lot of songs with Marti Frederkisen as well, the guy who produced the record. We’d written songs with him in the past. He’s a really talented guy. And five of those songs made the record. So it just goes to show you how good that was. We wrote with him for a week. We wrote six songs in five days, and five of ’em made the record. And then we took five of the remaining 22 that [guitarist] Stevie [Dacanay, a.k.a. Stevie D.] and I had written prior to getting in a room with Marti. And there you have ‘Hellbound’, the record. And it’s amazing.”

In the summer of 2020, BUCKCHERRY recruited JETBOY’s Billy Rowe as its new guitarist. He joined the group as the replacement for Kevin Roentgen, who left BUCKCHERRY in July of that year.

In 2019, BUCKCHERRY recruited Francis Ruiz as its new drummer. He joined the group as the replacement for Sean Winchester, who exited BUCKCHERRY after laying down the drum tracks on “Warpaint”.

BUCKCHERRY is currently performing in Canada as part of its 110-show 2021 “Hellbound” tour. The North American dates end November 13 and the band will close out 2021 with 11 shows in the U.K.

THE THREE TREMORS, the project featuring acclaimed heavy metal singers Tim “Ripper” Owens (JUDAS PRIEST, ICED EARTH, YNGWIE MALMSTEEN), Harry “The Tyrant” Conklin (JAG PANZER) and Sean “The Hell Destroyer” Peck (CAGE, DEATH DEALER, DENNER/SHERMANN), will release its second album, “Guardians Of The Void”, on November 5 via Steel Cartel Records. The video for single “Bone Breaker” can be seen below.

Coming off the successful release of their self-titled debut album, several North American and European tours, release of the solo versions of the first album, and some festival performances, THE THREE TREMORS shot out of a cannon at a frantic pace. They were pursuing an aggressive pace of live performances when the shutdown forced them to cut short their North American tour in the middle of their run in early 2020. They wasted no time, however, and got to work on another new album. Now their sophomore effort “Guardians Of The Void” is ready for blast-off.

Twelve songs are found on this wicked rocker of an album and once again they cover all the bases of heavy metal. As with all Steel Cartel releases, only the songs that receive video releases will be on the streaming platforms, so the physical medium and the fans that support and collect them, are the bands priority and focus.

And speaking of great physical product, THE THREE TREMORS has once again hired Marc Sasso to do the cover artwork once again. Sasso is best known for his work with such companies as Marvel, the WWE and HALFORD, DIO, CAGE and many others. He has hit it out of the park once again with this haunting, otherworldly painting that captures the mysterious essence of the album title perfectly.

Owens describes how the recording process went down: “We had just started our second North American tour promoting the solo versions that we had just released, when everything started to shut down. It was a shame because we had some really good momentum and the shows were selling well, including a few that were sold out in advance. When we realized that we could be sitting home for a while, we all started putting these new songs together and recording them.”

Harry said: “I had moved to Greece during this whole time and they guys started sending me song after song at a furious pace. The songs were kickass, and I found it easier and more natural to collaborate and add my ideas and nuances this second time around. We have toured and done so many shows together now the comfort level was there and they came together really quick. The end result is amazing, I think.”

Sean added: “Everyone in the band has a lot of other projects going on, so it was good we could all pull together and make this follow up album. Now Sean [Elg], our drummer, is also in KK’S PRIEST with Ripper, so we are stoked that we could not only put out another record but also get a tour in before everyone gets busy. We have spent so much time together we are like a heavy metal street gang and have a blast performing these songs and going on the road. With these new songs available from the ‘Guardians Of The Void’ album, our setlist will be even more vicious than before, if that is even possible, ha!”

There will be three different versions of the double gatefold vinyl of “Guardians Of The Void”: the original version, the 1-in-5 variant version and the virgin cover version. The 1-in-5 variant version has completely different cover art (again by Sasso) on the front and back and will be limited to one copy for every five standard versions that are produced. The virgin cover version has the original Sasso artwork without band logos or album titles.

Catch the THREE TREMORS on tour in the United States this November.

