KORN guitarist Brian “Head” Welch has once again clarified his recent comments about Christianity, insisting that he was only referring to the fact that he was “overzealous” and “obnoxious” with his faith when he first became a Christian.

During a March 2021 appearance on MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn’s “No Fuckin’ Regrets With Robb Flynn” podcast, Welch — who left KORN in early 2005, at the same time announcing that he kicked his addictions to drugs and alcohol by becoming a born-again Christian — spoke about the impact his new awareness has had on his life, his family and the influential rock act that he co-founded nearly 30 years ago. Asked if he thinks religion became his “new addiction” after his exit from KORN, Welch said: “The crazy thing is I had an experience with something from another dimension. And it wasn’t the religion — going to church and being a good boy — it was, like, I felt something come into my house, and I can’t explain it to this day. But I believe that it was Christ doing something in me. So that was real — that was very real. But yes, I think I went too far with it. And I got obsessed with it, just like I was obsessed with the drugs. I believe I did, for sure. And I had to come out of that and find normalcy, because there’s nothing worse than a freakin’ irritating religious person just shoving it down your throat — there’s nothing worse than that. And you saw it on the documentary [‘Loud Krazy Love’, which documents Brian’s journey towards sobriety], Jonathan’s [Davis, KORN singer], like, ‘I hate those motherfuckers.’ People can’t stand ’em. And for years, we’ve had those Christians outside of KORN concerts, saying KORN’s of the devil, and all this. It’s crazy — it’s a crazy thing. But I’m just glad I got through it. And I’m glad that I am who I am now, and I have a lot of peace and rest for my soul. I feel very leveled and at peace with myself.”

Welch addressed the negative feedback he received for his “No Fuckin’ Regrets” comments in a new video uploaded to his YouTube channel. In the three-minute clip dubbed “Am I Still A Christian?”, Welch said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “The Christian news media and other web sites and stuff, especially the Christian side, there’s been a lot of stories about Christian musicians renouncing their faith. So it’s really good for clickbait. A lot of these media outlets took it and listened to it and thought that I was renouncing it. So it was definitely taken out of context.

“When I first became a Christian, I was coming off of methamphetamines, first of all, and I had a massively powerful encounter where God was revealing himself to me. And so those two sides of the coin — coming off of meth and a powerful encounter — I didn’t know how to react and I just went out and I was overzealous, I was obnoxious with my faith, and it took me a while to bring it down. So that’s all I was trying to say in that video, in that podcast with Robb Flynn.

“I still share my faith, my personal stories of things that I go through in a non-religious way, I feel like,” he continued. “I try to be very spiritual, but non… Like, ‘This is this, this is how it’s helped me, da da da.’

“My manager hit me up and he’s, like, ‘Hey, I think you should address this because I think people are really starting to believe that you renounced it.’ And I was, like, ‘All right. All right. I’ll post about it.’

“But that kind of stuff doesn’t get to me at all anymore,” Welch explained. “It’s just, like, whatever. People can twist your words however they want. I have an amazing relationship with God and I know where that stands. So I’m very confident in that, so I don’t gotta really worry about it for temporary controversy.”

Less than a month after leaving KORN, Welch — wearing a white robe and sporting a long beard — was baptized in Israel’s Jordan River, along with about 20 other members of the Valley Bible Fellowship, the Bakersfield, California, church in which he spoke two weekends earlier. At the time, Brian told MTV News that he decided to be baptized in the Jordan after receiving a divine message.

“God told me … he didn’t say, ‘Hey Brian!,’ I just got a feeling in my heart that he was going to let me know something, I was going to be told something [in Israel],” Welch said. “Because the pastor is going to dunk me in the Jordan River, and when I come back here, I’m going to be a different person.”

Welch officially returned to KORN in 2013, one year after joining the band onstage at the Carolina Rebellion festival in Rockingham, North Carolina to perform “Blind”.

