Good morning Radicals! Here’s what’s up in Music News this morning:
Shinedown has released a video documentary on the making of its new album, Attention Attention. The follow-up to 2015’s Threat To Survival is a loose concept album charting the highs and lows of the record’s protagonist. Singer Brent Smith explained, “I had a really rough spot happen to me after we toured (2012 album) Amaryllis and I had some emotional and mental issues pop up. They kind of got the best of me again — but we all had to build each other back up again, and this is really a journey of those four years.”
Smith told us more about the LP’s overall themes: “It’s about not being afraid to fail. I think people sometimes will put themselves into a corner and they will paralyze themselves mentally and physically by understanding that, yes, they want something different for their life, but they’re too afraid to actually go after it because they think that they’re already gonna fail or that they won’t win. My outlook on that is: I don’t think that people will be defined by their failures. I think you’ll be defined by the fact that you didn’t give up.”
Attention Attention features the Number Two rock single “Devil.” The band also just shot a video for the song “The Human Radio.” Shinedown kicked off a tour with Five Finger Death Punch, Starset and Bad Wolves last weekend that next stops in Tulsa, Oklahoma today.
Five Finger Death Punch has released the official music video for the song “Sham Pain,” from the band’s upcoming seventh studio album, And Justice For None. Guitarist Zoltan Bathory described the tune as “a lyrical snapshot of probably the most chaotic, yet the biggest year of our career. So far, we’ve come out of every bear attack relatively un-scraped, and the band is tighter than ever. Life is not so difficult if you don’t take yourself sooo seriously.”
Bathory added about the clip, “It was a simple process: We lit the set on fire and then made our poor director Rob Anderson‘s artistic sense into a piñata. Whatever he could salvage became the music video.”
“Sham Pain” finds Five Finger Death Punch frontman Ivan Moody spitting out such lines as “My label tried to sue me/TMZ tried to screw me/Blabbermouth can f**king suck it/Cause they never f**king knew me.” The lyrics refer to a particularly event-filled 2016 during which the band was sued by its record label, Prospect Park, while a woman claiming to be Moody’s wife accused the singer of infidelity and abuse during their relationship.
Moody has also gone through rehab and with four members of the band now in recovery, Bathory told us that the group is a safer place for him now: “The whole band is sober, so hopefully it stays that way and it creates an environment that the guys who have a problem, you know, they can stay in a sober environment. If I want to be (laughs) serious about it, it’s a positive development, but you know, it’s great. It’s one less issue.”
Five Finger Death Punch’s follow-up to 2015’s Got Your Six was originally delivered to Prospect Park in December 2016, but a legal battle with the company delayed the LP’s arrival for more than a year. It arrives now on May 18th. Five Finger Death Punch is in the midst of a spring tour with Shinedown that pulls into Tulsa, Oklahoma on Thursday (May 10th). The band will kick off a co-headlining run with Breaking Benjamin on July 16th in Seattle.
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong‘s new band, The Longshot, has postponed the remainder of the West Coast leg of its tour. Armstrong posted on Tuesday night, “One of our band members @longshot is dealing with a very serious family emergency. It’s with heavy hearts we need to announce tonight’s show in Santa Ana and the rest of the west coast shows will be postponed. We love you all and we will be back. Please send good vibes to each other.”
Five more shows through May 15th — in San Francisco, Seattle and Bellingham, Washington, along with Vancouver and Portland — are affected by the postponement. As of now, the band is still scheduled to play on the East Coast, beginning May 22nd in New York and running through June 2nd in Philadelphia.
The Longshot’s debut LP, Love Is For Losers, arrived on April 20th, along with a music video for the title track. Armstrong began teasing the new act early last month on Instagram. Prior to releasing the album, he shared three songs on April 13th and hit the stage with The Longshot for the first time that same weekend. Green Day has been on a break since completing the tour cycle for its 2016 album Revolution Radio. The band has reportedly been working with HBO on the film version of its 2004 punk opera American Idiot.
Alice In Chains guitarist/singer Jerry Cantrell said in an interview with SiriusXM that the band’s new single, “The One You Know,” was inspired by legendary late rock artist David Bowie. Cantrell explained, “It’s really aggressive. It’s got a super-aggro riff. I was thinking kind of Bowie when I was writing it, a little bit, so it’s got kind of a metal ‘Fame’ shuffle to it, kind of almost. It’s a good aggro riff and it’s got the classic Alice In Chains chorus, with a weird kind of trippy middle part.”
“The One You Know” is taken from Alice In Chains’ upcoming sixth full-length studio LP, which is due out later this year. The title has not yet been revealed. Cantrell added about the new disc, “I wouldn’t say that the rest of the record sounds like (‘The One You Know’), but that’s a good indicator of what the rest of the record kind of feels like. There’s a lot of edgy stuff there, a lot of rocking stuff, a lot of weird stuff, and some pretty stuff in there too.”
The new LP follows up 2013’s The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. Regarding the five-year gap between records, Cantrell remarked, “We’ve been really fortunate in most of our career to be able to make music when we feel like it rather than having to be on somebody else’s schedule, which is really nice. So we take advantage of that.”
Alice In Chains is currently on a short spring tour that finishes up on May 19th in Philadelphia. After hitting Europe and Israel, the band will start a second leg on August 22nd in Vancouver.
Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready and Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall have teamed up on a cover of the late Tom Petty‘s classic hit, “I Won’t Back Down.” McCready produced the track and also plays guitar on it. An accompanying, more politically charged music video has been assembled from footage submitted by fans of marches and gatherings in support of various causes.
McCready and Tunstall chose the track to honor Petty as well as show their support for “all the people all over the world marching, protesting and standing up for justice and equality,” according to a message that appears at the beginning of the video.
The clip also features footage of McCready, Tunstall and Thunderpussy drummer Leah Julius recording the song in the studio. Proceeds from sales of the track will go to Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy Foundation, which was founded by Pearl Jam in 2006 to aid efforts towards community health, the environment, arts and education and social change. Pearl Jam has been writing its 11th studio LP and is heading out on European and North American tour dates this spring and summer.
Foo Fighters brought another memorable fan to the stage in Nashville last week in the shape of eight-year-old “Little Fonzie,” who got behind Taylor Hawkins‘ drum set for a three-minute solo and then decided he wanted to stay a bit longer. Frontman Dave Grohl finally had to ask, “Dad, come get your kid. We have a couple of more songs we’ve got to do,” before luring Fonzie offstage with the promise of a soda.
Smashing Pumpkins have added three more shows to their “Shiny And Oh So Bright” tour. The new stops are all Canadian, with the band playing London, Ontario on August 9th, Calgary, Alberta on September 8th and Edmonton, Alberta on September 9th. Tickets for the shows will go on sale via the band’s website and Live Nation at 10:00 a.m. local time on May 14th.
Finally, we’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to Tool drummer Danny Carey and Filter‘s Richard Patrick! Have a lovely day!
