KISS frontman Paul Stanley says that he and his family have all contracted omicron, the dominant strain of coronavirus in the U.S.

Sunday night (December 26), Stanley took to his Instagram to share what appears to be a selfie and he included the following message: “My Omicron face! Yup. My entire family has it. I’m tired and have sniffles. Most of my family have absolutely no symptoms. Do as you choose. I’m so glad I’m vaccinated.”

The highly contagious omicron variant has quickly become the most common form of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of all cases, according to federal officials.

Based on early studies, people are far less likely to be admitted to hospital with the omicron COVID-19 variant than the previous delta strain. However, the higher transmissibility of omicron means the risk of health systems being overloaded during the winter period is still quite high.

This is apparently at least the second time that Stanley has contracted COVID-19, having previously tested positive in August, forcing KISS to postpone a string of shows. A few days later, KISS announced that bassist Gene Simmons had also tested positive for the virus. As a result, the band postponed four more concerts.

Back in March, Stanley told AXS TV’s “At Home And Social” that he was “so excited and so thankful” to receive his second COVID-19 vaccine. “I’d like [to see] everybody just get back to a normal life,” he said at the time. “It’s been devastating for so many people. For us who are inconvenienced, it’s minor compared to what some people have gone through.”

Stanley also criticized people who were defiantly skeptical of mask wearing, saying they were posing a risk to themselves and to all those around them.

“Part of the problem is that we haven’t adhered properly to what should be common sense restrictions,” he said. “And as long as there are people who are negating what’s being told to them, this [coronavirus crisis] is gonna extend further.

“We’re supposed to be a community. And if there’s the slightest possibility that it would be the right thing to do, shouldn’t you do it?” he asked rhetorically.

Last month, Simmons blasted people who are skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines, calling them “delusional” and the “enemy” and saying they are posing a risk to themselves and to all those around them.

In October, Rolling Stone magazine published a story in which a group of KISS roadies suggested that the lack of COVID protocols enforced on the band’s “End Of The Road” farewell tour led to the death of a longtime guitar tech, 53-year-old Francis Stueber. Stueber died of coronavirus in his Detroit hotel room on October 17, just two days after being quarantined. The crew members claimed the tour didn’t take strict enough safety measures, including not testing everyone regularly. In addition, some crew members allegedly disguised their illness and/or faked vaccine cards.

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ROB ZOMBIE guitarist John 5 and TWISTED SISTER guitarist Eddie Ojeda were guests on a recent episode of the “Hangin’ & Bangin’: Artists On Lockdown” online show, where they were joined by Vinny Appice (BLACK SABBATH, DIO), Carmine Appice (OZZY OSBOURNE, VANILLA FUDGE) and host Ron Onesti. During the wide-ranging chat, they discussed the recent announcement by producers of the annual music convention NAMM Show that its normal January date was being postponed to June 3-5, 2022 at the Anaheim Convention Center due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each year, over 100,000 musicians, instrument makers, vendors, educators and more from all over the world come together in Anaheim to celebrate the latest in entertainment technology during the NAMM (which stands for National Association of Music Merchants) event, which is not open to the general public.

John 5 said: “I think personally that… NAMM’s been going on since around, like, 1955 or ’56, but you know what? I don’t think NAMM’s gonna last much longer, you guys. I know it sounds terrible to say. And not because of coronavirus or anything like that. But I just think it’s so expensive to put on for these companies. I really don’t think it’s gonna hold on much longer. What do I know? But just seeing how things are going, probably another five years or something.”

Ojeda chimed in: “Like John said, it’s very expensive. I’m friends with the Ash brothers, and it cost them like a half million dollars to do NAMM.”

Continued John 5: “If you guys think about [it], when they had this lockdown, they were still selling instruments. And they probably made the same amount of money and probably saved some money just by not doing NAMM. Who knows?”

The largest NAMM Show in the history of the organization took place in January 2020, when the Show welcomed 115,888 members and industry professionals and more than 7,000 brands. The show also hosted 350 professional development sessions, numerous live events, networking opportunities and concerts each evening on the Grand Plaza, as presented by Yamaha.