Since his conversion to Christ more than 16 years ago, Welch has been very open about how God changed his lifestyle and restored his relationship with his daughter.

In recent years, Brian has been preaching that people don’t have to wait until they die to see if having an encounter with the presence of God is real.

Both Welch and KORN bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu have had highly public, though separate, conversion experiences, ones that have been greeted with a certain amount of skepticism.

Earlier this year, Welch spoke to the “TruthSeekah” podcast about the backlash he received from Christians who lashed out at the guitarist for supposedly backing away from his faith. “This one guy said… I saw one [video] clip a friend sent me,” Welch recalled. “And he’s, like, ‘Getting a lot of messages about this.’ And [the video] was [dubbed], ‘Brian Welch quits Christianity,’ or something like that. It got thousands of views. The clip that I saw, the guy goes, ‘I will be so bold as to say Brian Welch was never a Christian.’ I’m just, like, ‘Dude.’ … I’m thinking about this guy, and I’m going, ‘You really have the cojones to say that? That’s putting yourself up with God’s level.’ And so I’m kind of scared for this guy. He’s just like so far off. Man… That’s messing with things, man, that you shouldn’t mess with. That is the number one thing that Jesus went after with the Pharisees in the Gospels. He was so irate and so against that spirit — judgmental spirit — and this and that, and Jesus is with the prostitutes, saying ‘Come to all who are broken.’ And this guy is saying that? Wow. That’s gonna be an interesting conversation. Honestly, I saw that, and I just said, ‘Lord, have mercy on this guy. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Have mercy on him. And where I’m in the wrong, fix me too.’ I’m just trying to take the humble approach. But that’s how I feel. And it was a little sad, but not a big deal.”

KORN will embark on a headlining tour in March with support from CHEVELLE and CODE ORANGE. Produced by Live Nation, the 19-date arena trek will begin on March 4 in Springfield, Missouri and make stops in Greensboro, Providence and Albany, among other cities, before wrapping up in Wichita, Kansas on April 1.

KORN’s new album, “Requiem”, will arrive on February 4, 2022 via Loma Vista Recordings. The official music video for the disc’s first single, “Start The Healing”, directed by Tim Saccenti (FLYING LOTUS, RUN THE JEWELS, DEPECHE MODE), was made available last month.

In a recent interview with Metal Mythos Aftershock, singer Tim “Ripper” Owens, who joined ICED EARTH in 2003 and stayed in the band for four years before being fired in December 2007, reflected on his split with the Jon Schaffer-led outfit. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It wasn’t a very good parting. I was leaving to go to [Jon’s] house to record a new record. And I walked back into my house to grab something and I got an e-mail and I looked at it and it said, ‘Brothers and sisters… You’re fired,’ or whatever. It’s the same e-mail he sent Blabbermouth at the same time. And it wasn’t a good falling out. It was two weeks before Christmas. It wasn’t good.”

Owens continued: “Two weeks before that, [Jon] sent me an e-mail saying, ‘Listen, I really need to teach you how to be a frontman and teach you how to do things.’ And Wendy Dio, who was my manager at the time, was beside herself. She kept saying, ‘Get out of this thing, man. You’ve gotta get out of this thing.’ And it was unfortunate that it ended like that — two weeks before Christmas with an e-mail that’s the same e-mail he sends Blabbermouth. I was kind of sad, but life goes on, and you move on to the next thing. And I think two days later I was recording a new Yngwie [Malmsteen] record. So it’s kind of, like, everything moves on for a reason.”

Owens previously discussed his departure from ICED EARTH in a 2012 interview with Australia’s Loud. He said: “It was handled poorly, I think, the situation. It could’ve been handled good and everybody could’ve looked good in the situation. But it was handled poorly, I think… I started getting all the blame when things weren’t the same. Or things weren’t what Jon thought they could be. And then, of course, it all came down on me. None of the blame ever came down on Jon. I’m fine with that, but the funny thing is that nothing really changed when I left anyway. I read numbers and I talk to agents, and the crowds are the same or smaller now. I think it was also me wandering a bit, knowing that ICED EARTH was kind of like a solo project. It’s really Schaffer’s band, and I knew that. And I started having my own: I started doing BEYOND FEAR, and pushing BEYOND FEAR when probably I should have been talking about ICED EARTH. I think Jon read a lot of that and he read into it that my heart and soul wasn’t into ICED EARTH.”

