Good morning Radicals! Here’s what’s going on in the world of rock and roll:
Stone Sour guitarist Josh Rand has given his first interview regarding his decision to step away from the band earlier this year to address his addiction issues. Rand emerged from treatment earlier this month and admitted he had been struggling with Xanax and alcohol dependencies. Rand told Des Moines, Iowa radio station (and hardDrive affiliate) Lazer 103.3, “I just had decided that I needed some help dealing with stuff. Really it’s been stuff that I’ve been dealing with — well one thing for a very long time, which surprised people. Nobody had any idea about it. I (had) been on Xanax for like eight years and nobody knew at all.”
Rand said he was first prescribed Xanax for anxiety related to flying. He added, “And then over the course of the last couple years I started drinking and when we started touring, I was basically day-drinking. But not drinking to get messed up, but just to maintain, I guess. Or to be able to cope, to have this buzz.”
The guitarist said he just started feeling “horrible and miserable” and that things came to a head for him in January on the ShipRocked cruise. Rand recalled, “We were flying from Florida back up to Canada and basically we were in the airport and I just had made the decision that I had to come home. Luckily I had the support of the other guys and my family to make that decision. I had hit a wall and knew that I needed to regroup and deal with my stuff. So that’s what I did.” Stone Sour enlisted a temporary replacement for its Canadian tour, with Rand now scheduled to rejoin his bandmates this weekend at the Welcome To Rockville festival in Jacksonville, Florida.
Rand said that he wanted to address his issues publicly because he wanted to break the negative stigma surrounding addiction and let other addicts know that there is no shame in getting help when it is needed. He explained, “I’ll be the first to admit, years ago, I didn’t understand it. I honestly thought [of] the addiction thing as a weakness, and it’s because I didn’t understand it at the time. I guess it took me to become an addict to understand the addiction side of it. But that’s the other reason why I feel okay to talk about it, ’cause I just know how much better I feel getting help over the last three months.”
A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan revealed in a new interview with Stuff that one of the songs on the band’s new Eat The Elephant album, called “Disillusioned,” was partially inspired by negative Yelp reviews of his Caduceus Cellars winery in Arizona. Keenan explained, “I’ve had bad Yelp reviews of my tasting room, but it had nothing to do with the wine. The reviews were bad merely because I wasn’t there! That’s like giving my record a bad review because I wasn’t in the record store when they bought it! I can only say to those people: shut the f**k up!”
Keenan also ripped Yelp itself, saying, “That thing is f**king poison! Sites like Yelp have fostered this generation of novice experts who have the power to open their mouths but haven’t actually put the work into knowing what they’re talking about.”
Keenan said a while back that fans of his music with A Perfect Circle or Tool have been mostly supportive of his wine business: “There’s always gonna be the kids who, they’re not gonna get it, just for whatever reason…environmental retardation or too much corn syrup or I don’t know. But for the most part, 999.9 percent of the people get it and they’re absolutely supportive and they trust that there’s something to it.”
Caduceus’ tasting room has just seven reviews on Yelp but the average rating is four out of five stars. Christina from Dallas wrote that the staff was “unprofessional and rude,” while another reviewer described the bartender as “super awesome.” Yelp also lists the location as now closed.
A Perfect Circle just played Coachella over the weekend and will head back out on the road starting on May 12th in Somerset, Wisconsin.
2019 pic.twitter.com/Lt8udtoJb6
— Slipknot (@slipknot) April 20, 2018
Slipknot‘s Twitter account has posted a photo of singer Corey Taylor and percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan on Friday (April 20th), with only the year “2019” in the caption. Taylor confirmed to us that the band is indeed aiming to release its sixth studio LP next year: “The guys are writing tons of music, and I’ve written lyrics to almost all of it, and we’re gonna start kind of putting demos together here and there and really try to get ahead of the curve as far as like what happens, you know, next. The plan right now is next year, but that is a huge plan because we still haven’t narrowed anything down. So we will definitely see what happens.”
Back in February, Taylor declared that the new material was “awesome” and posted an image of him writing lyrics for the record. Asked by Musik Universe about the lyrics, Taylor explained, “It’s really dark. It’s probably the most autobiographical I’ve been in years. Just for the fact that I’ve been through a lot the last few years and I’ve been sitting on a lot.” The new disc would follow up 2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter, which ended a lengthy hiatus for the group following the death of bassist Paul Gray in 2010.
A documentary about Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch, titled Loud, Crazy Love, will premiere during two film festivals in May. The 86-minute film directed by first-time feature filmmakers Trey Hill and Scott Mayo will make its Texas premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival the week of May 3rd through the 10th, followed by a second premiere during the Nashville Film Festival from May 10th through the 19th, with multiple screenings at each festival.
The documentary includes exclusive access to Welch on tour and at home, along with in-depth interviews with the artist, his family and his Korn bandmates, while exploring his identity as a father and the complicated relationship he shares with his daughter Jennea.