With the move of the 2022 NAMM Show to June, the organization has decided not to hold Summer NAMM in Nashville, Tennessee, for the 2022 year, effectively combining the two shows.

“The move from January to June next year is due 100 percent to the pandemic, and there was a big likelihood we would have had to cancel our January 2022 show,” NAMM president and CEO Joe Lamond told the San Diego Union-Tribune this past September.

The 2021 NAMM Show became the first in the 120-year-old nonprofit business organization’s history to be held entirely online.

The global music equipment and technology industry had revenues of $17.3 billion in 2019, with U.S. sales accounting for nearly $8 billion. The total U.S. revenues for 2020 was $7.21 billion.

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During an appearance on a recent episode of the “In The Trenches with Ryan Roxie” video podcast, legendary vocalist/bassist Glenn Hughes reflected on his time fronting BLACK SABBATH in the mid-1980s. Regarding how his collaboration with the Tony Iommi-led outfit came about, Glenn said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Tony was going to make a solo album in 1985. Myself, my dear friend Ronnie James Dio and Rob Halford were all gonna sing a couple of songs each. I was the first guy to go down to Cherokee Studios in Hollywood to do a couple of songs with Tony. And I wrote and sang a couple of songs in the first night. And he asked me to come back the next day, and it kept going and going and going, and I ended up being the only singer on that solo album. On the last song, Don Arden — Sharon’s [Osbourne] father — who was managing Tony at the time, suggested, with Warner Brothers, that we should call it ‘BLACK SABBATH featuring Tony Iommi.’ So it wasn’t a Tony Iommi album anymore; it was a BLACK SABBATH album called ‘Seventh Star’. It was a time for me where I was changing lifestyles, if you will. So it was a difficult time for me.”

Hughes added: “Being in BLACK SABBATH was not something I wanted to do. I was trying to help Tony out, doing his solo album. But I enjoyed working with Tony. I’ve made three albums with Tony now. So, long may that continue.”

Hughes previously discussed his SABBATH stint during a 2017 interview with Cat Unwrapped of the “Collision” radio show on Australia’s Voice FM. He stated about the experience: “It was a little different, because number one, some of those songs were not written for me, kind of, to sing in the way I sing. It was a very dramatic change for me to be in a band that had this huge fan base of really cult, kind of, you know, metal kind of, dark, kind of image. Let’s be clear, because Ozzy [Osbourne], Geezer [Butler], Tony and Bill Ward, like, were all my family — we all grew up together, so I know these guys personally, but their catalog is very dark and sinister, but they’re not, you know. And for me to wear that cloak and dagger, mystery thing, was a little bit strange for me.

“I really did enjoy making ‘Seventh Star’, and I made another album called ‘DEP Sessions’ with Tony, and [then] we did ‘Fused’, so I’ve done three records with Tony,” he continued. “But it was a little bit different for me singing in BLACK SABBATH. It wasn’t quite who I am. I’ve always liked a challenge, you know — I always like a challenge — but I think Ozzy’s voice, and Ronnie Dio’s voice, is perfect for that band, although I did enjoy working with those guys.”

Hughes confirmed in a 1995 interview that he got into a fistfight with BLACK SABBATH production manager John Downing four days before the start of the “Seventh Star” tour. The injuries he obtained affected his ability to perform live, and vocalist Ray Gillen was subsequently recruited to complete the tour.

Originally released in 1986, “Seventh Star” saw Iommi recruiting the skills of Dave “The Beast” Spitz and drummer Eric Singer (later of KISS) and for the first time the position of a keyboardist became a visible credit and long-serving back-room operator Geoff Nicholls was finally brought to the foreground as an official member. “Seventh Star” was somewhat of a departure from what was expected from the BLACK SABBATH name, and the songs on “Seventh Star” were more blues inclined and in the case of the single release “No Stranger To Love”, an altogether more radio-friendly breeze was adopted.

Hughes is currently a member of THE DEAD DAISIES. He is joined in the band’s lineup by Doug Aldrich (DIO, WHITESNAKE) on guitar, Tommy Clufetos (BLACK SABBATH, OZZY OSBOURNE) on drums and David Lowy (RED PHOENIX, MINK) on guitar.

