Boston death thrashers Soul Remnants bring the visual violence on the new clip for “Cult Destroyer.”
The post Video Premiere: Soul Remnants — “Cult Destroyer” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

In a recent interview with Spain’s Mariskal Rock, JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford was asked which fellow British band was more important to him personally while he was coming up in the music scene in Birmingham, England in the late 1960s and early 1970s, DEEP PURPLE or BLACK SABBATH. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “They’re all important to me for all of the styles and variety of music that they presented. I was naturally drawn to SABBATH because of the heaviness. If you put PURPLE on and then you put SABBATH on, or SABBATH on then PURPLE, they’re both really strong, powerful bands, depending on which album you’re listening to.

“PURPLE are hard rock; to me, they’re not metal,” he continued. “I’ll probably be killed for saying that, but that’s just the way I feel. SABBATH are exclusively metal, although Tony [Iommi, SABBATH guitarist] has always said SABBATH isn’t metal. I don’t know what’s going on, but that’s the world we live in, when musicians talk about each other.

“There’s a certain speed, there’s a certain intensity in PURPLE that is also in SABBATH, but it’s in a different texture. When you listen to what [DEEP PURPLE drummer] Ian Paice was doing, for example, pushing those songs, I was as excited by that as I was by ‘Fairies Wear Boots’ or ‘Iron Man’ or any of these super-heavy tracks from SABBATH.

“So they were all important to me, as bands are to all musicians,” Rob added. “All musicians are inspired and influenced by other musicians, so they all are very valuable to me. I wouldn’t put one above the rest in terms of a list. The whole representation of the work that they make is important.”

JUDAS PRIEST recently announced the rescheduled “50 Heavy Metal Years” North American tour dates for March-April 2022. Support on the trek will come from QUEENSRŸCHE.

JUDAS PRIEST was forced to postpone around two dozen North American shows on its rescheduled 50th-anniversary tour in late September after the band’s guitarist Richie Faulkner suffered an acute cardiac aortic dissection during a performance at the Louder Than Life festival. He ended up undergoing a 10-hour life-saving surgery a short distance away at Rudd Heart and Lung Center at UofL Health – Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.

Bassist Ian Hill is the sole remaining original member of PRIEST, which formed in 1969. Halford joined the group in 1973 and guitarist Glenn Tipton signed on in 1974. Rob left PRIEST in the early 1990s to form his own band, then came back to PRIEST in 2003. Founding guitarist K.K. Downing parted ways with the band in 2011, and was replaced by Faulkner.

Matt Tuck of Welsh metallers BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE spoke to AndrewHaug.com, Australia’s first-ever dedicated 24/7 rock and metal online radio station, about it’s going to be like for the band to embark on its first pandemic-era international tour.

“I think the best thing that we can do now, as far as the band and the crew, is just get double vaccinated and just kind of do what we need to do if we need to travel,” he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “It’s not a huge ask to do a test before getting on a flight, for example — it’s not really a big ask — and if that’s what it takes for us to be able to continue on with our life and our musical journey and our career, that’s what we’ll do.

“The world is a big place, and, unfortunately, we’re not all on the same page, for whatever reasons — politically, medically, whatever it is. It’s tricky,” he continued. “So we can only really focus on what we’re in control of at the moment, and that’s a U.K. tour which is on sale and doing really well. We’ve got a European run at the end of January [going] into February, which is looking okay. But we’ve got the double hit here in the U.K. of, obviously, COVID and Brexit, which is making our lives doubly horrible. For touring musicians, it’s an absolute nightmare because that freedom of movement that we once had to go through Europe and travel through Spain and France and Portugal and Greece — all throughout the continent — has been taken away from us. And we don’t really know what that means yet because we’ve had COVID get in the way as well. So, yeah, it’s not looking good short term. I’m sure it’ll sort itself out. But all we can do at the minute is really just focus on what’s directly in front of us rather than too far into the future ’cause there’s just so many hurdles right now, it’s not worth stressing ourselves out about it. And we’ll just let management and promoters and agents globally try and work it out between them on how we can make this work.”

Many countries in the EU reportedly still require expensive visas for U.K. artists to tour.

The U.K. government has been heavily criticized for jeopardizing the future of touring for U.K. artists when the Brexit deal secured with the EU failed to negotiate visa-free travel and Europe-wide work permits for musicians and crew.

BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE’s latest, self-titled album arrived on November 5 via via Spinefarm/Search & Destroy. The LP was written beginning in September 2019 with longtime producer Carl Bown, who co-produced the band’s 2015 album, “Venom”, and produced and mixed 2018’s “Gravity”.

“Gravity” saw BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE’s catalog surpass one billion streams in the U.S. That accomplishment solidified BULLET’s status as one of the most elite bands in the hard rock scene.

In a recent interview with AndrewHaug.com, Australia’s first-ever dedicated 24/7 rock and metal online radio station launched by Andrew Haug, the former host of Triple J Australia’s “The Racket” radio show, CARCASS frontman Jeff Walker discussed how he has been spending the coronavirus downtime in his native United Kingdom. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We’re kind of lucky that we had some reserves in the bank, so we could survive that way. I’m a bit of a squirrel; I always make sure there’s money in the bank to see us through hard times. And luckily, it was enough to tide us over for this period.

“As far as me getting by personally, I’ve just been looking for small joys in life — small things locally or whatever,” he continued. “Living a jetsetting life and having exciting times traveling the world and playing gigs, it’s one extreme to another. I’m just looking for small things to keep me happy and finding solace in the smallest things. I’ve been walking and cycling a lot more. There’s a lot of local history that I never noticed before — railway tracks and lines and really boring stuff, middle-age stuff like that that I’ve kind of got interested in.

“I’ve enjoyed the hiatus, to be honest… We’d been touring for seven years without a break, and it’s been healthy to step back and have a break. I’d also say it’s been a bit detrimental because we haven’t played together for 18 months now. So we’re gonna be incredibly rusty if we ever get to play again.

“It’s been positive, but now it’s starting to drag a bit,” Walker added. “The novelty’s wearing off because we just had a to cancel a European tour which would have been great timing for promotion of the [new CARCASS] album [‘Torn Arteries’].

“There’s no real end in sight for me. I wanna see things happen before I commit CARCASS to anything. We have confirmed a gig that we’re gonna play in November in the U.K. But as far as touring is concerned, I still see people booking tours and they still get canceled. I think it’s a bit kind of crappy to give false hope to people.”

CARCASS played its first pandemic-era concert on November 6 at the Damnation Festival in Leeds, U.K.

“Torn Arteries” was released in September via Nuclear Blast Records. Drummer Daniel Wilding did session work in Sweden at Studio Gröndahl with David Castillo while guitars were recorded at The Stationhouse with James Atkinson in Leeds, England. Eventually needing some form of residential location to finalize vocals, bass, and other guitarwork, the band headed back to Studio Gröndahl in Sweden to continue work in a very relaxed atmosphere with Castillo.