THE OFFSPRING has unveiled the video for “The Opioid Diaries”. The song, which appears on the band’s acclaimed, chart-topping tenth studio album “Let The Bad Times Roll”, is part cautionary tale and part admonition, and takes aim squarely at the source of the opioid crisis that has devastated communities around the world for more than 20 years: Big Pharma.

As lead singer Dexter Holland notes: “I wrote this OFFSPRING song about addiction. While drug addiction is certainly not a new issue, the opioid epidemic in America is different. It’s different because it was created by, and driven by, Big Pharma — and I wrote this song to say that the pharmaceutical industry should be held accountable for its consequences.”

Directed by Daveed Benito, the video offers an unflinching look at the ravages of opioid addiction through its use of hallucinatory images, time-lapse photography, and somber statistics that encapsulate the collective trauma caused by the epidemic.

“Producing this video was tough,” says Benito. “Addiction is a heavy subject to take on, but it’s important to bring awareness to this crisis. My hope is that these visual metaphors shed more light onto this epidemic — an epidemic that does not discriminate with regard to race, wealth, or age.”

“‘The Opioid Diaries’ is a song written from a personal point of view, to show the very personal toll that opiate addiction has taken on our friends and families,” says Holland. He asserts: “This opioid crisis is different because people who might not normally have been looking for drugs were unwittingly prescribed these opiates for pain, not knowing how addictive they were. There are countless stories of regular folks with short term pain issues — a blue collar factory worker, or a high school athlete, for example — who were given these drugs and became hopelessly addicted in a short period of time. When the prescription ran out, they had no choice but to start taking illegal street drugs like heroin and fentanyl. And the results, of course, have been deadly.”

In Holland’s view, it’s essential to reframe the narrative around opioid addiction in order to effectively address it. “And yet the larger problem still remains.” He reflects: “What should we do to fight drug addiction? I say that until we stop treating drug addiction as a criminal issue, and start treating it as a medical issue, we’ll stay stuck in this vicious cycle of pain and suffering. I’ve never seen a social ill assuaged by punishment, but always and only by compassion.”

He further contends: “The right approach is not to jail people with addiction issues, but to get them the medical help that they need.

“We wouldn’t put our kids in a jail cell if they had cancer…and we shouldn’t put them there for addiction.”

THE OFFSPRING has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, won countless awards, and have toured consistently, playing more than 500 shows in the last decade alone. Their music has had a lasting impact across film, television, and video games, and their latest album “Let The Bad Times Roll” has been a huge global success, hitting career-high chart debuts with seven Top 5 and ten Top 10 international debuts and nine Top 10 debuts in the U.S. The album peaked at No. 3 on the U.K. chart and hit No. 1 on the Alternative Albums chart in the U.S.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have released another song, “High And Lonesome”, from their first new album in fourteen years. Out November 19 on Rounder Records, “Raise The Roof” has been named one of the most anticipated LPs of the fall by the New York Times, New York magazine, Entertainment Weekly and more. Like its platinum-selling 2007 predecessor, “Raising Sand” — which won six Grammys, including “Album” and “Record Of The Year” — “Raise The Roof” delivers new takes on songs from legends and unsung heroes of folk, blues, country and soul music. “High And Lonesome” is the collection’s lone original, written by Plant and T Bone Burnett, who reprises his “Raising Sand” role as the album’s producer.

Hear Plant, Burnett and Krauss in harmony on the standout track “High And Lonesome”, backed by an all-star lineup of drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Dennis Crouch, guitarist Marc Ribot and pedal steel player Russell Pahl, plus Viktor Krauss on mellotron, Jeff Taylor on bass accordion, and Burnett on electric guitar and mellotron.

“High And Lonesome” is the second preview of “Raise The Roof”, following lead single “Can’t Let Go”, a rendition of the Randy Weeks/Lucinda Williams classic that reaffirmed Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer Plant and 27-time Grammy winner Krauss as “one of the most critically adored odd couples of music” (USA Today). As NPR Music says: “This feels like a warm welcome back from two old friends you haven’t seen in a long time,” and across “Raise The Roof”, their voices “still fit together like a pair of dusty boots nestled atop a welcome mat” (New York Times).

Recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios, sessions for “Raise The Roof” began in late 2019 and wrapped just weeks before the world went into lockdown. “One of my favorite parts of this is the songs and songwriters that I had never heard of,” says Krauss. “Working with Robert, and with T Bone, is always a great education in music history.”

The rest of “Raise The Roof” includes deep cuts by Merle Haggard, Allen Toussaint, THE EVERLY BROTHERS, Anne Briggs, Geeshie Wiley, Bert Jansch, Calexico and more. “It’s such a far cry from everything I’ve done before,” says Plant. “I love the whole kaleidoscope of music that I’ve explored, but this is a place where you can think within the song, you can decide how to bring home an emotion. It’s another blend that we’ve got, and long may we have more of them.”

“Raise The Roof” track listing:

01. Quattro (World Drifts In)
02. The Price Of Love
03. Go Your Way
04. Trouble With My Lover
05. Searching for My Love
06. Can’t Let Go
07. It Don’t Bother Me
08. You Led Me To The Wrong
09. Last Kind Words Blues
10. High And Lonesome
11. Going Where the Lonely Go
12. Somebody Was Watching Over Me

“High And Lonesome” credits

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – lead and harmony vocals
Jay Bellerose – drums, percussion, claps
Dennis Crouch – bass
T Bone Burnett – electric guitar, mellotron, harmony vocals
Viktor Krauss – mellotron
Marc Ribot – guitar, hofner bass, claps
Russell Pahl – pedal steel, guitar
Jeff Taylor – bass accordion

Written by Robert Plant and T Bone Burnett

Photo by David McClister

Nita Strauss, the Los Angeles-based guitar shredder for the ALICE COOPER band, will embark on the “Winter Wasteland” solo tour next month. The trek will kick off on November 10 in New Orleans, Louisiana and conclude on December 18 in Angola, Indiana.

Nita commented: “Because who needs time off after the last year and a half??! Where will we be seeing you??!!!”

2021 “Winter Wasteland” solo tour dates:

Nov. 10 – New Orleans, LA @ The Hangar
Nov. 11 – Houston, TX @ Scout Bar
Nov. 12 – Dallas, TX @ Amplified Live
Nov. 13 – San Antonio, TX @ The Rock Box
Nov. 15 – El Paso, TX @ RockHouse Bar & Grill
Nov. 16 – Tuscon, AZ @ Encore
Nov. 17 – Phoenix, AZ @ Rebel Lounge
Nov. 18 – Los Angeles, CA @ Whisky A Go Go
Nov. 21 – Sacramento, CA @ Harlows
Nov. 22 – San Jose, CA @ The Ritz
Nov. 24 – San Diego, CA @ Brick By Brick
Nov. 27 – Denver, CO @ HQ
Nov. 30 – Destin, FL @ Club LA
Dec. 01 – Orlando, FL @ The Haven
Dec. 02 – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade
Dec. 03 – Spartanburg, SC @ Ground Zero
Dec. 04 – Greensboro, NC @ The Blind Tiger
Dec. 07 – New York, NY @ Market Hotel
Dec. 08 – Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar
Dec. 09 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Jergels
Dec. 10 – Harrison, OH @ Blue Note
Dec. 11 – Flint, MI @ Machine Shop
Dec. 12 – Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
Dec. 14 – Cleveland, OH @ The Odeon
Dec. 15 – Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s Rock Club
Dec. 16 – Minneapolis, MN @ Skyway Theater
Dec. 17 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Back Room @ Colectivo
Dec. 18 – Angola, IN @ The Eclectic Room

Tickets go on sale this Friday, October 8.

Nita’s live show is mostly instrumental in nature, combining originals with covers.

In a May 2021 interview with Kylie Olsson’s YouTube show “Life In Six Strings”, Nita spoke about the progress of the writing and recordings sessions for her follow-up to 2018’s “Controlled Chaos” solo debut.