THE DEAD DAISIES’ latest album, “Holy Ground”, was released in January. Recorded at La Fabrique Studios in the south of France with producer Ben Grosse, the LP is the band’s first to feature Hughes, who joined the group in 2019 as its new bassist and vocalist, replacing John Corabi (MÖTLEY CRÜE) and Marco Mendoza (THIN LIZZY).

Photo credit: Oliver Halfin

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TESLA guitarist Frank Hannon recently spoke to Let’s Rock about the band’s latest single, “Cold Blue Steel”. A music video for the song was released in August, directed by Brandon Gullion and produced by Hannon.

Regarding the inspiration for the track, Frank said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It’s an example of [late LYNYRD SKYNYRD singer] Ronnie Van Zant being our influence in a way of telling a story. When you’re listening to “Saturday Night Special’, you can picture the story.

“So Jeff [Keith, TESLA singer] was really fired up about that song. One day he was coming over to my house a couple of months ago and we were gonna work on some music and he was listening to that track. And that’s where it started.”

Hannon went on to say that the lyrics to “Cold Blue Steel” have been partially misinterpreted by some fans.

“We’ve been getting a lot of flak from people that only hear the couple of verses in the song, thinking it’s about gun control,” he said. “And in a way it is, but, really, it’s so much deeper than that, the lyrics. We try to definitely not take sides and be political but we wanna sing about a situation. Something like what we did with ‘Modern Day Cowboy’ in the ’80s; we sang about foreign lands and terrorist demands and ‘bang bang, shoot ’em up’ and how that attitude was still happening in the world at that time, being a gunfighter, cowboy situation, but we’re not pointing fingers. And that’s the same way with this song, but some people only hear parts of it and have been giving us some shit about it. But if you listen to the lyrics, it’s asking a question, ‘What’s to blame? Let’s get real.’ And the song is really about people that you give ’em an inch, they take a mile — whether it’s a politician, whether it’s a crook, whether it’s a police officer. And we support our police.”

He added: “There’s evil intentions in all parts of life, and that’s what the song is really about — just observing and asking the question, ‘What’s to blame?’ It’s not talking about ‘take away guns’ or any of that shit. But it started off just being a fun poke at Ronnie Van Zant. That last lyric in the song, ‘Just like Ronnie said, ‘Let’s dump ’em to the bottom of the sea,’ that’s where the song started for fun. And then we took it and tried to make it a little bit more serious.”

Asked if the arrival of “Cold Blue Steel” means that there is a new TESLA album in the works, Hannon replied: “Yeah, it’ll end up on an album, but we’re gonna just do one song at a time. Instead of trying to cram for a test… Making an album is almost like a test — you’ve got a deadline on it and there’s all this pressure and you’ve gotta try to finish it by a certain date. And then what you end up doing is cramming the songs. So we’re not gonna do that. We’re just gonna write a song when we feel it and have fun with it. And then when we have a group of ’em, we’ll put it out together as a collection on an album.”

In August, TESLA postponed several shows due to members of the touring party — including Hannon — contracting COVID-19. Hannon later issued a statement saying that he had “not been able to move all week” and revealed that he woke up with a 102-degree fever and could “hardly breathe” on the day that TESLA was scheduled to leave for tour.

TESLA played the first two shows of its summer 2021 tour — August 5 in Grants Pass, Oregon and August 6 in Grand Ronde, Oregon — without Frank. Filling in for him was Howie Simon (JEFF SCOTT SOTO, GRAHAM BONNET, STRYPER), who previously stood in for Hannon in September 2018.

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During a recent appearance on “The Jasta Show”, the video podcast hosted by HATEBREED frontman Jamey Jasta, ANTHRAX bassist Frank Bello recalled a time when he got sick from eating meat that was not properly cooked while on tour with PANTERA nearly 25 years ago.

