Good morning Radicals! Here’s what’s up in music news this morning:
Ghost stopped its concert in Milwaukee at the halfway point last Thursday night (May 31st) when a fan in the audience reportedly collapsed and died. The band had completed its first set, which usually consists of around 13 numbers, but did not come back to the stage at the Riverside Theater to perform the show’s 14-song second half.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, security was alerted when a man in the pit fell to the ground just as intermission began. CPR was administered, but approximately a half hour later, it was announced that the show was canceled. Staff at the Riverside described the incident as a “terrible tragedy.”
Ghost later issued a statement saying, “Tonight, in Milwaukee there was a medical emergency with one of our fans. We decided not to continue out of respect to him and his family. Ghost and all who work with us ask that you please send the family your thoughts, prayers and respect their privacy during this time.”
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s office later identified the deceased as 52-year-old Jeffrey Fortune. He died of probable cardiac arrest and had a history of heart problems.
Fans posting about the incident online were largely supportive of the group’s actions, with one fan writing, “It was a tragic incident and totally understand that you couldn’t and made the right call of shouldn’t going on . . . It was a sight unfortunately I can’t unsee, watching an individual die in front of you while the emergency responders did all they could.” Another attendee called the tragedy “a horrible thing to witness.”
The incident occurred on the eve of the release of Ghost’s highly-anticipated new album, Prequelle, which arrived on Friday (June 1st).
Godsmack singer Sully Erna says that the band is eager to play more material from its new When Legends Rise LP in concert. But he’s also worried about making the set list work on Godsmack’s upcoming co-headlining tour with Shinedown: “You know, we’re trying to figure it out. It’s getting more complicated for us to do co-headlining bills, to be honest with you, because we just have so much material. I think we have 22 or 23 Top 10 singles, and we can’t even play half of them — especially with a new record. You want to play a certain amount of the new record and then you want to try to stuff in as many, you know, songs that did well for us in the past. So we’re struggling with our song selection sometimes.”
Godsmack’s co-headlining run with Shinedown begins on July 22nd in Detroit and will last through the early fall. The band will hit Europe after that and plans to spend a full year on the road in 2019. When Legends Rise arrived on April 27th and entered at Number Eight on the Billboard 200 album chart on Sunday night (May 6th), with sales of 40,000 copies in its first week of release. This marked Godsmack’s seventh Top 10 debut on the Billboard survey. The first single, “Bulletproof,” became the latest in a long line of Godsmack tracks to top the rock radio charts.
System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian has shared a new song called “Dictator” from his recently revived side project, Scars On Broadway. The tune is the title track from the first new Scars On Broadway album in eight years, which will arrive on July 20th. “Dictator” follows on the heels of the album’s first song and video, “Lives,” which is closing in on two million views on YouTube.
Malakian told Rolling Stone that Dictator was recorded in 2012 but that he held the album back in hopes of recording a new LP with System Of A Down. With the members of System continually unable to agree on whether to make a new album, Malakian decided to take matters in his own hands, saying, “Not knowing what’s happening with System has kept me from putting my own stuff out. Too much time has passed, and I’m really excited to finally get some music out finally.”
Malakian wrote, produced, sang all vocals and played every instrument on Dictator, which was recorded over the course of a 10-day recording session. The album’s cover art was created by his father, Vartan Malakian. Daron noted, “This album has more of a System flavor to it than the first Scars on Broadway did.”
Malakian told us a while back that he has an unorthodox approach to writing songs: “I juggle, like, 25 things at the same time and I play all of them, like, right after each other and I just keep writing. I’m almost writing four songs at a time sometimes. It’s just, you know, I can’t really explain my work ethic too much, but judging from what people tell me, my approach is quite different.”
The band itself, now rebranded Daron Malakian & Scars On Broadway, has undergone a complete overhaul, with none of the members from the group’s 2008 debut — including System drummer John Dolmayan — appearing on the new songs. Malakian has no plans to tour behind Dictator, but will hit the road with System Of A Down later this year. The latter band has not released new music in 13 years.
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl was asked in his recent extensive interview with the British edition of GQ to say what he thought was the “greatest misconception” people have about Nirvana, the band in which Grohl played drums for four years and achieved his first major commercial success.
Grohl responded that people seem to believe that being in the band was a negative experience for him and a “bummer,” explaining, “It wasn’t always a bummer. There were times when it was so outrageously hilarious and fun. Kurt (Cobain) had an amazing sense of humor, and (bassist) Krist Novoselic, if you’ve ever spent time with him, is one of the funniest people you’ve ever met.”
But Grohl added that being in the band had been like “living in a loud, distorted version of Monty Python — when it gets dark it gets f**king dark.” Grohl told us a while back that Nirvana liked to rock as hard as any other band: “There was a lot of that crazy, heavy element in Nirvana. You know, the one thing that Nirvana was against was just the bulls**t.
Nirvana ended in April 1994 with Cobain’s suicide. Although Grohl received offers to join other bands, including Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, he opted instead to launch his own act, Foo Fighters, in 1995. Nine albums and 23 years later, 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.
Guns N’ Roses have added a cover of Velvet Revolver‘s “Slither” to their live set, debuting the song on Sunday (June 3rd) during the opening show of their 2018 European tour in Berlin. “Slither” appeared on Contraband, the 2004 debut LP from Velvet Revolver. That band featured Guns members Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum alongside Dave Kushner and the late Scott Weiland. “Slither” had appeared on Guns N’ Roses set list in 2016, but was never performed.
Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti has shared a new song from A Dying Machine, the upcoming LP from his Tremonti solo act. The track is called “As The Silence Becomes Me.” The disc is Tremonti’s first concept album and is due out on June 8th. Tremonti begins a European tour on June 17th in Florence, Italy.
Finally we want to wish a Happy Birthday to Black Stone Cherry Singer/Guitarist Chris Robertson and former Bullet For My Valentine drummer Michael “Moose” Thomas!
