Happy Friday! You’ve made it! Here’s some music news to celebrate:
Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda has unveiled a new solo song, titled “About You,” along with an accompanying music video. The tune also features producer and rapper Blackbear and will appear on Shinoda’s debut solo album, Post Traumatic, due out June 15th. Shinoda premiered the track on Apple Music’s Beats One, where he said that the lyrics were not directly about late Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington.
Shinoda explained, “I was writing all these songs and a lot of the early stuff on this album was about what had happened and it was about Chester and all that. Then I started trying to write some songs that weren’t about Chester and weren’t about that whole thing, and I realized that people would hear them as if they were about him. I was like, man even when I try and make a song that’s not about him, it still feels like it’s about him.”
“About You” follows the previously released Post Traumatic tracks “Crossing a Line” and “Nothing Makes Sense Anymore.” In January, Shinoda shared a three-track EP, also titled Post Traumatic, which marked his first new music since Bennington’s suicide last July.
Shinoda also said that while he was at first reluctant to perform Linkin Park songs when he starts doing solo shows soon, he has gradually changed his thinking on that. He said, “Look, there’s a universe of possibilities. I could do covers, but why would I do covers when I can do a couple of songs that I actually wrote and perform vocals on?” Shinoda also said that the members of Linkin Park are in touch and talking, but have not come up with any decisions about the band’s future, explaining, “It could be one thing, like we said ‘Hey do you want to go to the studio and just write some new stuff?’ That’s like the easiest thing in the world. Yes, we can do that. But then what happens after that? . . . I don’t want to get out onstage and if it’s just the five of us, how are we going to play ‘One Step Closer.’” Shinoda will make his first solo appearance since Bennington’s death at this spring’s Identity LA festival in downtown Los Angeles on May 12th.
Muse will release a 90-minute concert film called Drones World Tour in theaters across the country for one night only on July 12th. The film captures the British trio performing in multiple cities in 2016, playing a career-spanning set including “Psycho,” “Madness,” “Uprising,” “Supermassive Black Hole” and more. The band’s stage production on the trek featured never-before-seen special effects, with autonomous drones flying over the audience, giant projections and intricate LED lasers creating an incredible audio and visual experience.
Frontman Matt Bellamy said, “The symbiosis between humanity and technology has always been something I am interested by. Drones just seem to be a very interesting modern metaphor for what that represents . . . You want to leave people with the idea that they ask the question themselves about the role of technology in our lives and whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
Bassist Chris Wolstenholme told us a while back that Muse always tries to make its shows more than just a performance of songs: “That’s always the aim, really, is just to come up with something that just looks really impressive, you know, and something that kind of ties in a little bit to the concept of the album but, you know, more importantly, something that becomes an experience and not just a gig, you know.”Tickets for the one-day showing will go on sale on May 3rd. More information can be found at musedrones.film
Muse released a new single and video on February 15th called “Thought Contagion.” The track follows “Dig Down,” which was released last year. The band intends to issue two more singles in the coming months, with the full album arriving either in the fall or early 2019. The band has a handful of live shows coming up, including an appearance at Carolina Rebellion next month.
Ghost is inviting fans to a “special sermon” that will be held on the morning of Monday, April 30th, at 9:00 a.m. ET at the Irving Plaza music venue in New York City. The group adds that promptness and “ghoulish attire” will be welcomed and “graciously rewarded.” No other information about what the event might entail has been revealed.
The new Ghost album, Prequelle, is due out on June 1st. The band has already issued the first single and apocalyptic video, “Rats.”
Singer Tobias Forge, a.k.a. Cardinal Copia, told us that macabre themes and dark subject matter are things that are close to his heart in real life: “Horror and the devil and heavy metal and all that, that’s in my blood. That itself was never a commercial add-on. In my opinion, it’s very sincere and it’s very much part of me. As fictious as everything seems, like a charade and like a facade, it’s actually very much those things that I grew up with and things that I like seeing myself.”
Prequelle follows up the breakthrough 2015 album Meliora, which featured the Grammy-winning single “Cirice.” A number of pre-order packages for Prequelle have been launched, and among the items available are Ghost-themed masks similar to those worn by plague doctors back in the 17th century. Ghost will kick off a run of North American dates on May 5th in Riverside, California.
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist Kirk Hammett recently visited the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, during the band’s European tour. Based in Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border, CERN operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world and is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web. While there, Ulrich and Hammett spoke about their interest in science in an interview posted online.
Hammett explained, “I was an avid science student. At one point, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was in elementary school. I was into model rocketry — I built rockets. I always maintained my fascination with science and all sorts of science — all sorts of different types of science, from basic physics all the way to quantum physics.”
Ulrich added, “I grew up with a father who has been very interested in physics, in philosophy, very interested in [the] universe and particles and everything. Most of my schooling came not only from the Danish public school system, but came from hanging out with my dad and staring up into space and the night sky and talking and listening and being around my father, who was very interested in everything about the universe and history and big bangs and black holes.” Both Hammett and Ulrich called CERN “amazing,” with Hammett adding, “It’s very, very humbling to know that there’s something like this that exists in our world at this time.”
Metallica has played 17 shows in Europe since early February and has another eight dates booked between now and mid-May. The band will kick off a new 34-date North American leg of its “WorldWired” tour on September 2nd in Madison, Wisconsin.
That’s a wrap! Enjoy Infinity War!