“I had to give up coffee,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “I had to — because of my gut. And this happened way back when. Years ago, we were on tour with PANTERA. We went out and we got loaded one night in Mexico City. On the streets of Mexico City, PANTERA and ANTRAX, just loaded off our asses… You know those street carts you’re not supposed to eat the fucking food out of? Sausage… Who knows? It was fucking red. I shouldn’t have eaten it. I was starving. I wanted to soak up the juice that was in me, the booze… So this red sausage went into my body. And I was fine for that moment. But then the next day, I started, and it was non-stop — dude, I couldn’t hold anything. For that whole year, every specialist in New York — every specialist — I went to the city and I [tried to figure out] with everybody, ‘What the hell is wrong with me?’ This one doctor, this one specialist, a renowned dude, finds that I have two — not one — two parasites underneath my liver that were just destroying everything for a year. So this really heavy strong medicine, antibiotic, blah blah blah, got rid of it, but the after-effect of all that good stuff, it really made me not drink coffee — stuff that I love. So I’ve gotta be really careful with my diet.

“My wife’s a vegan now — my wife’s a full-on vegan,” he continued. “And she’s a great cook, and she cooks me whatever I want, which is awesome. But I kind of follow her path now. That’s what I’m doing, because I kind of see what’s going on. And look, I’ll eat but I’ll be really careful about what I’m putting in. The sugar stuff is out of my… I’m out of sugar, man. I’m done with sugar.”

Bello went on to say that it took a while for the doctors to make the correct diagnosis and catch the disease in time for treatment.

“I went to the most renowned people,” he said. “And I was spending thousands [of dollars] on doctors — thousands — going everywhere in the city. ‘Cause I live in Westchester [county in New York]; there’s not a lot of people up here that you can go to. So I went to [New York City]. And they kept [telling me], ‘You have to go to see this guy. You have to go see this girl.’ It was all like that. And finally I found the right one. And it was not fun, man. That stuff, when you’re searching… I lost all this weight. People were [wondering] am I dying. What’s going on? And they finally found these two parasites. And it just screwed me up. Now I have to be careful on this specific diet. I can eat but I have to be really careful. Like, sugar is completely out for me, man. Which is probably good for my life anyway. I miss it — I miss a good pastry and stuff like that — but I watch other… I live through other people now.”

Frank’s memoir, “Fathers, Brothers, And Sons: Surviving Anguish, Abandonment, And Anthrax”, was released on November 2 via Rare Bird. The foreword was written by KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons.

ANTHRAX is working on material for the follow-up to 2016’s “For All Kings” album, tentatively due in 2022.

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SABATON frontman Joakim Brodén spoke to Germany’s Radio Bob! about the stage production for the upcoming tour in support of the Swedish metallers’ tenth studio album, “The War To End All Wars”. Due on March 4, 2022 via Nuclear Blast Records, the concept LP of 11 brand-new songs was written and recorded during the COVID-19 global pandemic and once again dives deep into the atrocities, miracles, and events tied to the early 20th century’s World War I.

Brodén said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, I can give some hints [about the live show]. I don’t wanna be secretive, but at the same time, I don’t wanna spoil the surprise, because that should be something for the concertgoers to discover in a way, so they get that ‘wow’ effect. But yeah, we are expanding on what we already had with [2019’s] ‘The Great War’ [album] since we’re moving in the same era and time. There is, actually, a whole bunch of people in Sweden right now as we are speaking building new parts of the stage set. And I’ve seen some pictures and hints of what’s coming. Both for the Swedish tour we have some special stuff being built, but especially, of course, the European tour. Yeah, I think there are things that are gonna be very familiar but there are also things that are gonna be — a few places where it’s gonna be, ‘What the…?'”

In a recent interview with Canada’s The Metal Voice, Brodén said about the musical direction of SABATON’s new material: “It’s very much a SABATON album in that way. We’ve been an evolutionary band always and not a revolutionary band. There’s always surprises on a SABATON album but we’re never gonna flip the coin and do something totally different on every song on a new album. There’s gonna be surprises on every album.

