Love playing “Master of Puppets” at loud decibels in the morning. Smells like victory!…..Nine Inch Nails‘ first album in five years and first on a major label since 2007, Hesitation Marks, debuted at Number Three on the Billboard album chart yesterday (Sep 11th), selling 107,000 copies in its first week of sales. That’s a large leap forward from the band’s last two albums, the independently released The Slip and Ghosts I – IV, which entered at Numbers 13 and 14 with first-week sales of 29,000 and 26,000 copies. Guess when you have a song RADIO is playing, makes a great difference, eh? Anyhow, Nine Inch Nails have also released a four-song live EP exclusively through Spotify. The set includes a live version of new song “Copy Of A” recorded in July at the 2013 Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, along with three songs from Nine Inch Nails’ 2013 Lollapalooza set: new tracks “Came Back Haunted” and “Find My Way,” along with a performance of the vintage Pretty Hate Machine track “Sanctified.” The band kicks off their tour Sep 28th in St Paul, MN….Metallica, Metallica, Metallica! There are two webisodes about the making of Metallica: Through The Never you are gonna wanna watch, which I can’t seem to get the URL’s to post (check back later when I get some IT support), but here’s an interview with Lars Ulrich and the film’s star Dane DeHaan from the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday. The film is amazing. The band is amazing. What else can I tell ya? You have to see it to believe it! Be listening to hardDrive XL the week of Sep 23-27 when we hear from Robert Trujillo about this huge undertaking. The good news is, the next tour the band does, it appears they may actually USE this stage! I am guessing 10-15 semis will be rolling for this one. Maybe more! Movie opens Sep 27th in select markets on IMax screens and wider on Oct 04th. Meanwhile, Rob admitted in a new interview with Classic Rock mag that work on the band’s next album — its first official release since 2008’s Death Magnetic — has been sidetracked in recent months by touring and by preparing the feature film Metallica Through The Never for release. Trujillo said, “Before all the film stuff, we were jamming these ideas and having a lot of fun. But we got sidetracked. In 2014 it’ll be all about getting new music — without any interruptions, hopefully.” Trujillo told me the band wants to get back on track with its 10th studio album as soon as it can: “Obviously for next year, our priority has to be making a new record. We’ve been detoured from that through the course of the year. We had about six weeks or so where we were really focusing on a new album and writing and then, you know, somehow we ended up hitting the road. And then at the same time we’ve got to promote this film. We get sidetracked by great things — it’s a blessing and a curse.” And I am hoping the Metallica ticket fairy gets me in to see Metallica at the Apollo Theater next weekend. Gonna be SICK! Look for the soundtrack to Metallica: Through The Never on Sep 24th. “Master Of Puppets” was released earlier this week …..Alter Bridge will release its fourth studio album, titled Fortress, on Oct 8th, and singer Myles Kennedy told us the band took a different approach to writing and recording this time around: “I think that Fortress is probably the most musically adventurous record we’ve made to date. There was definitely an awareness when we went into this of what we would not do, which was to touch on approaches that we’d used in the past a number of times. So I think that people will hear that we took some chances on this album.” Tonight, I’ve been invited to see Myles perform acoustically with Mark Tremonti at the Moscot Mobileyes event. I may even get a pair of the new MYLES signature sunglasses! Since I am blind as a bat, I will hand them off to my pal Lou Brutus for sure! Moscot Mobileyes is a foundation that helps underprivileged kids get free eye care…..OK so you probably read the comments/jokes from Robb Flynn of Machine Head about Avenged Sevenfold’s album. (He sort of did a Letterman Top 10 Things About Avenged Sevenfold’s ‘Hail to the King’ CD.) Anyhow, M Shadows commented to a Canadian radio station in Ottawa on the whole thing. “Actually, Chris Jericho sent it to me [Tuesday] morning,” Shadows tells Canada’s 106.9 The Bear radio show. “He’s, like, ‘Dude, look at this B.S.’ [He was] going crazy. And I was, like, ‘Ah, Chris, I love you.’ But I read it, and I read it as a joke. I have met Robb on numerous occasions and he’s always been cool to me. And I just read it as a joke. I really don’t know what to say about it other than I agree with him on the Metallica Sad But True thing — that was obviously an inspiration for that song. Everything else, I kind of think he… If it is a joke, it was kind of overboard, ’cause it doesn’t make sense in my mind. But at the same time, he was saying it was a joke, so… I have no ill will towards those guys. I’ve met [Machine Head guitarist] Phil [Demmel] a couple of times; he’s cool. Robb is cool. And I think the guy has the right to go make… if it’s really a joke, in his mind… Some people might see it as being as an underhanded… joke. But, to me, if he just wants to go in there and write whatever he wants, I think that’s totally cool. Everyone has an opinion and everyone should be entitled to say whatever they want. So it’s no skin off our backs. I think all the bands he said we were very inspired by…Sabbath, Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones. I think when you take a record like this and the way metal has become very blast-beat, screamy-oriented, when you kind of take things back and go to a more classic-rock feel, you’re gonna feel the similarities to what we were trying to do; we were trying to make an Avenged Sevenfold album from the early ’90s and late ’80s. It was just something that really intringued us and interested us. And so, for me, I think all those bands have always been an influence — you can hear that on City Of Evil. And Metallica has, obviously, influenced every single band that picked up a guitar and plays metal. So, yeah, all those bands, plus all the old greats.” Glad there’s no hard feelings because Matt could kick Robb’s ASS! LOL. (Thanks Blabbermouth)….Happy 61st today to Rush drummer Neil Peart! And former Chevelle bassist Joe Loeffler is 33. In 4 months, he will be 33 & 1/3rd. (My older readers will get that!) LOL Have a great day!