“That’s been really an interesting experience, writing and being creative when you really are sort of stuck in this bubble and you have no stimuli to get you inspired to do things,” she said, referring to the coronavirus crisis. “It’s been an interesting process being creative in this time, but ultimately I’m really proud of how everything is coming out. I think it’s some of the most interesting stuff I’ve done musically. And I’ve been focusing a lot more on the song. My first album was kind of, like, ‘How much cool guitar stuff can I do?’ And this time there’s a lot of cool guitar stuff, if I do say so myself, but there’s also a lot more of a focus on the song and the songwriting and the journey that it takes the listener on. I’ve been working with different songwriters and producers to sort of help me refine my skills in that area and not just be vomiting guitar all over the song. [Laughs] And it’s been a really good growth process for me. So I’m really happy with how it’s coming out.”

Asked if her second album will once again be an all-instrumental effort, Nita said: “I will have some guest singers on it this time. There are a couple of names that are attached that, one in particular, if this happens, will be a really, really crazy crossover that people wouldn’t expect, and then some of the others more people that vibe with my personal style. But whatever it is, I can promise you it will not be boring and it will not be what you would expect.”

Strauss went on to say that she happily delegated some of the responsibilities with the production and engineering side of the upcoming album to other people. “The first one, I did absolutely everything, and that was more out of stubbornness than anything,” she explained. “I wanted to make my own statement; I wanted to do it all myself. I didn’t want any external influence telling me how it should be done. So I produced it, I engineered it, I played everything that I could play. I’m not a good enough drummer or keyboard player to play that stuff, but anything that I could do myself I did. And this time around, I’m really happy to take a step back from the engineering bit of it and really just focus on being a guitar player and songwriter. So I’m still engineering my own guitars, I still engineered the keyboards and stuff like that, but I’m not gonna be engineering the drums. When Josh [Nita’s longtime boyfriend, manager and drummer Josh Villalta] goes in and plays the live drums, I’m not gonna be the one miking them this time, so you’re welcome. [Laughs] And then the same thing with the vocalist. I don’t know how to record vocals. I feel no ego about taking a step back and letting somebody that really knows what they’re doing do it. I think that’s good growth for me, because I would have stubbornly flailed around on my own until I made it sound decent. And now I’m really just happy to step back and embrace the process and work with some really good people.”

Nita also confirmed that she will not handle any lead vocals herself on the new LP. “I can hold a tune enough to sing a little bit on the Alice tour, but I’m not a good enough singer to actually sing a whole song,” she said.

In April, Nita told Wrestling Inc. managing editor Nick Hausman that her next LP will feature a guest appearance by one of her “favorite female singers out there on the scene right now.”

Strauss has been playing with Alice Cooper since 2014 when she replaced Australian musician and former Michael Jackson player Orianthi. She joined Alice in time for a mammoth MÖTLEY CRÜE tour. She was recommended to Cooper by the legendary rocker’s former bass player and WINGER frontman Kip Winger.

It’s been a long time, but the wait is almost over……..
The first single from my next solo album drops this month ?

Do you guys want an instrumental song first or one with a guest vocalist??

Posted by Nita Strauss on Friday, October 1, 2021

IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson spoke to Pablo of the Minneapolis, Minnesota radio station 93X about his current spoken-word tour, which kicked off in his native United Kingdom in August. “It’s hopefully reasonably amusing,” Bruce said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “It’s a look at how a spotty kid from the middle of nowhere ended up being the singer in IRON MAIDEN wearing crazy trousers, and all points in between. And it covers the cancer thing. It covers a lot of the early-days stuff, like how I learned to sing, all the weird stuff that happened to me at school and what formed your personality [and] character — all done with a very dark sense of humor, I hope. And then we take a break, and then the last 45 minutes, one hour-ish is basically improv. And so what I do is I take cue cards from the audience they write on the night, and I arrange them into kind of an improv script. Then I do that. That’s the show.”

Asked if there is a chance that he could bring his current spoken-word tour to the U.S. in the not-too-distant future, Bruce said: “The answer to that is we haven’t actually done the press release yet and tickets aren’t on sale yet, but there’s a possibility of around about 35 shows in the depth of winter… So, I’m just saying that, I’m raising that possibility, I’m flagging that up so people can get their winter woolies out and think how they’re gonna get to the middle of nowhere when it’s raining and snowing. Just pretend you’re a postman.”