“It’s always subjective,” he continued. “I think it’s pathetic when an artist goes, ‘It’s the best album we’ve ever made,’ and they keep promoting the same tired line. I say it’s up to the listener to decide that, but I know for a fact that everybody in the band, without even sitting in the same room together, because I sort of shipped out the pre-mixes to everyone, and everybody — this is the only time in our history this has happened — everybody came back with, ‘Fuck. That sounds great.’ Everybody is super happy with the production. We were always happy before, but it was, like, ‘Maybe this, maybe that.’ Now it was more like, ‘Okay, yeah, I have some suggestions and ideas, but wow.’ We’re really happy with the sound.”

SABATON is considered to be one the most important bands to emerge from the Swedish modern metal scene, having been honored with five Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards (including “Best Live Band” three different years) and nominated several times for the Swedish equivalent of the Grammy Awards, the Grammis. In 2016, SABATON’s “The Last Stand” album debuted at No. 1 in three different European countries and cracked the Top 3 in four others. Joakim Brodén (vocals), Pär Sundström (bass), Chris Rörland (guitar), Hannes Van Dahl (drums) and Tommy Johansson (guitar) curate a festival of their own, Sabaton Open Air, that started back in 2008, as well as their own forward-thinking Sabaton Cruise which has been held since 2009.

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During a summer 2021 appearance on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” show, STAIND frontman Aaron Lewis discussed his controversial solo single “Am I The Only One”. The track, which takes aim at liberals and touches on American flags burning and statues that have been removed in the country, was written by Lewis with Ira Dean and Jeffrey Steele.

Speaking about the inspiration for the song, Lewis said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, I lived through the last year and a half with you and everybody else in this country, and I found myself on many occasions, just like all of you, sitting and scratching my head and wondering what is going on in this amazing country that we have.”

Aaron went on to say that the key to connecting people from both sides of the political aisle is to open a dialogue in the first place.

“I think that we’re not talking enough,” he said. “I think that we’re not communicating enough with each other. I think that together we stand and divided we fall. And this country has done some pretty amazing things going on those words.”

When asked how we can find common ground with those with whom we disagree, Lewis said: “Just the simple thread that connects us all, which is that we’re Americans. And that means something — that means we’re a part of something greater than any human experiment that’s ever taken place. And we’re blessed and we’re lucky to be able to wake up in the morning and call ourselves American. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you stand on.”

The “Am I The Only One” chorus sees Lewis singing: “I’m not the only one, willin’ to fight / For my love of the red and white / And the blue, burnin’ on the ground / Another statue comin’ down in a town near you.” Lewis also criticizes Bruce Springsteen at the end of the track, singing: “Am I the only one who quits singin’ along every time they play a Springsteen song.”

Asked why he chose to call out Springsteen in the song’s lyrics, Lewis told The Daily Wire’s “Candace” show: “Because he’s always portrayed himself as the all-American middle-class guy. And during all of this craziness, he said that if one man is re-elected to the office of presidency that he was gonna move to Australia. How American is that? You’re gonna bail on America just because you don’t like the guy that may have gotten into office?”

This past July, Scott Borchetta, Big Machine Label Group’s founder and president-CEO, defended the company’s decision to release “Am I The Only One”. Borchetta’s comments came in response to industry blogger Bob Lefsetz, who slammed Lewis’s song as “heinous.” Lefsetz went on to call Lewis a “middle-class, right-wing wanker” whose divisive track “should have been played at CPAC, in between speeches by nitwits like saying to refuse the ‘Fauci ouchie.'”

Lewis told “Candace” that there was initially some pushback from people about him wanting to record and release such a blatant conservative political protest song. “There might have been a little tinge of that in the beginning, but I think everyone successfully saw through that,” he said. “And I even got support from some places that I didn’t expect to get support from — like my record label. Come to find out Scott Borchetta is pretty big on the First Amendement, freedom of speech.”

Springsteen can best be described as Lewis’s political polar opposite, having been a vocal opponent to former U.S. president Donald Trump on many occasions. In August 2020, Bruce went as far as to allow the use of his song “The Rising” in a video that aired during night one of the Democratic National Convention.

