All our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and families of the terrorist attack yesterday in my beloved New York City. #NYCStrong
On a much better note…….
ICYMI: Here are some highlights of Dave Grohl as host of Jimmy Kimmel Live. “I’m Dave Grohl dressed as Dave Letterman sitting in for Jimmy Kimmel, it’s confusing, I get it, especially if you’re home watching right now stoned to the bone,” the guest host said, donning a long white beard and a letterman jacket. Grohl wore the costume for the entirety of the episode.
And besides Kristen Bell, Dave’s other guest was our friend Alice Cooper!
Grohl and his Foo Fighters then joined a straitjacketed Cooper on stage to perform the singer’s 70’s hits “The Ballad of Dwight Fry” and “Killer” that ended with a morbid magic trick: In the medley’s final minutes, Cooper loaded himself into a guillotine that “beheaded” the singer in front of the audience. However, when the head was revealed to the audience, it was a copy of Grohl’s head and not Cooper’s. Grohl smooched his severed head in the waning seconds of his guest-hosting gig.
Foo Fighters have announced they’ll perform New Year’s Eve at The Chelsea at the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Opening acts are The Zac Brown Band and Duran Duran! Tickets on sale Friday! (Thanks to Rolling Stone for the Jimmy Kimmel info)
The Pulse Of Radio reporting the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain‘s widow and daughter, Courtney Love and Frances Bean Cobain, are continuing their efforts to stop a conspiracy theorist from getting the city of Seattle to release graphic photos taken at the scene of Kurt’s suicide in April 1994. Richard Lee sued the city of Seattle in 2014 in an attempt to have the photos released. Lee lost his case in 2015, but filed an appeal last year, with Love and Frances issuing a new response to fight the appeal.
Love and Frances state in their response that they would suffer “substantial and irreparable damage” if the photos ever were released, adding that making them public “would not only exacerbate the post-traumatic stress Frances Bean Cobain has suffered since childhood but physically endanger her and her her mother by encouraging more disturbed stalkers and fanatical threats.”
Seattle police did release some photos of Cobain’s shotgun back in 2016, and additional photos have turned up in the years prior. Lee is one of a small number of people who are still pushing the long-discredited theory that Kurt was murdered, possibly on the orders of Love.
We asked Kurt biographer Charles R. Cross why he thinks the conspiracy theories linger on: “I think the main reason people embrace the conspiracy theory is simply that it’s very painful to imagine that Kurt, someone they loved or maybe identified with, that he betrayed them in some degree by taking his own life. You know, the bottom line is there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that Kurt’s death was anything other than suicide, and it’s almost absurd that the topic continues to come up.”
Blabbermouth reports Slipknot has “seven or eight” full songs written for its next studio album, Shawn “The Clown” Crahan has revealed. Slipknot‘s touring cycle in support of 2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter, ended last November, with singer Corey Taylor returning to his other band Stone Sour this year. .5: The Gray Chapter was released following a six-year hiatus during which founding bassist Paul Gray died and drummer Joey Jordison was dismissed.
Asked in a brand new interview with Metal Hammer about the progress of the songwriting sessions for Slipknot‘s next disc, Crahan said: “‘The Gray Chapter’ was pretty much the final learning velocity of our career. We had to replace a bass player, we had to replace a drummer — one of them was walking the earth, the other was buried in the earth. It was a very hard time. People were telling us, ‘How is the band gonna write? Joey and Paul are gone.’ Fuck you. We made a fucking awesome album that we love. And we’re gonna continue to do that. I actually have a date that some of us are gonna get together in a studio and get things going for the next one.”
According to the percussionist, he, guitarist Jim Root and drummer Jay Weinberg went to Los Angeles earlier in the year to “organize everything we had written out on the road. We wrote fifty f-ing ideas,” he said. “We spent two weeks organizing all that, and also adding some stuff that was written a year ago.”
Shawn added: “We have over twenty-seven ideas ready to go — seven or eight of them are full songs. These songs can change, they can be written over, nothing is in stone. But it’s great that we have concrete ideas to begin with. So the future has never been sweeter for Slipknot music.
“I don’t know what Corey’s got in mind, because he will bring his own songs, too, but we’re just writing music and getting ideas and moods and soundscapes — getting it all fucking together,” he said.
In a recent interview with Metal Wani, Taylor spoke about a possible musical direction for Slipknot‘s next album, saying that nothing has yet been decided. “I know I wanna write something violent, to be honest,” he said. “I wanna do something that feels uncomfortable. I wanna go somewhere where we haven’t been in a long, long time. I don’t know what that means, but I think when I hear it, I’ll know what it is.”
Finally today, Blabbermouth says In This Moment‘s video for the song “Roots” can be seen below. The clip was directed by Maria Brink and Robert Kley.
“Roots” is taken from the band‘s latest album, Ritual, which was released this past July by Atlantic Records in partnership with Roadrunner Records. The disc features a guest appearance from Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford on the song “Black Wedding”.
Ritual was produced by In This Moment‘s longtime collaborator — and multiple Grammy Award nominee — Kevin Churko (Five Finger Death Punch, Ozzy Osbourne, Hellyeah).
Asked how the material from Ritual has been going over live, guitarist Chris Howorth told Fuel The Scene magazine: “The reception has been overwhelmingly good all across the board. It’s kind of weird now… Because album sales are so different, with streams and everything, you don’t really notice it, except for on the live front, you see the people showing up and singing the songs, and you know that they’re getting it and hearing it. Otherwise, it’s hard to kind of tell.”
Added guitarist Randy Weitzel: “When we play a song for the first time, people are just sort of staring at you. But as tours go by, they start to get to know the lyrics and it livens up a little bit. So I think it’s going pretty good.”
Happy 55th today to Anthony Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers!
