Man, it’s like the stars are falling from the sky! We’re lining up interviews in the next week with Korn, Alice In Chains, Device, Young Guns, Beware of Darkness and Metallica. I would say rock is alive and well and talking to hardDriveRadio! Lest there be any misconceptions! We’ve also got interviews in the can with Volbeat and Mike McCready. Life is good around the cubicle walls here at the mighty hardDrive! Feels really good, too!……Speaking of one of those bands, Pulse Content reports Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell told Rolling Stone the band’s upcoming album, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, is “a unique record that’s completely different from anything we ever did,” adding, “It encapsulates a period of time, like all records do. You see growth and that the band is moving ahead in new territory that we haven’t been to before, but we haven’t lost our identity.” The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here follows up 2009’s Black Gives Way To Blue, which was the band’s fourth studio effort after a 14-year hiatus and marked the recording debut of singer/guitarist William DuVall with the group. Cantrell said about the new disc, “There’s some real filth in there. That’s intentional, and that’s also just how we sound together. We’re trying to make a record that we dig and we’re trying to keep the bar high for ourselves and see if we can get past it, and I think that we did again.” The first track from the album, “Hollow,” has already hit Number One on the rock radio chart. Cantrell called the response to the song “awesome,” adding, “We just put that song out there for the fans and then it ended up turning into a number one single, a six-minute sludgy metal tune.” The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here will be out in May, at the same time as Alice In Chains is hitting the road on a spring trek that starts on April 25th in Miami Beach and includes headlining slots at the Rocklahoma, Carolina Rebellion, Welcome To Rockville and Rock On The Range festivals….Head over to the NPR website! Sound City: Real To Reel, the soundtrack to Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl‘s documentary Sound City, is now streaming on the NPR website in full ahead of its official release next Tuesday (Mar 12th). The 11-track set consists of new musical collaborations featuring musicians like Paul McCartney, Trent Reznor, Corey Taylor, Rick Springfield and others. The sessions grew out of the interviews Grohl conducted for the movie, which chronicles the rise and fall of a legendary Los Angeles studio and the recording board there that was used for dozens of classic albums. Grohl and surviving Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear collaborated with McCartney on the song “Cut Me Some Slack,” and Grohl told me they were so starstruck working with McCartney, they didn’t realize how momentous the occasion was for other reasons: “When we were recording the song with McCartney, that really was the first time Pat and Krist and I had sat down in a room and written a song from scratch and jammed it out like Nirvana used to do. That was the first time that had really happened in 20-something years. Because Paul was there, we sort of forgot that. So the first couple of hours we were there, we were so focused and freaked out on Paul McCartney being in the same room that we forgot, like, ‘Wait a minute, we used to be Nirvana, this is weird,’ you know.” I know I am gonna miss Dave’s keynote speech at SXSW because my damn plane doesn’t land til the speech is over! Rats! Should’ve left on Wednesday! But I do know the buzz around the convention is all about Dave, as it should be! And Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor will host an artist discussion during the South By Southwest music and film festival in Austin, Texas, which begins this weekend. The session Taylor will host is called “What the Hell Was That?!: Corey Taylor and the Art of Making Mistakes” and will take place on Friday, March 15th at 2:00 p.m. While there, Taylor will also sign copies of his book, Seven Deadly Sins, right after his talk, and he will join the Sound City Players for their performance on the 14th at Stubb’s! But wait, there is another DAVE who is gonna throw a party at his home, David Draiman of Device! Looking forward to eating some BBQ at the Draiman spread in Austin!….Mark Tremonti told us in an interview he can confirm Wolfgang Van Halen will be a permanent member of his Tremonti band! That’s great! Meanwhile, after the Tremonti tour ends tonight, he plans to get down to writing the next Alter Bridge record and plans to be touring with them in September! Meanwhile, who wants to bet Eddie Van Halen shows up tonight in LA at the Roxy for Tremonti’s set! Wish I was gonna be there, dammit! But our winner Ken Gillette and his wife will! You lucky so and so’s!…..Oh geez, we missed yesterday marked the 10-year anniversary of the release of Fallen, the major label debut by Evanescence that became a monster, multi-platinum hit for the Amy Lee-fronted rock band. Wind-Up Records plans to reissue the album on limited edition purple vinyl, with pre-ordering currently under way for the May 21st release. Led by the single “Bring Me To Life,” which also included vocals from 12 Stones singer Paul McCoy, appeared on the soundtrack to the movie Daredevil, Fallen sold a whopping seven million copies in the U.S. and yielded three more singles with “Going Under,” “My Immortal,” and “Everybody’s Fool.” Evanescence also won Grammys in 2004 for Best New Artist and Best Hard Rock Performance. And with all the success of Fallen, it also led to turmoil within the group, as founding guitarist Ben Moody left in late 2003, leaving Lee as the only original member of the band. Moody is now with a new project called The Halo Method with Dave Buckner and Lukas Rossi……May 11th, Kansas City, Missouri’s 98-9 The Rock, KQRC will host the city’s annual Rockfest. Bands confirmed to appear include Alice In Chains, Killswitch Engage, Papa Roach, Device, In This Moment, Seether, Volbeat, Halestorm and more. The Rock is celebrating their 10th anniversary of the festival and more information on the lineup and tickets can be found at www.rockfestkc.com. Rock on to Bob Edwards and the great staff at the legendary KQRC!