Schaffer addressed Owens’s exit from ICED EARTH in a 2008 interview with Metal Exiles. At the time, the guitarist said: “Tim was great to work with in the studio, and from a standpoint of performing live, he was great as far as being an incredible vocalist, but he was not a true believer in this band. It was a job for him, and ICED EARTH is not about that… He was more interested in doing his solo thing — that was where his head was at — and it was becoming more and more obvious. This band was a means to an end for him.”

In April, Schaffer pleaded guilty to his role in the U.S. Capitol riot. As part of the plea deal, Jon entered into a cooperation agreement with the government.

Following the initial reports that Schaffer was involved in the riot, his ICED EARTH bandmates distanced themselves from his actions. Singer Stu Block and bassist Luke Appleton later posted separate statements on social media announcing their resignations. BLIND GUARDIAN frontman Hansi Kürsch also quit DEMONS & WIZARDS, his long-running project with Schaffer. The allegations also apparently affected Schaffer’s relationship with his longtime record label Century Media, which had released albums from both ICED EARTH and DEMONS & WIZARDS. As of mid-January, the Century Media artist roster page did not list either band.

Former MÖTLEY CRÜE singer John Corabi says that he doesn’t know if the songs he recorded with Mick Mars five years ago will make it to the MÖTLEY CRÜE guitarist Mick Mars’s highly anticipated debut solo album.

Back in 2016, Mars released snippets of two solo songs, apparently called “Gimme Blood” and “Shake The Cage”. The tracks, which were recorded at Blackbird Studio in Nashville, where Mars has lived for about eight years, featured Corabi, who appeared on CRÜE’s 1994 self-titled album. Corabi later said that he didn’t contribute to the writing process for the two songs, but that he was open to collaborating with Mars on some brand new material.

During a December 22 Facebook Live session, Corabi was asked about the fate of the material he recorded with Mars. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “A couple of years ago, Mick asked me to sing a couple of songs, and I did it. He put snippets of them out, but he’s gone on to do a full record. And as of right now, I have no idea whether or not Mick is using those songs. It’s Mick’s solo record. He just asked me to sing two tunes. Unfortunately… I wanted to do more, and Mick wanted me to do more, but I wasn’t able to, because of my schedule and because of Mick’s schedule. So we’ll all just have to wait and see. I’m as excited to hear Mick’s record as you are. And we’ll see. Hopefully he used those songs. Maybe he didn’t. I don’t know.”

Mars has been working on his solo disc — on and off — for at least the past five years. Some of the early sessions for the LP were helmed by recently retired producer Michael Wagener (OZZY OSBOURNE, ACCEPT, WARRANT, SKID ROW) at the aforementioned Blackbird Studio.

Almost two years ago, Alabama musician Jacob Bunton revealed that he was the lead singer on Mars’s solo album. Speaking to AL.com, Bunton, who has previously played with LYNAM and former GUNS N’ ROSES drummer Steven Adler, said about his collaboration with Mars: “I can tell you that I’m involved and the past several months we wrote and recorded a record and Michael Wagener produced it. The great Michael Wagener from [mixing 1986 METALLICA album] ‘Master Of Puppets’ and all that kind of stuff. He worked with MÖTLEY CRÜE on their very first record ‘Too Fast For Love’, when they did it themselves they recorded the record and then Michael Wagener mixed, and then when they got the record deal with Elektra, [QUEEN producer] Roy Thomas Baker ended up going back and remixing it. But on all of their self-released copies, it’s Michael. But to make a long story short, Michael’s producing the record because that was the first producer Mick worked with in MÖTLEY CRÜE, so he wanted to do his solo album, so it’s been really cool. We’ve been recording it in Nashville and we’re almost done.”