Mayo said, “The intimate details of Brian and Jennea’s life during the years he was absent from Korn are turbulent . . . You don’t have to be a Korn fan to empathize with Brian’s decision to sacrifice all his success in an attempt to be a good father.”
Welch says in one scene in the film that while he was happy at the birth of his daughter, he also knew that he was “incapable of being what she needed and deserved.”
Welch left Korn in early 2005 when Jennea was seven, at the same time announcing that he kicked his addictions to drugs and alcohol by becoming a born-again Christian. He rejoined the band in 2013.
He told us a while ago that he bottomed out during the last two years before he left Korn in 2005: “2003 is when I started using speed every day. Meth. I got hooked on meth and in order to get up and function, even play the show, I had to snort lines, you know. And I told myself, ‘I’ll do this tour, I’ll do this Ozzfest, and I’ll do meth the whole time and I’ll go home and check into a rehab.’ And it scared me, you know, ’cause I was like coming — every month I would tell myself, ‘I’m gonna stop this tour,’ and I wouldn’t be able to do it. Like a fear would come over me. I was just trapped.”
Production of the film covered four years and includes two decades worth of never-before-seen material from Welch, his family and Korn. A wide release is expected for the fall. Korn’s latest album was 2016’s The Serenity Of Suffering, with the band possibly slated to return to the studio later this year.
Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder made a surprise guest appearance with a New York City blues band featuring his friend, photographer Danny Clinch, on Saturday night (April 21st) at the Tribeca Grill in downtown Manhattan. Vedder performed “All Along the Watchtower” with the band, showing up shortly after accompanying his 75-year-old mother and her brothers to a performance of Springsteen On Broadway.
Breaking Benjamin‘s sixth studio album, Ember, has debuted at Number Three on the Billboard 200 album chart, selling 88,000 equivalent album units, 80,000 of which were traditional album sales. Ember is the multi-platinum band’s fourth Top Five debut on the Billboard survey, following 2015’s chart-topping debut for Dark Before Dawn, 2009’s Dear Agony, which arrived at Number Four, and 2006’s Phobia which launched at Number Two.
Late Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland‘s first wife says the rocker died with child support obligations that need to be fulfilled, so she wants his estate to take over those payments. According to documents filed last week, Mary Weiland says her two kids, 17-year-old Noah and 15-year-old Lucy, don’t receive support from other sources and depended on the funds from Weiland. Mary claims that she was awarded $4,000 a month in child support when she and Scott divorced. Meanwhile, Weiland’s widow Jamie has also filed a claim seeking a monthly allowance of $64,000, but Mary, who is also the head of the estate, says Jamie did not file the paperwork properly and her claim has since lapsed.
System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian and his Scars On Broadway project have launched a video for their new single, “Lives.” The video launch coincides with the 103rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, with a portion of proceeds from sales of the single on iTunes going towards Armenia Fund’s Lives Campaign. The song is taken from Malakian’s new album Dictator, which will be released on July 20th.
Garbage will embark on a fall tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of its 1998 sophomore album Version 2.0. The band will perform the LP in its entirety on the trek, along with some B-sides from the era. The 17-date tour kicks off on September 29th in Seattle and concludes on October 27th in Brooklyn, New York. Tickets go on sale April 27th. Version 2.0 will also be reissued on June 22nd, featuring 10 bonus songs.
An upcoming documentary called Long Live Rock…Celebrate The Chaos examines the culture of hard rock and heavy metal and the relationships that exist around and within that culture. In addition to featuring interviews with members of Metallica, Slipknot, Korn, Avenged Sevenfold, Rob Zombie and more, the film also spotlights the lives of metal and rock fans and discusses the problem of substance abuse with several well-known musicians.
In a trailer for the film, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich calls the hard rock community a “place of solidarity . . . where the disenfranchised feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves.” Also interviewed in the film are Jonathan Davis of Korn, M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold, Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour, Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach, Taylor Momsen of the Pretty Reckless, Josh and Jake Kiszka of Greta Van Fleet, plus members of Beartooth, Guns N’ Roses, Five Finger Death Punch, Halestormand more.
Interviews with everyday fans were filmed at festivals like Rock On The Range. Scott Prince, a law enforcement veteran from Kentucky, says that he often discusses music with inmates, explaining, “Music provides that bond where two people can find a mutual bond.” On the subject of substance abuse, Jonathan Davis remarks, “A lot of people in this scene like to drink and do drugs, and that’s where they escape. But if you continue down that path, it’s just going to lead to dark, bad things.”
The film is directed by Jonathan McHugh and fans can contribute to it via PledgeMusic.com, with different gifts and perks awarded depending on the amount of the donation.
Finally, we’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to Breaking Benjamin guitarist Jasen Rauch and Alter Bridge bassist Brian Marshall!
