Today, several new albums hit the streets! To celebrate the release of their 11th album, The Paradigm Shift, Korn appeared last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live to perform “Never Never.” If you look at their appearance closely, the little boy sitting on the amps was Jonathan‘s son (I think it was Zeppy, who was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes last year.) Anyhow, performance was great and I see Korn has brought back the cage. Looking forward to seeing my boys in Las Vegas on Saturday night at The Pearl with our Korn Kontest winner Joe Mentelle! The new album is the first to feature original guitarist Brian “Head” Welch since 2003’s Take A Look In The Mirror and follows up 2011’s dubstep experiment, The Path Of Totality. Frontman Jonathan Davis told us Welch’s return on guitar was a good balance to Davis’ own continued fascination with electronic music: “We wanted to make a record that everybody was happy with, and Head coming back I think was great ’cause me and him butted heads. ‘Cause he really is on the rock side and I was on the electronic side, and it was good having the compromise on both sides. It was just good for the creative process, I think.” Welch recently told Rolling Stone the new album has “the old Korn vibe, but with a new twist . . . The end product is a really good mix of old Korn mixed with some new elements. It’s got a fresh new Korn 2013 sound.” So happy everyone can hear what I’ve been listening to for about 6 weeks now! I think “Spike In My Veins” is my second favorite song and will probably be the next single…..High Rise, the new EP from Stone Temple Pilots is the band’s first new disc with lead singer Chester Bennington, who replaced original frontman Scott Weiland earlier this year. Although the EP contains just five songs, Bennington told us coming up with music together was not a problem: “After our very first initial kind of ‘let’s sit down, you know, officially kind of shake hands and say we’re doing this,’ I think by the time we got home, we were already like coming up with ideas. Within a couple of days we had nine or 10 demos that we were kicking around and I knew the second that I got the memo from Robert (DeLeo, bass), he was playing ‘Out Of Time,’ the main riff, and it was like, I mean melodies just started coming.” The band is planning on doing more material as soon as their lawsuit is settled….Alter Bridge issues its fourth album, Fortress, today, which follows up the group’s last release, 2010’s AB III. During the break, singer Myles Kennedy toured as part of Slash‘s solo band and also performed all the vocals on the ex-Guns N’ Roses guitarist’s second solo effort, last year’s Apocalyptic Love. We asked Kennedy how singing for Alter Bridge is different from working with Slash: “Vocally, each band brings a different approach out. The feel of the music will dictate that. With Slash, there’s definitely more of a bluesy, soulful vibe that just naturally happens. With Alter Bridge, because it’s got more of a metal undercurrent, I think there’s something that just happens there as well. But the nice thing is is that it allows you to stretch in two different directions.” Guitarist Mark Tremonti recently told Music Radar the quartet did everything they could to make the new disc as unpredictable as possible, explaining, “We messed with time signatures, tones, key changes. Everything we could throw at these songs, we did. They have you never knowing what you’re getting next.” Check out this webisode of the making of the album’s title track, Fortress, here…..Tom Araya from Slayer announced over on Loudwire the band is looking at a couple of songs the late bassist Jeff Hanneman submitted to the band prior to his passing. It is possible they could be used on the next Slayer album, which would be a really nice tribute to Jeff. More on this as the band gets closer to recording the next one. Sadly, Jeff died unexpectedly from cirrhosis of the liver after his long and agonizing recovery from a flesh eating disease he contracted after being bit in 2011 by a brown recluse spider. He fought to save his arm (I believe) with many skin graft surgeries. Sad…..Metallica: Through The Never reportedly made $3 million last week, during it’s only weekend run on IMAX screens. (The film Gravity opened last weekend.) Metallica’s film is now running wider in 2D and hopefully more folks will be able to check it out. The band reportedly put $18 million of their own dough into the production. Hey, it’s a giant write-off, if not!….And next Tuesday, Oct 15th, the new Trivium album, Vengeance Falls, drops. The band is streaming it now on their site, www.trivium.org….And finally today, Californian deathcore mob Suicide Silence have just confirmed ex-All Shall Perish frontman Eddie Hermida as their new vocalist following the tragic death of singer Mitch Lucker last year. Here’s what they had to say: “Suicide Silence is pleased to announce the addition of Eddie Hermida to the family. Many of you may be familiar with Eddie through his work with All Shall Perish. For those of you unfamiliar, our relationship with Eddie goes way back to the Spreading Disease Tour, our first U.S. headlining run, in 2006. Mitch & Eddie remained long-time friends and we felt that if the band were to continue it should be with someone Mitch knew personally and respected as both a friend and an artist. We’ve chosen Eddie as our new frontman in association with this long-standing relationship & countless other attributes from his quality of character to his dynamic vocal abilities that make him the absolute best fit for this band. We hope you all will embrace this decision with open arms understanding that this is what Mitch would have wanted. He would want his brothers to stick together & carry forward what he helped create. Every time we step on stage it will be in his honor & for his legacy. Suicide Silence will continue.”…Have an A-1 Day!