Lewis, who is widely considered to be one of the most politically conservative musicians in rock, made headlines in September when he urged his fans to chant “Fuck Joe Biden” during a STAIND concert in Pennsylvania.

Aaron told the Anchorage Press in a January 2020 interview that he considered the first Donald Trump impeachment by the House Of Representatives as the clearest representation of what’s wrong with America these days.

Lewis was a staunch critic of President Barack Obama, telling a crowd at one of his solo concerts in 2016: “Barack Obama should have been impeached a long fucking time ago. Every fucking decision he makes is against the Constitution, it’s against what’s good for our fucking country, and he is truly the worst fucking president that we have ever had in the history of this fucking country.”

That same year, Lewis told Billboard that he would support Trump in the U.S. presidential race, even though he was “disappointed” by the real estate mogul “with the bickering and the name-calling.” Lewis added that he voted for Senator Ted Cruz, Trump’s closest competitor in the Republican nomination race, in the Massachusetts primary.

In June, Lewis made headlines when he accused the U.S. Democratic Party of fighting against every major civil rights initiative and of having a long history of discrimination.

Country singer #AaronLewis discusses what inspired his new song ‘Am I the Only One’ that calls out those who are disrespecting the American Flag.

Lewis says he wants to remind the nation, “We’re blessed and we’re lucky to be able to wake up in the morning and call ourselves American.”

Posted by We Love Staind & Aaron Lewis on Monday, July 5, 2021

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Vocalist Kyle Thomas of New Orleans-based thrash metal pioneers EXHORDER has confirmed to the “Brutally Delicious” podcast that he and his bandmates have spent much of the coronavirus downtime working on material for the follow-up to 2019’s “Mourn The Southern Skies” album. “We all were really busy with the writing process pretty much from jump,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “I think any band that kind of snoozed on that opportunity set themselves up for being in a bad position because now bands that did put in the work during the pandemic, if they’re not releasing albums now, they’re not far off. We’ve been in pre-production for it for quite some time. It’s something that we’re gonna be working really hard on in the upcoming months after the [recently complted U.S.] tour. So [I’m] looking forward to that.”

Asked if he and the rest of EXHORDER — guitarist Marzi Montazeri, bassist Jason Viebrooks and drummer Sasha Horn — have been able to get together in person and work on new music or if it’s mostly being done remotely, Kyle said: “It’s tough for us to do that because none of us live in the same state. We’ve got four guys in four different states, so that makes it… The dynamics are… It’s a long commute. So I think what everybody’s pretty much set out to do is we’ve all just kind of crafted our own songs individually, and then when we got together in August, while we were rehearsing for the ‘Slaughter In The Vatican’ set, we also did some jamming on the new stuff, bouncing ideas off each other, tweaking this and tweaking that, seeing what works and what doesn’t. So that’s the good part — is once we finally get together, we do hear each other out on ideas and stuff. Sometimes something that somebody submits works and sometimes it doesn’t. So we just kind of stockpile what does work together and move on from there.”

Last February, Thomas told “The Dan Chan Show” that he and his bandmates have been “writing at home” and “piecing everything together” for the upcoming LP

“Mostly what I do for EXHORDER songs is I write parts, and then I submit them, and then they might get used here and there,” he said. “That’s how it always was done in the past. There are some parts of mine that made it on to the old albums. But most of what I write, when I’m writing, ends up being more like the FLOODGATE stuff. On occasion, when there’s something that I’ve written, they’ll use. I’m not that worried about it. I just want great songs handed to me so I can do what I do.

“My biggest part, outside of writing vocals and lyrics, is the arrangement — helping to piece the song into the format that it needs to be in,” he explained. “And just the overall production side of it, especially vocally, I like having input on — what part here, the intro should be this…

“EXHORDER’s always been a team effort; it’s never been one person writing all the music, one person writing all the vocals. It’s not like that at all. It’s always been a collaborative effort, and I think that’s what makes us so good at what we do — you get all those different flavors melding into one dish, and then it’s something special.”