Regarding what fans can expect from Mars’s solo CD, Bunton said: “The songs are really cool, the record is really cool. He’s such an inventive player and his riffs are insane and it’s definitely going to be what people are expecting. When they hear it … It’s really cool.”

In September 2019, Mick told Billboard about the musical direction of his solo material: “[It’s] not like today’s music, which to me is pretty much pop metal and more growly guys. It’s all cool and it’s all good, and I’m just searching for something that’s just a little different than that. I [also] don’t want to be living in ’85. It’s hard to reinvent yourself, but that’s what I’m doing now. I’m trying to reinvent the way that I approach music writing. I’ve got a lot of crap, and I’ve got a lot of good stuff too.”

At the time of the Billboard interview, Mars said that he had been working with a vocalist named Jacob, leading some fans to speculate that he was referring to Bunton. “[He] can be a lot of different voices, and it’s pretty amazing,” Mick said. “I go, ‘I want this kind of voice here,’ and he’ll pull it straight off.”

In a separate interview with “Talking Metal”, Mars said that his debut solo record will not sound like anybody else. “Well, I guess it’s my own style,” he said. “It isn’t really blues. My playing has a blues element to it, of course, but it isn’t what you would call a blues record. It’s more of a heavier rock thing, but I don’t wanna even try to ‘outheavy’ the heavies, you know what I mean? It’s just something hopefully just a little different than what’s going on now. You’re not gonna hear a MÖTLEY-flavored song, except for the guitar, [because] that’s me. They’re gonna be a bit harder than that, but not as hard as the heavies, like MINISTRY and some of those guys.”

This past August, KORN drummer Ray Luzier confirmed that he is a featured guest on Mars’s solo album.

Posted by John Corabi on Wednesday, December 22, 2021

At last month’s Welcome To Rockville festival in Daytona Beach, Florida, DISTURBED frontman David Draiman spoke to SiriusXM’s Shannon Gunz about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band’s follow-up to 2018’s “Evolution” album. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “This past week has just been amazing for the DISTURBED camp — like, amazing for the DISTURBED camp. We have been writing, and it is sick — it is absolutely sick. It is old-school DISTURBED. It’s groove, it’s power, it’s ferocity, it’s polysyncopation — it’s all those things that people have known us for since day one. We really wanted to go back to where we came from — our meat and potatoes, so to speak. We came up with six new song ideas this week. We have two in our back pocket. We’re gonna look to start actually tracking them for real sometime after the New Year, and we are incredibly excited. The material is big.”

Prior to DISTURBED’s appearance at Welcome To Rockville, Draiman told Lou Brutus of HardDrive Radio that the band will likely do things slightly differently with the upcoming release. “The way that I see it happening is we’re probably not gonna put out something in the traditional full-length; we’re probably gonna be doing two separate releases,” he explained. “So we’ll probably have one geared for release — if everything works as planned — by the fall, and then maybe something the following year as well.” When Brutus asked Draiman to clarify if that means that the next DISTURBED release will be an EP, David said: “Define it what you want, but it would like five or six songs at a pop — something like that.

“We live in an environment right now and in an age where people’s consumption of music has been very soundbitish and very track-driven and very single-driven,” he continued. “And there’s definitely some beauty towards continuing to try and [make] things like concept records and telling a long story over the duration of a series of songs — there’s huge merit to that — but I think that when you write 10 songs and three of them actually get worked at radio and maybe, if you’re lucky, the fans are really familiar with half the record and the rest ends up sitting on a shelf, and if you do end up pulling it out one day, it’s like an obscure, weird moment during the set, and it’s almost like gratuitous for yourself. I don’t wanna do that anymore. I wanna make everything count. I wanna make sure that we get the biggest bang for everything we’re putting out there. I think that that should be easily attainable. It seems to be where the environment is going, and it seems to be — whether we like it or not — what the digital age has funneled us into.”

