Good morning Radicals! We’re in full recovery mode after this past weekend at Rock on the Range… which means we’re posting all of the videos we shot! Keep your eyes on the hardDriveRadio YouTube channel as we relive the glory all week! We’ve got great videos with Lou Brutus chatting with Josh Rand of Stone Sour:
Matt Tuck of Bullet for My Valentine:
and Alex Varkatzas of Atreyu:
The upcoming Nine Inch Nails release, Bad Witch, will be issued as a full-length album and not an EP. This is happening despite the fact that it is relatively brief and is the third entry, following 2016’s Not The Actual Events and 2017’s Add Violence, in what was originally billed as a trilogy of EPs.
Posting in a Nine Inch Nails fan forum under the name “teitan,” NIN main man Trent Reznor responded to a user named “Quantum550,” who wrote that an album consists of seven tracks at minimum and runs over 30 minutes in length. Reznor replied, “Want to know why it’s being labeled an LP instead of an EP? EPs show up with singles in Spotify and other streaming services = they get lost easier. EPs feel less important in today’s music-isn’t-as-important-as-it-once-was world. Why make it easier to ignore? We’re not charging any more for it so why get worked up about it?”
Also apparently answering Quantum550’s comment that the EP was delayed by a “lack of inspiration,” Reznor retorted, “Quantum550: suck my entire c**k.” Bad Witch in fact contains six tracks and runs 30 minutes and 11 seconds. It arrives on June 22nd.
Nine Inch Nails will embark this fall on the “Cold And Black And Infinite” 2018 North American tour in support of the disc. The trek will launch on September 13th in Phoenix and feature two-night stands in a number of cities, wrapping with four dates in Los Angeles in early December.
Rise Against has announced the upcoming release of Ghost Note Symphonies, Vol. 1, a collection of reimagined versions of their songs in more stripped-back arrangements. The band has just shared a video for the first single from the set, a new version of “House On Fire” that places more emphasis on acoustic guitars and also features drummer Brandon Barnes playing his kit with brushes.
The Chicago-based act said in a statement, “You’ll find the songs stripped down, with alternate instrumentation, unique orchestration and a surprise or two.” The album is set to drop on July 27th.
McIlrath told us a while back that despite Rise Against’s success, the band’s mission has not changed from its early years: “The bands that I grew up listening to and watching, they would always take the stage with more in mind that just selling records and selling T-shirts. What we do today is just an extension of that. It’s really just giving back to the scene that gave so much to us, you know, and trying to carry on that torch to the next generation of punk rock so they can see and understand what this music is, and what our responsibilities and our obligations are.”
Rise Against has been touring in support of its eighth studio album, Wolves, which came out in June 2017. The set featured the Top 10 rock singles “The Violence” and “House On Fire.” The outfit will spend the month of June in Europe, before returning for a summer North American trek with AFI that kicks off in late July.
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl acted as a judge at the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest in Memphis this past weekend. Grohl met with a number of fans, even briefly jamming with some. He also played a bit with country singer Tim Montana.
Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins told us not long ago that Grohl remains approachable and down to earth despite his success: “He’s definitely not a rock star in any way, shape or form, you know. He doesn’t have that…so much sense of entitlement with so many guys out there that I see. Just, like, playing festivals and stuff, you see some of these people and you’re like, ‘Dude, you’re just a f***ing musician.’ And most of the time people who act like that aren’t even good ones.”
Foo Fighters recently confirmed that they will headline the 2018 edition of Cal Jam, the once-dormant festival that Grohl and company revived in 2017 as a one-day event featuring the Foos, Queens Of The Stone Age, Cage The Elephant, the Kills and Liam Gallagher. This time out, the Foos will be joined by Iggy Pop, Tenacious D, Garbage, Greta Van Fleet, Silversun Pickups and more, including Giants In The Trees, a group led by Grohl’s Nirvana bandmate Krist Novoselic. The festival will take place on October 5th and 6th at Glen Helen Regional Park and Amphitheater in San Bernardino, California. Foo Fighters opened their touring cycle in support of last year’s Concrete And Gold album at the 2017 Cal Jam, while this year’s event will serve as the band’s last Los Angeles-area show in support of the LP.
Blink-182 singer/bassist Mark Hoppus was asked in a new interview with Las Vegas magazine if former guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge would be invited to participate in the band’s upcoming Las Vegas residency. Hoppus replied, “We haven’t really talked about that at all. I mean, there’s no hard feeling or bad blood between us and Tom. He’s doing his thing and we support him entirely, but we haven’t talked about him coming out at all.”
Blink parted ways with DeLonge in early 2015 after he refused to commit to recording and touring plans with the group. DeLonge decided to spend more time pursuing his interests in the paranormal and conspiracy theories involving UFOs.
Meanwhile, the residency itself, dubbed “Kings Of The Weekend,” will take place at the Palms Casino Resort and last for 16 dates, starting on May 26th and continuing on select weekends through November 17th.
Hoppus revealed in the interview that the band is considering doing some recording when it’s in Vegas, saying, “The Palms has a great studio in the building, and since we’re going to be there so much we talked about spending time in Las Vegas after and before the shows, getting into the studio there and working out ideas or recording songs for the next record.”
The trio has kept a low profile since wrapping up its 2017 tour in support of 2016’s California, the band’s first album without DeLonge. With Alkaline Trio‘s Matt Skiba joining on guitar and vocals, the album hit Number One on the Billboard 200 and the tour behind it was one of the bigger rock attractions of last year.
Guns N’ Roses has released a previously unseen music video for the song “It’s So Easy,” from the band’s 1987 debut album Appetite For Destruction, through Apple Music. Filmed live in 1989 at the infamous Cathouse in Los Angeles, “It’s So Easy” was never completely finished and remained in the vaults, unseen and unreleased. The footage was recently uncovered for inclusion in the upcoming box set reissue of Appetite and has been digitally restored in 4K UHD from 16mm film transfers. In addition, the original conceptual scenes were edited back in with the live footage, just as the band had originally intended.
The newly announced “Locked N’ Loaded” deluxe boxed set of Appetite For Destruction is due out June 29th. It also includes B-sides from the Appetite sessions, the 1986 Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide EP and three of the four songs from the band’s 1988 acoustic EP GN’R Lies.
The deluxe set will contain 73 songs — including 49 tracks that never before been released — spread out across four CDs and seven 12-inch 180-gram vinyl LPs. A super deluxe version will also include a 96-page book with unreleased photos from Axl’s personal archive, new lithographs and a plethora of memorabilia. Appetite For Destruction is one of the most successful albums in recording history, selling a reported 28 million copies worldwide since its original release.
Guns N’ Roses will return in June for a seven-week European jaunt and in November for an Asian tour, but the band’s plans beyond that remain unknown for now.
Stay tuned for more!