Thomas is now the sole remaining founding member of EXHORDER, which released its debut album, “Slaughter In The Vatican”, way back in 1990. In February 2020, EXHORDER parted ways with its original guitarist Vinnie LaBella, who wrote much of the material on “Mourn The Southern Skies”. The remaining members of the group later issued a statement saying that they would fulfill their “touring and recording obligations for 2020 and beyond.”

Asked if it’s “strange” for him to be the only remaining founding member of EXHORDER, Kyle told “The Dan Chan Show”: “At this point, I’ve jammed with so many people over the years — so many different lineups for this and that, fill-ins and all this stuff. To me, it doesn’t really matter as much who’s there, as long as the material that’s being played is being played within the spirit of that band in particular. And the stuff that we’re writing now, it’s amazing. I play it for a lot of people that are my confidants, people love the band, and they’re gonna shoot me straight. And the new stuff that we’re working on, everybody’s, like, ‘Wow. It sounds like EXHORDER to me.'”

EXHORDER released two albums in the early 1990s through the Roadrunner label — the aforementioned “Slaughter In The Vatican” and 1992’s “The Law” — before breaking up, with Kyle going on to form FLOODGATE and also briefly appearing live as the vocalist for TROUBLE, which he later joined on a full-time basis (and is still a member of).

EXHORDER, which is cited by many as the originator of the riff-heavy power-groove approach popularized by PANTERA, has just completed a U.S. headlining tour during which it performed “Slaughter In The Vatican” in its entirety.

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QUIET RIOT bassist Rudy Sarzo says that the band is planning to release new music in the coming weeks.

The 71-year-old musician, who recently rejoined QUIET RIOT after an 18-year absence, spoke about the possibility of fresh material from the group during an interview with the “Diary Of The Madmen – The Ultimate Ozzy Podcast”. He said: “We have a couple of surprises coming up that are already recorded. So they’re just waiting to be released. We’re gonna release ’em in conjunction when we start touring in February [of 2022].”

The veteran rock group’s last collection of fresh material was 2019’s “Hollywood Cowboys”, which marked drummer Frankie Banali’s final QUIET RIOT studio album before his untimely death.

Banali, who joined QUIET RIOT in 1982 and played on its breakthrough album, 1983’s “Metal Health”, died in August 2020 after a 16-month battle with pancreatic cancer.

The surviving members of QUIET RIOT later said it was “Frankie Banali’s wish that the band continue and we keep the music and the legacy alive.”

Earlier this year, QUIET RIOT guitarist Alex Grossi touched upon the possibility of the band making new music in an interview with “Rock Chat With Trace”. He said: “There’s been talk of doing a lot of new things… There could be a new album. There’s definitely a lot of tracks that Frankie left behind that could be utilized for that, which is nice — that were works in progress before he got sick. All I’m gonna say is stay tuned, but there definitely will be new music from QUIET RIOT.”

Rudy was one of the members of QUIET RIOT’s “Metal Health” lineup. He played bass on the classic LP, which sold over ten million copies and spawned the hits “Cum On Feel The Noize” and “Metal Health” and on the follow-up record “Condition Critical”.

Sarzo appeared in the most notable music videos in the MTV age and toured with the band until 1985 and again from 1997 to 2003. During his years out of the band, Sarzo was a member of OZZY OSBOURNE, WHITESNAKE, DIO, BLUE ÖYSTER CULT, QUEENSRŸCHE and THE GUESS WHO.

Joining Sarzo in QUIET RIOT’s current lineup are Grossi, vocalist Jizzy Pearl and drummer Johnny Kelly.

Grossi was in the last version of the band, from 2004 through 2007, before founding singer Kevin DuBrow passed away, and was asked by Banali to return in 2010.

QUIET RIOT went through two vocalists — Mark Huff and Scott Vokoun — before settling on Pearl in 2013. Pearl announced his exit from QUIET RIOT in October 2016 and was briefly replaced by Seann Nichols, who played only five shows with the group before the March 2017 arrival of “American Idol” finalist James Durbin. Pearl returned to QUIET RIOT in September 2019.

For a list of upcoming QUIET RIOT shows, visit QuietRiot.Band.

Photo credit: Ron Lyon Photo

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