In October 2020, Draiman told “Loudwire Nights” that DISTURBED’s new music would be “blisteringly angry” and added that he was “dying” to sink his teeth into “new, original, angry, ferocious, brutal material.”

DISTURBED performed live for the first time in nearly two years on September 25 as one of the headliners of the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky.

In March, DISTURBED’s “The Sickness 20th Anniversary Tour” was officially canceled. The amphitheater tour, with very special guest STAIND and BAD WOLVES, was originally slated to take place in the summer of 2020 but was rescheduled to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. It was eventually scrapped altogether.

“The Sickness 20th Anniversary Tour” was supposed to celebrate the 20th anniversary of DISTURBED’s seminal album “The Sickness”. On this tour, the band was expected to perform songs off the album, as well as tracks from “Evolution” and DISTURBED’s extensive catalog.

In September 2020, DISTURBED released a cover version of Sting’s 1993 single “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You”.

During an appearance on a recent episode of “Stoke The Fire”, the alternative lifestyle and culture podcast hosted by musician Jesse Leach (KILLSWITCH ENGAGE) and DJ/presenter Matt Stocks (“Life In The Stocks”), SEPULTURA frontman Derrick Green spoke about the departure of original drummer Igor Cavalera more than a decade and a half ago. Igor left SEPULTURA in June 2006 due to “artistic differences.” His exit from the band came five months after he announced that he was taking a break from SEPULTURA’s touring activities to spend time with his second wife and their son (who was born in January 2006).

Green said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “When I joined [SEPULTURA as the replacement for original frontman Max Cavalera in 1997], I was already just so chaotic because Max was the front person. A lot of people had it in their minds that he created everything, SEPULTURA was his creation as a whole and the band had gotten there solely because of that. I think a lot of press and people [created that perception] because he was doing a lot of press; he’s a very charismatic person, so he took on that role. And a lot of times, people were seeing him as the face, which happens with a lot of bands, especially with the singer. I think it was a little bit easier with Igor, but also difficult — extremely difficult. Because I was friends with Igor. He’s one of the people that really got me charged when I was in the band and [he was partly responsible for] getting me into the band, I believe. And [his departure came] at a time where we were [on an upswing], like, ‘Yes!’ We’d been battling and working on a lot of stuff for album after album. We were at an album [at that point] — ‘Dante XXI’ — and we got great artwork, we’ve got a great team behind it, great songs, and then [Igor told us], like, ‘I’m not gonna go on tour.’ And I was just, like, ‘Oh, man. This is really rough.’ And then it just ended up where we went on tour with IN FLAMES, and we had Roy Mayorga come and fill in, which was fantastic.

“Igor was just going through a lot of different changes with his relationship and not wanting to be in the band anymore — not really wanting to do that style of music, I believe,” Derrick continued. “It was very difficult just because it was just kind of over with that, and then people were, like, ‘Oh, now it’s definitely over. Throw in the towel, boys.’ Certain people were just, like, ‘Yeah, game definitely over.’ And we didn’t feel that way. I mean, as difficult as it was, we were just on this momentum. We just created something so incredible, it’s hard to throw it away when you feel that you’re evolving. Like, ‘I’m doing stuff better than we’ve ever done. Let’s keep this going.’ So we continued onward.

