Good morning Radicals! Hope everyone is having a great week. If you’re not subscribed to the hardDriveRadio YouTube channel, then you’re missing out when we post awesome new videos! Here’s some of the great stuff we filmed backstage at Rock on the Range:
Five Finger Death Punch‘s seventh studio album, And Justice For None, is expected to sell between 65,000 and 70,000 copies in its first week of release, according to Billboard. That won’t be enough to land the LP a Number One debut, something that’s eluded the band across all six previous records. It will mostly likely enter at Number Three, while the group’s three previous efforts all debuted at Number Two.
And Justice For None will apparently be kept from the top spot on the chart by BTS‘s new album Love Yourself: Tear and Post Malone‘s Beerbongs & Bentleys. The new Five Finger disc arrived last Friday, May 18th, and final sales figures will be published this Sunday evening, May 27th.
Ghost leader Tobias Forge said in a new interview that his legal battle with several of the band’s former members “needed to happen” in order for the group to move forward. Forge, who founded the group eight years ago, was sued by four ex-members in April 2017 who accused the singer of cheating them out of their rightful share of the profits from the band’s album releases and world tours.
Forge told NME about the legal battle, “A year down the line, having been through so much turmoil, I’ve come to realize that what happened needed to happen. Also, I’m a big fan of rock, of rock history, and I’ve read every classic rock biography of every band I’m a fan of. You know what? The same s**t takes place in every single one.
Forge added, “A friend of mine, a very successful songwriter, said to me, ‘You’re not really in the game until you’ve been sued, so welcome in!’ and I think he’s got a point. I’ve been in lots of situations in my life where I’ve managed to turn pain into growing pains. Really, what happened was a receipt that things are going well.” The lawsuit claimed that a partnership agreement existed between Forge and the four former members, all of whom performed anonymously in the band as Nameless Ghouls.
Forge responded that “no legal partnership” ever existed between him and the other members, that they were paid a fixed salary to perform as his backing band, and that they were essentially session musicians. The suit also forced Forge to reveal his identity after years of performing in a mask as Papa Emeritus.
Ghost’s new album Prequelle, arrives on June 1st and features the Top Five rock radio hit “Rats” as well as the newly released track “Danse Macabre.”
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl revealed in a new interview with GQ that he has no interest in getting into politics or running for president someday. Grohl explained, “Taylor (Hawkins, drummer) and I talked about this the other day. He said, ‘You need to be president and run for office.’ F**k that. And that’s my quote right there. I’m not doing an Oprah. I’m not going to go, ‘Well, you never know.’”
Although he has no interest in holding office, Grohl told us not long ago why it’s important for the band to be politically active: “Before we were ever in this band, we were American citizens, we were human beings, and there’s some things that are important to us outside of the band, like the future of the country and the future of the environment and the world that our children have to live in in 15 or 20 years. And it’s our responsibility to do what we can to try to better that.”
In the same interview, Grohl discussed Donald Trump’s effect on the world’s view of the U.S., saying, “I’ve probably traveled internationally more than our current president, and the one thing I understand that he doesn’t is that the world isn’t as big as you think it is. It is all in your neighborhood . . . I am ashamed of our president. I feel apologetic for it when I travel.” Foo Fighters will resume their current North American tour in support of the band’s 2017 LP Concrete And Gold on July 6th in Columbia, Maryland.
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong‘s new band The Longshot resumed touring in New York City on Tuesday night (May 22nd) after a “family emergency” for one of the band members forced the group to cancel a string of West Coast shows. The band’s first New York performance featured all 11 songs from its debut LP, Love Is For Losers, a number of covers and one Green Day tune, the obscure “Stay The Night” from 2012’s Uno! album.
Among the covers the band played were Ozzy Osbourne’s “Goodbye to Romance,” the Ramones’ “Rockaway Beach,” the Rolling Stones’ “As Tears Go By,” Generation X’s “Kiss Me Deadly,” and the frequently-covered “I Fought the Law.”
Love Is For Losers, arrived on April 20th, along with a music video for the title track.
Armstrong began teasing the new act in early April 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.
Alter Bridge and Slash vocalist Myles Kennedy is streaming a mini-documentary about his debut solo effort, Year Of The Tiger. The LP is a concept record inspired by the loss of Kennedy’s father, Richard Bass, in 1974 when he was a child. Bass was a Christian Scientist and refused medical treatment and passed away from appendicitis when the future rocker was just four years of age. Year Of The Tiger recently reached Number 63 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
That’s a wrap, have a great one!
