Happy hump day Radicals! Here’s some fresh music news to start your morning:
Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Zoltan Bathory told Guitar World that the name of the band’s new LP, And Justice For None, was inspired by both the group’s recent legal battle as well as the classic 1988 Metallica album, . . . And Justice For All. Bathory explained, “We were in a lawsuit with the label, and it was a long process. The thing is, no one really wins a lawsuit. So, when we were finished, And Justice For None was a line that Ivan (Moody, singer) dropped. We started thinking and decided to call the album that because it embodied the situation we went through. It’s also a nod to Metallica and we knew it would also piss off the online trolls (laughs). It was perfect.”
Bathory gave us a little more insight into the meaning of the title: “What it means to us really is that everybody’s screaming, that the world is divided, everybody’s screaming so loud, that actually nobody’s heard. Everybody is just screaming at each other and if nobody has a conversation, if there is no conflict resolution, nobody’s right. Therefore there can be no justice for anybody.”
And Justice For None, the seventh studio effort from Five Finger Death Punch, debuted at Number Four earlier this week on the Billboard 200 album chart with sales of 71,000 units. 60,000 of those were traditional album sales.
Five Finger Death Punch’s follow-up to 2015’s Got Your Six was originally delivered to its label Prospect Park in December 2016, but a legal battle with the company delayed the LP’s arrival for more than a year.
The band will kick off a co-headlining tour with Breaking Benjamin on July 16th in Seattle.
Ghost frontman Tobias Forge says that the character he currently plays in the band, Cardinal Copia, has the potential to follow in the footsteps of Forge’s three previous personas and become Papa Emeritus IV in the band’s occult mythology. Forge explained to Revolver, “The Cardinal is not the boss. He’s just the toastmaster. A cardinal is junior to a pope figure. We still have Papa Emeritus (Zero, a.k.a. Papa Nihil) but he’s passing on. He needs to teach the Cardinal to become a pope, to earn his skull paint.”
Forge added that it was always part of the plan to throw in a new character between Papas, saying, “There was gonna be a moment in time where you have to sort of chew through a little bit of an underdog person that you might not like. So we end up with this character that I’m not even fond of myself. He’s new and he is an imposter and he hasn’t proven himself yet. But if he does, he will become Papa IV.”
Forge founded the band and has played all three Papas as well as the Cardinal, while the musicians behind him perform as anonymous Nameless Ghouls. The previous three Papas have been “murdered” and their corpses are on display at Ghost shows. The new Ghost album, Prequelle, comes out on this Friday, June 1st and follows up 2015’s Grammy-winning Meliora. The first single, “Rats,” is Number Four on the rock chart.
Greta Van Fleet reunited last Wednesday night with 87-year-old Gretna Van Fleet, the woman whose name the band borrowed for themselves with a small alteration. Van Fleet and her husband Dale were invited to join the band at its sold-out show at the Fillmore in Detroit, meeting up with the members for the first time in five years.
Van Fleet told Billboard, “They’ve matured, I’ll say that. It was mostly ‘Glad to see you again’ and congratulations on their accomplishments and so forth. We had seen the parents in between, but not the boys. I hadn’t met the drummer yet, so it was nice to meet him.”
Bassist Sam Kiszka revealed that their previous drummer’s grandfather came up with the idea for the name, saying, “They were at breakfast and his grandpa told him that he needed to go cut wood for Gretna Van Fleet. He heard it and thought, ‘That’s an interesting name.’”
Kiszka continued, “I think it was Josh (Kiszka, frontman) who said, ‘Let’s drop the ‘n’ out of Gretna, so it was Greta Van Fleet, and that rolls off the tongue better. I think it’s an interesting name because it’s different.”
Drummer Danny Wagner told us that it took a long time for his family to believe in the band: “I have a very large family and everyone was so skeptical, you know, as the band was evolving. They were looking at my parents and going, ‘Man, you’re letting your son in a band? Like, is anything really happening?’ And I knew that everyone was thinking that, you know. When I’d go to family parties it was kind of weird and stuff like that.” Following a three-week European festival run starting later this week, Greta Van Fleet will kick off a summer headlining tour on June 29th in Kansas City, Missouri.
Weezer has unveiled a cover of Toto‘s 1982 hit “Africa.” The band recorded the song after a 14-year-old fan named Mary, whose Twitter account is @weezerafrica, lobbied for months to get the group to cover it. At first Weezer cut a version of a different Toto tune, “Rosanna,” but ended up doing its own take on “Africa” as well.
Weezer is supposed to release its self-titled “Black Album” sometime this year, after postponing it from a May arrival. The new disc, the band’s 12th studio effort, will follow up both 2016’s self-titled “White Album and last year’s Pacific Daydream. Frontman Rivers Cuomo released a surprise solo single, “Medicine for Melancholy” in March, followed by a solo acoustic show in early April. The 27-song set featured Weezer hits and rarities as well as covers of songs from artists like Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies and REO Speedwagon. The band will kick off a co-headlining summer tour with Pixies on June 23rd in Tampa, Florida.
Finally, we’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to Prophets of Rage guitarist Tom Morello, Live bassist Patrick Dahlheimer and Stitched Up Heart singer Mixi!