“I remember it being difficult, but not as difficult [as it was], I think, for those guys when Max left, because they got a lot of the questions from the media, like, ‘How does it feel since Max wrote this album…?’ And then they’d be, like, ”Yo, I play drums.’ ‘Yo, I play lead guitar. What are you talking about?’ It was never like that. Those guys wrote together as a whole. I could feel that, kind of, like, ‘You guys don’t know what you’re talking about,’ being in certain situations with the press with them. But seeing that transition, as far as with Igor leaving, it was, like, ‘Oh, man. Let’s continue onward. It’s hard, but let’s continue onward.’ And again, we had a lot of support, still, [and] people believing in us. And we moved on to [Igor’s replacement in SEPULTURA] Jean Dolabella. And it was again a growing process, getting used to him, going through an album cycle where people were, like, ‘Hmm. It’s okay. It’s all right.’ And then, with the sophomore album with Jean Dolabella, and joining Nuclear Blast, having a solid label, then we started to notice a change again, like a rebirth… Going out and playing new songs, people were, like, ‘Yeah. I know this song.’ This is really getting back up there. And then I was, like, ‘Okay, here we go.’ And then Jean was, like, ‘I’m out,’ after that whole tour. I was, like, ‘No! No! We’re just getting back again.’ And then starting that whole process again with [current SEPULTURA drummer] Eloy [Casagrande]. But, again, having such a great label, Nuclear Blast, that helped, because they were always supportive.”

Max Cavalera exited SEPULTURA in 1996 after the rest of the band split with Max’s wife Gloria as their manager.

For a decade and a half, Igor has been part of the MIXHELL DJ/hip-hop/electro project with his wife Laima Leyton.

Two years ago, Igor teamed up with Wayne Adams (BIG LAD, DEATH PEDALS, JOHNNY BROKE) to form the PETBRICK project. The band’s debut album, “I”, was released in October 2019 via Closed Casket Activities in the U.S.

Igor’s other current musical projects include CAVALERA CONSPIRACY (alongside Max) and SOULWAX.

Cleveland native Green went from fronting hardcore band OUTFACE in Ohio to relocating to New York and then living in São Paulo, Brazil for nearly two decades.

SEPULTURA’s current lineup comprises Green, guitarist Andreas Kisser, bassist Paulo Xisto Pinto Jr. and Casagrande.

It’s official: the 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise will return in January 2023.

The 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise creator, Swiss concert promoter Andy Piller, confirmed that the event was back on track after being canceled in 2021 and 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’ve been working hard to secure a new ship, possibly even with a new destination, and with the best lineup that 70000 Tons Of Metal, the world’s biggest heavy metal cruise, has ever seen,” Piller said in a video message which was uploaded to social media on Friday (December 24).

The 70000 Tons Of Metal team added in a separate message: “We can’t wait to reunite with our Global Heavy Metal Family in 2023 when we sail through the beautiful Caribbean once again.

“Thank you very much for your continued loyalty and undying support, it means the world to us.”

70000 Tons Of Metal has been one of the more unique and/or ingenious ideas to infiltrate the live music scene in the last decade.

“You have to see it took me from the point I had that quite insane idea,” Piller told FixionMedia.com in a 2014 interview. “It took me almost four years to get the ship in the water, so to speak. It was from the beginning that my thought was to make the ship as an annual event, given the fact it would work. When you start a new business, you never know if it will work or not. Isn’t this what you’re aiming for? Otherwise I wouldn’t have put four years of my life into it. I wanted to establish it as an annual thing, and not spend four years of my life as a one-off.”

Piller’s extensive background in the European live industry gave him an up-close and personal look at the workings of the venerable open-air festivals that dominate the summer landscape. Seeing how successful these festivals are, coupled with a few drinks and some friends during a warm summer night at his apartment in Vancouver, helped spawn the idea for 70000 Tons.

“I have never organized big festivals,” he noted. “I started as a local promoter in Europe, then switched to a touring role. Then I was working for a tour/production/road manager for 15 years, and that eventually brought me to Vancouver. It wasn’t something far off. It’s not like I’m a banker or dentist coming up with this. I totally had the idea and connections on how this could work, and I had been to most of the big European open-air festivals. That was the idea — just condense that and put it on a cruise ship.

