It’s Friday! Wooooo! You made it! Celebrate with some fresh music news:
Singer Mike Shinoda says that he has “every intention” of continuing with Linkin Park, half a year after the death of his bandmate Chester Bennington. Shinoda spoke out on the band’s future on Thursday, after he released a surprise three-song EP titled Post Traumatic in which he directly addresses Bennington’s death and his own anxiety over what would come next.
Shinoda wrote on Twitter, “I have every intention on continuing with LP, and the guys feel the same. We have a lot of rebuilding to do, and questions to answer, so it’ll take time.”
Discussing the EP, Shinoda wrote, “I wanted to put this out as soon as possible because I’m living it, and a lot of other people are living it, too. I want people to see and hear it as soon as I complete each thing.” Shinoda also revealed that he has “a bunch” of additional songs, saying, “I wanted to release these three today and see what the fans want me to do next. If you like these, I’ll keep going.”
Bennington committed suicide on July 20th at the age of 41. In the months that followed, fans have speculated about Linkin Park’s future, with some wondering if the group would stay together. Linkin Park paid tribute to Bennington last October with an emotional three-hour show that featured numerous guests joining the band onstage at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The one new song that Shinoda performed at that show, “Looking For An Answer,” does not appear on the EP. Asked about its absence, he wrote, “It still exists. I just want to figure out the right presentation.”
Avenged Sevenfold will skip this year’s Grammy Awards in apparent protest of the way the organization treats the rock and heavy metal genres. Avenged Sevenfold has received its first-ever Grammy nomination this year in the Best Rock Song category for the song “The Stage,” the title track from its latest LP. But asked by a fan on Twitter how they felt about the nomination, the band responded, “Honored. Unfortunately, they have taken ‘Best Rock Song’ off the telecast this year so we won’t be attending. Maybe next time.” Also nominated for Best Rock Song are Metallica‘s “Atlas, Rise!,” K.Flay‘s “Blood In The Cut,” Nothing More‘s “Go To War” and Foo Fighters‘ “Run.”
Avenged singer M. Shadows told us a while back that awards aren’t the most important thing to the band: “It’s cool, but it, you know, it’s one of those things. You know, you can’t let stuff like that go to your head ’cause I think it’s all whatever’s happening at the time and awards are…whatever.”
In an interview last month with Detroit radio station WRIF, Shadows expressed his disappointment that the Best Metal Performance category was one of 70 not televised during the Grammy Awards broadcast. He explained, “You wanna get nominated for a Grammy and you wanna get noticed by people and seen on TV . . . So the ‘metal’ award still is a problem because literally no one’s gonna see those bands or know that they’re nominated, and that’s an issue.”
The Best Rock Song category has been telecast in the past, but it will now join the 84 or so awards handed out in a non-televised event the afternoon before the main awards ceremony. Around a dozen prizes will be doled out on the broadcast, which is set for this Sunday January 28th on CBS-TV at 8:00 p.m. ET.
Canadian act Three Days Grace will release its sixth full-length album, titled Outsider, on March 9th. Bassist Brad Walst said about the follow-up to 2015’s Human, “To me, Outsider represents the journey to find your place. The world feels crazy at times. We try to get away from that every once in a while. We do our own thing, and we’re comfortable doing it. We have always looked forward — and not backwards. That’s an ongoing theme.”
The band shared the video for its first single from the new LP, “The Mountain,” on Thursday morning. The clip was filmed at a UFC octagon and features a cameo by UFC fighter Misha Cirkunov. You can watch it below!
Drummer Neil Sanderson said that the record’s title also reflected the way in which the band wrote, electing to work in a converted garage two hours outside Toronto instead of in their downtown rehearsal space in the city. Sanderson explained, “This is all about taking a step back from life’s madness without destroying yourself, cutting everyone off, or going crazy. You get a break and find the space to create.”
Additional work was done on Sanderson’s 90-acre farm before recording commenced at Ontario’s remote Jukasa Studios. Outsider is the second Three Days Grace effort to feature Brad’s brother Matt on lead vocals, following the departure of original frontman Adam Gontier in late 2012. Matt’s debut with the group, Human, debuted at Number 16 on the Billboard 200 album chart and yielded two chart-topping singles in “Painkiller” and “I Am Machine.”
Metallica is reissuing its long-out-of-print 1987 EP, The $5.98 EP – Garage Days Re-Revisited, on April 13th. The five-song set includes covers of songs by Diamond Head, Holocaust, Killing Joke, Budgie and the Misfits. The remastered EP will be released as a CD, a download and in several vinyl versions, including a picture disc, as well as on cassette and in a longbox package reflecting the era in which it was first released.
All Metallica.com pre-orders will receive an instant download of the remastered version of Killing Joke’s “The Wait.” The EP’s five songs were later released as a part of the Garage, Inc. double album in 1998, but Metallica thought it would be fun to bring them back now in the original format. The other tracks include Diamond Head’s “Helpless,” Holocaust’s “The Small Hours,” Budgie’s “Crash Course In Brain Surgery” and a medley of the Misfits’ “Last Caress” and “Green Hell.” Pre-orders can be made now at Metallica.com.
Korn frontman Jonathan Davis has premiered the music video for his new solo track, “What It Is.” The song appears on the newly released soundtrack to the film American Satan and also serves as the first single from the singer’s forthcoming solo album. That effort is expected to be released later in the year through Sumerian Records with more details to come.
Slash, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and Ozzy Osbourne are among the artists who appear in a new documentary titled #NoJoke. The film follows singer Andrew Cole as he sets out to convince his musical idols to help him record a song in support of victims of bullying. In addition to the artists mentioned above, he’s joined by actors Jeff Goldblum, Patrick Stewart and Jane Lynch, late Motorhead frontman Lemmy, Julian Lennon and more, who share their talents and their own sometimes painful experiences with bullying.
Finally, we want to wish a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Matt Heafy of Trivium and the legendary Eddie Van Halen!
Make it a great one!
