Happy Friday Radicals! Do you know what my favorite thing about Friday is? New music releases! Today we get the new AVENGED SEVENFOLD “The Stage” DELUXE EDITION on vinyl! New AVATAR album “Avatar Country” arrives today, as well as the new BLACK VEIL BRIDES album “Vale!”
Speaking of AVATAR, I went to the Avatar Country tour last night here in NYC, and man oh man, what a show! It was great to see them play with a massive new set to a packed crowd at Gramercy Theater. Opening side-show act HELLZAPOPPIN and support band THE BRAINS were also excellent. You don’t want to miss this show when it comes through!
Pop Evil has released a behind-the-scenes studio video filmed at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville this past summer while the band was recording its self-titled fifth album. The clip, the first in a series of videos to come, documents the musicians living together as they embarked on the writing process for the new disc, which will follow up 2015’s Up.
The new Pop Evil disc is due out on February 16th. The first single and video is called “Waking Lions.” Pop Evil will embark on the “Music Over Words” tour on February 14th at the Kewadin Casino in Sault Saint Marie, Michigan, wrapping things up at the Fillmore in Detroit on April 6th. Additionally, Pop Evil is confirmed to appear at the Carolina Rebellion festival on Friday, May 5th and Florida’s Fort Rock on Sunday, April 29th. You can check out all the dates on the Road Rage page.
Tool drummer Danny Carey told Kerrang! magazine that the band’s new music is resolutely non-commercial, even joking that the songs are “too long.” Carey explained, “Whatever those guys play is how they express themselves. Adam (Jones, guitarist) and Justin (Chancellor, bass) aren’t musically educated, so they just come up with the weirdest s**t. I just try to anchor it down and make it simple . . . The tracks are long — too long! Definitely too long for the radio!”
When asked if he could reveal any track working titles or discuss the concept of the record, he replied, “It’s all still a work in progress. We don’t even go there until the record is done. It needs to have a voice of its own . . . You don’t think about that until the project’s finished and it all comes together and connects. Everything has its own voice.”
Adam Jones told us not long ago how the band puts its songs together: “We’ve got lots of material. Our strongest thing is jamming. But grouping stuff together — and that’s kind of how we work, you know, we jam and then you kind of go, ‘Wow, this works with this really well’ — and then you jam those two things and see if you can get ’em to work.”
Asked again about the timeline for the new LP, Carey stuck to the answer he’s given in other recent interviews, saying, “It’ll be out at some point in 2018.” Tool’s last album, 10,000 Days, came out in May 2006, more than 11 years ago. The instrumental members of the band have been working steadily on music for the past year, according to reports, with singer Maynard James Keenan rumored to be getting more involved in recent months.
Kid Rock has decided to change the name of his upcoming tour from “The Greatest Show On Earth” to the “American Rock ‘N’ Roll Tour” after being sued by the owners of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, who own the trademarked slogan. In a statement submitted to the court after Feld Entertainment filed its lawsuit, Rock said, “While I firmly believe that I am entitled under the First Amendment to name my tour after my song, I have changed the tour name because I do not want this lawsuit to distract me or my fans from focusing on what is important in my upcoming tour — my music.”
Feld Entertainment filed their lawsuit against Rock in Florida last month, claiming that while they had licensed public usage of trademarks in the past, no one from Rock’s camp had reached out about using the name. Rock’s attorney, Kenneth G. Turkel, stated that while Rock has already changed the name and began removing all marketing material using the moniker, he was still within his rights to use the title based on fair use grounds. Turkel also stated that Rock was free to name his song “Greatest Show On Earth” as it made no reference to the circus or its brand. A Feld Entertainment spokesperson said that the company still intends to pursue legal action against the singer.
Former Motorhead and Fastway guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke passed away on Wednesday (January 10th) after a battle with pneumonia. He was 67 years old. Clarke, a member of Motorhead from 1976 until 1982, was not an original member of the group but one-third of its classic lineup, which also included drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor and singer/bassist Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister.
Taylor died in November 2015 of liver failure, while Kilmister passed away from cancer in December of that same year, making Clarke the last surviving member of Motorhead’s best-known lineup until now. Clarke, Taylor and Lemmy appeared on five albums together: Motorhead’s 1977 self-titled debut, 1979’s Overkill and Bomber, 1980’s Ace Of Spades and 1982’s Iron Fist.
Finally, a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the legendary ROB ZOMBIE and Rage Against the Machine frontman ZACH DE LA ROCHA! Have a great Friday everyone!