“People thought I was nuts to have a metal fest on a cruise ship,” he continued. “They thought it was nuts to have put 40 bands on there, and now we have 60. The idea is like, the average band has five musicians, and if you have 40 bands, that’s 200 guests. It’s a 1-to-10 ratio, and that actually created such a special atmosphere because there are so many musicians around. I’m sure it would have worked with less bands, but the question is, where’s the breaking point? A lot of people are concerned we’re going to make it bigger and lose the intimacy factor and so on. I think it won’t, but just to keep the principles of the event the same, so okay, we add 1,000 people and we have to add 20 more bands. Now there are 3,000 guests and 60 bands.”

For more information, visit 70000tons.com.

During a recent appearance on producer Rick Rubin’s “Broken Record” podcast, punk rock icon Henry Rollins discussed his decision to stop making music 15 years ago after spending well over a decade recording and touring with ROLLINS BAND, his alt-rock powerhouse. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “The smart thing I did as a younger man was one day I woke up in my bed and I went, ‘I’m done with music. I don’t hate it. I just have no more lyrics. There’s no more toothpaste in the tube.’ I called my manager at the time and I said, ‘I’m done with music.’ And 15 percent of that was a good thing for him. He was, like, ‘No. No.’ I [was, like], ‘Yes.’ And so luckily, I had enough movies, voiceover, documentary work, writing, talking, where that just filled in, and now I’m busier than ever. But I walked away before I had to start saying, ‘Hey, kids, remember this one?’ So I didn’t have to put it on and go up there and put on the dog and yelp for my dinner.

“I’ve had gentle discussions with major rock stars,” he continued. “I [go], ‘You go out and you play those same songs every night for the last 40 years.’ And one of these people, who I love dearly, said, ‘Yeah, that’s what people want.’ I go, ‘You wanna give ’em what they want?’ ‘Yeah.’ He’s an older-school guy — even older than me. And he said, ‘Yeah. You wanna make people happy.’ I’m, like, ‘You do? Huh. I never thought of that. That never once occurred to me.’ And he went, ‘What do you do?’ I go, ‘Just what’s on next.’ And he went, ‘Huh. How’s that treating you?’ I’m, like, ‘Well, I need bus fare to get home.’ [Laughs] But just two different schools.

“His whole thing is you put on the show, everyone goes ‘yay,’ you play what everyone wants to hear and everyone’s happy. And he said, ‘You’re not?’ I’m, like, ‘No, not necessarily. If they happen to like what I’m doing, cool. If they don’t, they can bite me.’ And I’m sure in the last few years he has sung that one, that one, that one and that one for the five hundred and seventy millionth time. And 50 thousand people went ‘yay.’ That’s just not for me. I’d rather take the risk.”

Rollins previously discussed his decision to retire from making music in a 2011 interview with Valley Advocate. At the time, he said he called it quits with ROLLINS BAND because “I could not find any way to do it differently. There was nothing new about it for me, so I decided to do other stuff. Too many people in my age group have been making the same record over and over. It might suit them, not me. When I see Mick Jagger still singing ‘I can’t get no satisfaction,’ I have to conclude that he’s either very stupid or not being truthful.”

Rollins has toured the world as a spoken-word artist, as frontman for both ROLLINS BAND and BLACK FLAG and as a solitary traveler with insatiable curiosity, favoring road-less-traveled locales in places such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Siberia, North Korea, South Sudan and Iran.

When he’s not traveling, Rollins prefers a to keep a relentless schedule full of work, with gigs as an actor, author, DJ, voice-over artist and TV show host to name a few of the roles that keep him occupied.

As a spoken-word artist, Rollins regularly performs at colleges and theaters worldwide and has released a number of spoken-word recordings. His album “Get In The Van” won the Grammy for “Best Spoken Word Album” for 1995. As an actor, he has appeared in “The Chase”, “Johnny Mnemonic”, “Heat” and David Lynch’s film “Lost Highway”.