Back in October/November 2017, Dickinson read from his autobiography, “What Does This Button Do?”, talked about the experience of writing it and answered questions from the audience at half a dozen U.S. appearances, including in New York City and Los Angeles.

Dickinson is considered one of the world’s most storied musicians. Aside from decades spent delivering high-octane performances with his larger-than-life persona in IRON MAIDEN, Bruce has lived an extraordinary off-stage existence too. A true polymath, his accomplishments include: pilot and airline captain, aviation entrepreneur, beer brewer, motivational speaker, film scriptwriter, twice-published novelist and Sunday Times best-selling author, radio presenter, TV actor, sports commentator and international fencer… to name but a few.

So there’s plenty to be entertained by, throughout the evening’s cornucopia of fascinating tales and derring-do exploits, all delivered by Bruce with characteristically infectious enthusiasm and wry wit.

Split into two parts, the first section of the show sees Bruce taking a humorous and often satirical look at the world from his own very personal perspective, treating the audience to private insights into his drive and ambition, peppered with plenty of MAIDEN anecdotes, and a myriad of other experiences encompassing not just the giddy heights but also the extreme lows, as told first-hand in his inimitable anarchic style, punctuated with photographs, videos and sometimes even erupting into song a-capella, to illustrate a point.

The final section of the evening is devoted entirely to the aforementioned question-and-answer session, with the opportunity to pose questions on any subject whatsoever. As Bruce’s answers will all be completely improvised — the more left-field and quirky the question, the more interesting and compelling the response is likely to be.

Six years ago, Dickinson had surgery to remove a cancerous lump on his throat. The rocker, 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 previously told iNews that he wanted to cover his cancer battle in his 2017 autobiography to raise awareness of the condition, which affects people who often have no or minimal history of tobacco or alcohol abuse. The individuals with HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer who undergo treatment have a disease-free survival rate of 85 to 90 percent over five years. Dickinson also expressed disdain for some of the media outlets that suggested he may have gotten tongue cancer from performing oral sex on women.

IRON MAIDEN’s 17th studio album, “Senjutsu”, was released on September 3 via BMG. The band’s first LP in six years was recorded in 2019 in Paris with longstanding producer Kevin Shirley and co-produced by bassist Steve Harris.

Venice, California crossover thrash/hardcore punk legends SUICIDAL TENDENCIES have regained control of their Instagram after recently being locked out of their account due to the band’s name.

Earlier today, SUICIDAL TENDENCIES shared the following message via the Facebook-owned app: “So as a lot of you already noticed, our Instagram account was down for the last 3 weeks. Long story, this had nothing to do with ‘us’, but everything to do with our name 🙂

“This isn’t the first time we’ve been flagged but hopefully it will be the last,” the band added.

In the mid-1980s, just as SUICIDAL TENDENCIES were seemingly in ascendancy into the big league their controversial name made them ripe targets for the moral majority. California’s police department, fearing singer Mike Muir’s crew was merely a front for a Los Angeles gang, even went so far as to ban the band performing in their hometown. The notorious moral campaigner Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator (and later vice president) Al Gore, led pressure group the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) to keep up a campaign against the band claiming that a number of teenage suicides were directly attributable to the band.

Muir previously told Australia’s Beat about SUICIDAL’s battle with the PMRC: “The record label didn’t want to release our album because it had ‘Suicidal’ in the title. We said, ‘If you get Tipper Gore to say to kids not to buy the record, then millions of kids are going to want to buy it. And I’ll go out and appear on every talk show, because I can talk the language of middle America and I would rebut everything the PMRC was going to say.’ So the label went back to the PMRC and said, ‘You’re going to have a war on your hands.’ So Tipper Gore and the PMRC retreated and they never mentioned the band’s name.”

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES’ latest album, “STill Cyco Punk After All These Years”, was released in September 2018. The LP was a re-recording and re-imagining of a Cyco Miko (Mike Muir) solo album recorded in 1995, “Lost My Brain! (Once Again)”.

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