Good morning Radicals! First off, congratulations to Foo Fighters and Mastodon for their Grammy wins! Foo’s took home best rock song for “Run” and Mastodon was awarded best metal performance for “Sultan’s Curse!” Can’t wait to talk to Troy Sanders about it later today!
Stone Sour guitarist Josh Rand will sit out the band’s new North American tour after having entered treatment for unspecified issues. The band said in a statement, “Unfortunately, Josh Rand has checked into a treatment center and will not be joining Stone Sour for the Canada/US tour. Though he will be back as soon as possible, we ask you all to keep him in your thoughts. Until then, the rest of Stone Sour will see you all on tour in Jan/Feb. Thank you.”
Rand most recently performed with the band on last week’s ShipRocked cruise. Stone Sour did not indicate who would play guitar on the new tour, which just started this past weekend in British Columbia. The trek includes dates with Halestorm, In This Moment and Red Sun Rising. You can see all those dates on the Road Rage page!
Breaking Benjamin has set April 13th as the release date for its sixth studio album, Ember. Speaking about the LP, founder and frontman Ben Burnley said, “People have always really liked the heavier side of the band. I think that’s what they sort of gravitate towards. But we also make sure to explore our melodic and softer side too.” He added, “We just tried to make it more extreme — the softer side on this album is really soft, and the heavy side is really heavy. We decided to give everybody what they want to the furthest degree.”
The first single from Ember, “Red Cold River,” already has 2.5 million streams and is Number 13 at rock radio after three weeks. The video has over 600,000 views. Ember is the follow-up to 2015’s Dark Before Dawn, which debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 chart and yielded three chart-topping singles with “Failure,” “Angels Fall” and “Never Again.”Breaking Benjamin is currently on a U.S. arena tour with Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet For My Valentine that pulls into Biloxi, Mississippi on Wednesday, January 31st. A new song from the album, “Feed The Wolf,” is now being streamed online. You can listen below!
Queens Of The Stone Age returned to the stage last week for the first time since frontman Josh Homme kicked a photographer during a show in Los Angeles last month. The band’s first public appearances since the December 9th incident took place in Canada with Homme on his best behavior. He did not address the incident directly, but introduced one song in Victoria, British Columbia by saying, “Sometimes things go wrong, and when they’re wrong it’s too late.”
As previously reported, video footage of the Los Angeles incident showed Homme walking across the stage past photographer Chelsea Lauren in the photo pit, stopping briefly, then giving a direct kick to her camera and knocking it into her face. After a first apology in which he said he was “lost in performance” and hadn’t noticed Lauren had been hurt, Homme posted a more extensive apology on video the next day, saying in part, “I don’t have any excuse or reason to justify what I did. I was a total d**k, and I’m truly sorry, and I hope you’re okay.” Queens Of The Stone Age are touring in support of their latest album, Villains, and next play in Fresno, California tonight.
Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron has shared a brief video online from what appears to be a writing session for the band’s now-abandoned seventh album. You can watch it here. The clip is focused on Cameron as he plays along to what sounds like a new song. Cameron posted the clip for “Flashback Friday,” simply writing under it, “A taste from 2016.”
Soundgarden was working on material for the follow-up to 2012’s King Animal before singer Chris Cornell took his own life in May 2017. Although the group had completed around six songs for the project, only demos and not finished studio versions were recorded. Cornell had indicated in interviews before his death that the band intended to resume writing and recording the album in the summer of 2017.
Cameron told us a while back that Soundgarden had a fairly straightforward method of writing songs: “The way we’ve always written is four guys in a room just slamming it out. A lot of times Chris would write complete songs and he would record a demo and we’d learn his demos, and then sort of add our own spice to it, so to speak.”
Whether any of the material that the band worked on, even in demo form, ever sees the light of day remains unknown at this point. It would likely represent the final music written by Cornell before his death. Cameron also plays drums in Pearl Jam, who will return to the road this summer in both Europe and the U.S., with the band rumored to be working on a new LP.
That’s a wrap, have a great day everyone!