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Tuesday, May 01 2018

Julian Woolsey


Good morning Radicals! It’s the first of May and we got your music news right here:

Shinedown has shared behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the video for the song “The Human Radio,” from the band’s sixth studio LP, Attention Attention. The new disc is a loose concept album and Shinedown plans to shoot a video for every song. We asked singer Brent Smith when we might see them all: “We’ve done two videos so far. In regards to how long it will take, we don’t have a set timeline. The fact of the matter is that we are going to release a video with every song, because we’re gonna tell the story. I would like to say everything would be filmed…by the middle of 2019 it should all be done.”

Attention Attention will be released on May 4th and also features the hit rock radio single “Devil.” Shinedown bassist Eric Bass produced and mixed the 14-track album in its entirety.

Smith told Cryptic Rock about the album, “I wouldn’t necessarily call it a traditional concept record . . . This is an album that is definitely a psychological, emotional, and physical journey.” Shinedown appears at the Carolina Rebellion festival in Concord, North Carolina this Friday (May 4th) and will kick off a tour with Five Finger Death Punch, Starset and Bad Wolves on Sunday (May 6th) in Nashville.

The deluxe box set edition of A Perfect Circle‘s new album, Eat The Elephant, features a version that is billed as the first hologram LP. The 58-minute hologram, which unfolds through the eyes of a young girl over the 12-song album arc, reveals itself when fans place the prism on their smartphones and enter a special code. The box set can be ordered via the A Perfect Circle online store.

The hologram was designed by award-winning filmmaker Steven Sebring, who said, “Having Maynard (James Keenan, singer) and Billy‘s (Howerdel, guitar) trust to create this for A Perfect Circle was a true artist’s dream. Their 14-year break allowed technology to catch up with their groundbreaking music and gave me the chance to apply new ideas of dimensional capture to this stunning album.”

Eat The Elephant was also made available in the traditional incarnations: digital, CD and various colored vinyl editions. The LP was released on April 20th and debuted this past weekend at Number three on the Billboard 200 album sales survey, moving 68,000 copies in its first week. 63,000 of those were traditional album sales.

A Perfect Circle’s last studio release, eMOTive, opened and peaked at Number Two in 2004 with 142,000 copies sold in its first week. All four of the band’s studio offerings have debuted in the Top Five. The group will start a short North American jaunt this spring on May 12th in Somerset, Wisconsin that wraps May 26th in Dallas, after which A Perfect Circle will head to Europe.

Ghost has announced its very first arena dates which will take place at the Forum in Inglewood, California on November 16th and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York on December 15th. The band unveiled the dates yesterday with a special press conference helmed by Papa Nihil and Sister Imperator at Irving Plaza in New York City.

Ghost frontman Tobias Forge gave us a hint of what to expect when the band takes its new stage show on the road: “It will definitely be an upgrade. We have a lot of new production value that is to me a little more thought-through and a little more invested in than the past. We have a bigger band now as well, in terms of personnel. We’re a little bit more like a Springsteen or Guns N’ Roses sort of band, with backup singers, and it’s gonna be the best version yet.”

Papa Nihil and the Sister also debuted the “Chapter Three: Back On The Road” video at the event, in which the question of what happened to Ghost’s three “previous” singers — Papa Emeritus I, II and III — was finally answered. In the video, the three Papas in a darkened room playing Uno, when Sister Imperator tells them they’re going back on the road “in full regalia” and that they’re “going to be back in the spotlight forever.” A Nameless Ghoul then injects Papa III in the neck, before all three Papas are seen being laid into coffins then packed into travel cases in the back of a van. Of course, all three Papas have been played singer and founding member Tobias Forge, who will now appear live as Cardinal Copia.

Asked about the new identity in the latest issue of Metal Hammer, Forge said, “If we just continued with Papa to Papa to Papa to Papa, that would grow very boring . . . If I had just done that, Ghost would have gone on auto-pilot and it would have grown stale very quickly.” General admission tickets for both shows will be available for purchase starting Friday (May 4th) at 10:00 a.m. local time. The band is also touring this month in support of its upcoming album Prequelle, which arrives on June 1st.

Guns N’ Roses fans have gone into “wild speculation” mode following the arrival of a new website, GNR.fm, that appears to be teasing an upcoming product or event related to the band’s classic Appetite For Destruction album. The site, which is registered to Universal Music Group, is displaying the message “DESTRUCTION IS COMING” along with the hashtag #AppetiteForDestruction.

In addition, a billboard featuring the five skulls from the Appetite For Destruction cover art — each representing one of the band’s original members — has shown up in the Camden area of London, also promoting the GNR.fm site.

This has led to speculation among fans that Appetite For Destruction will be reissued in a special deluxe edition with plenty of bonus material, although there has been no official word to date on any kind of release.

Some fans are going further, theorizing that the inclusion of the five skulls from the original cover means that founding drummer Steven Adler and guitarist Izzy Stradlin will participate in an event focused on Appetite. Neither Adler nor Stradlin have been part of the Guns N’ Roses reunion tour that started in April 2016 and is continuing later this year with singer Axl Rose, guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan. Adler did rejoin Guns at several shows on the tour, including three stops on the U.S. leg and one gig in Buenos Aires, Argentina, playing drums on two songs. Stradlin reportedly turned down a five-figure fee to participate, writing that the band didn’t want to “split the loot equally.” Guns N’ Roses will return in June for a seven-week European jaunt, but the band’s plans until then, and beyond that, remain unknown for now.

The Edgewater Hotel in Seattle, which already has a Beatles-themed suite, is now taking booking for its Pearl Jam suite. The hotel partnered with the band and their fan club to put together the new accommodations. According to the hotel’s website, the suite includes “industrial, grunge-inspired designs,” “authentic band art posters,” “fan representation in design” and “ultimate rock ‘n’ roll luxury.” The suite also has a record player, all the band’s albums on vinyl, plus a guitar and amplifier in case the next Eddie Vedder stays there and gets the urge to jam. 

Speaking of the Pearl Jam singer, his three-day Ohana Fest, which he organizes with surfer Kelly Slater, is set to take place on September 28th, 29th and 30th at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point, California. Vedder himself will headline a bill that also includes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Mumford & Sons, Beck, Norah Jones, Liz Phair, Young The Giant and others. Tickets go on sale May 4th through the festival’s website.
Pearl Jam has been writing its 11th studio LP and is heading out on European and North American tour dates this spring and summer.

Finally, we’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to former Smashing Pumpkins bassist D’arcy Wretzky! Congrats!