In April 2021, YouTube user J Donaldson uploaded an aerial view of late PANTERA and DAMAGEPLAN guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott’s house and recording studio (a.k.a. The Fortress) in Dalworthington Gardens, Texas. Check out the one-and-a-half-minute video below.

Back in February 2015, as part of Guitar World’s coverage of the tenth anniversary of the guitarist’s tragic death, the magazine was invited into Dimebag’s home and recording studio — and they got to bring their cameras. Guitar World’s exclusive video tour, which can also be found below, offered a private look at Dimebag’s impressive guitar collection, not to mention his home, memorabilia, kitchen, bathrooms and a lot more.

Abbott, one of the most beloved and respected musicians in hard rock, was shot onstage during a DAMAGEPLAN concert on December 8, 2004 at the Alrosa Villa club in Columbus, Ohio by a 25-year-old ex-Marine named Nathan Gale. Gale murdered a total of four people and wounded three others before being killed himself by police officer James D. Niggemeyer, who arrived on the scene minutes after Gale began his rampage.

According to The Pulse Of Radio, Gale seemed to deliberately target Abbott, leading to speculation that the young man, who had a history of mental illness, held a grudge against Abbott and his brother, drummer Vinnie Paul, for the break-up of PANTERA in 2002. Columbus police closed their investigation in October of 2005 without establishing a motive for the shootings.

Abbott and Paul formed PANTERA in the mid-Eighties in Texas. The band recorded four independent albums before their 1990 major label debut, “Cowboys From Hell”, introduced a heavier sound and made them a favorite with metal fans. 1994’s “Far Beyond Driven” debuted at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 without benefit of a commercial hit single.

The group splintered in 2002 following the departure of volatile lead singer Philip Anselmo. Dime and Vinnie, as they were known to their fans, regrouped with DAMAGEPLAN, releasing the band’s debut album, “New Found Power”, in February of 2004. The group was touring in support of the record at the time of the shootings.

Abbott’s death was a devastating blow to the close-knit hard rock and metal community. He was known to his fellow musicians for his hospitality, friendship and partying spirit, and was a legend among fans and peers for his powerful, innovative and unmistakable playing style.

Vinnie Paul died in June 2018 at the age of 54 in his sleep at his home in Las Vegas. The official cause of death was dilated cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart, as well as severe coronary artery disease. He was buried next to his brother and their mother, Carolyn, at Moore Memorial Gardens cemetery in Arlington, Texas.

DREAM THEATER’s official YouTube channel has uploaded the band’s cover of the holiday classic “O Holy Night”. The track was recorded during a soundcheck at the Roseland Theater in Portland, Oregon on June 9, 1993 and was released three years later on a very rare fan-club-only Christmas CD.

Last year, DREAM THEATER released a medley of holiday classics called “The Holiday Spirit Carries On”. The proceeds of the song, which was made available via Bandcamp, went to support the band’s road crew which was unable to work in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

DREAM THEATER’s latest LP, “A View From The Top Of The World”, came out in October. It was produced by guitarist John Petrucci, with engineering and additional production by James “Jimmy T” Meslin and mixing and mastering by Andy Sneap. The artwork for “A View From The Top Of The World” was created by longtime DREAM THEATER collaborator Hugh Syme (RUSH, IRON MAIDEN, STONE SOUR).

DREAM THEATER — comprised of Petrucci, singer James LaBrie, Jordan Rudess, John Myung and Mike Mangini — was in the middle of a sold-out world tour in support of its 2019 last release “Distance Over Time” and the 20th anniversary of “Scenes From A Memory” when a global pandemic brought the world to a stop. The musicians found themselves at home, with LaBrie in Canada and the rest of the group in the States. As fate would have it, they’d just finished construction on DTHQ (Dream Theater Headquarters) — a combination live recording studio, rehearsal space, control room, equipment storage, and creative hive. With LaBrie in Canada, he initially wrote with the band via Zoom on a monitor in DTHQ. In March 2021, he flew down to New York, quarantined, and recorded his vocals face to face with Petrucci.