Happy Friday Radicals! Celebrate with some new music releases today! Halestorm‘s new album “Vicious” is officially here, as is the new acoustic album from Rise Against, “Ghost Note Symphonies, Vol. 1!” Lou Brutus has both bands on hardDrive XL tonight to celebrate!
Prophets Of Rage guitarist Tom Morello has unveiled his new solo album, titled The Atlas Underground, announcing that the project will be released on October 12th. The 12-track disc marks Morello’s first full-length LP under his own name, having previously released three solo albums and an EP as the Nightwatchman. His most recent effort under that name, World Wide Rebel Songs, arrived in 2011.
The Atlas Underground’s lengthy guest list includes contributions from Portugal. The Man, Cage The Elephant singer Matt Schultz, X-Ambassadors, Rise Against frontman Tim McIlrath, Marcus Mumford, K. Flay, Knife Party, Bassnectar, Big Boi, Killer Mike, Steve Aoki, RZA and many more.
Morello said about the project, “I’ve been devoted both musically and as an activist to fighting injustice at every turn. Amid this heightened sense of impending doom, it’s now time to rally the troops in a last-ditch effort to save the planet, and our artistic souls. By challenging the boundaries of what music is and has sounded like before, you can open people’s eyes to changing the status quo in society.”
Morello told us a while back that social change has always been his main motivation for making music: “I need to add my voice and what I do best, which is play guitar, you know. I need to be another link in the chain to start turning this thing around. You know, as the great historian Howard Zinn says, you can’t be neutral on a moving train, and this train’s moving in the wrong direction. And it’s not time to be sitting in the dining car sipping martinis, it’s time to be mugging the conductor.”
Morello has shared a pair of tracks from The Atlas Underground, titled “Battle Sirens” and “We Don’t Need You,” along with two teaser clips for the album. The former Audioslave and Rage Against The Machine guitarist’s other band, Prophets Of Rage, recently released a new song called “Heart Afire” and revealed that they finished work on their sophomore LP not long ago.
Metallica uses streaming service Spotify to determine its set list in whatever city it’s playing in, according to an interview with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek at Quartz. Ek claimed that the band views the most popular songs in the area it’s playing and adjusts the set accordingly. He explained, “You have an artist like Metallica, who changes their setlist on a city-by-city basis just by looking at Spotify data to see, which the most popular songs happened to be in that city. We’ve never before been at a place in time where you could make as many informed decisions and understand your audience as well as we can do now as an artist.”
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich told us that since the early 2000s, the band has never played the same set list two nights in a row: “We’ve really enjoyed it. It keeps it fresh for us and keeps it hopefully fresh and exciting for the fans. And when you’re doing long tours, I mean, you just, you don’t wanna ever go into autopilot, man. We did that a lot in the ’90s, where it drifted close because of how long the tours were. So this has really made a big difference for us in terms of how we not only enjoy the concerts, but how we also enjoy touring.”
Ulrich explained in a 2017 interview how he created the set lists for the band’s shows, saying, “I’ll sit and look at last couple times we played (in the area) — whatever city we’re in, I’ll look at the last 10 years worth of shows from that particular city. Obviously, there’s certain songs we ‘have’ to play, but then there’s the deeper cuts . . . I try to vary six or eight of the deeper songs so you give fans a different setlist and a different experience.”
Metallica is currently home on a three-month break before launching a North American arena tour on September 2nd in Madison, Wisconsin.
Marilyn manson just bailed on Toronto pic.twitter.com/yKIG8G9qoQ
— Steven Wilson (@Rockamaniac00) July 27, 2018
Marilyn Manson abruptly canceled his performance on Thursday night (July 26th) at Budweiser Stage Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The cancellation was confirmed on Manson’s official Twitter account, which stated, “Due to unforeseen illness, Marilyn Manson will not be performing tonight in Toronto, ON. If you were in attendance specifically to see Marilyn Manson, your tickets will be available for refund at point of purchase. Rob Zombie will perform as scheduled.”
A fan-filmed video has surfaced on Twitter showing the crowd’s reaction to the announcement, which was a mixture of boos and yells in disgust. As the clip shows, Manson’s stage backdrops were already hung in anticipation of the scheduled performance.
The show was part of the shock rocker’s “Twins Of Evil: The Second Coming” tour with Zombie, which kicked off earlier in the month. It was not known at press time if Thursday’s cancellation would have any effect on any of the tour’s upcoming co-headlining dates.
Ozzy Osbourne and his son Jack recently visited Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama for an episode of their A&E Network travel show Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour. The Space Camp episode, titled “Lizard Of Oz,” will premiere next Wednesday (August 1st) at 8:00 p.m.
A preview clip for the segment features Ozzy wearing an astronaut’s spacesuit and suspended in mid-air, while muttering, “I’m dressed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.” He adds as if quoting a news report, “Ozzy Osbourne breaks neck. He fell off a make-believe rocket.”
Season three of Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour debuted last month and features Ozzy and his son traveling to various historical and off-the-beaten-track locations around the globe. Ozzy’s daughter Kelly also joined them for a few episodes this season.
Ozzy had not starred in a regularly scheduled TV series since the MTV reality show The Osbournes ended a four-season run in 2005. A variety show called Osbournes Reloaded ended after one episode on Fox in 2009.
Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose has not ruled out the possibility of recording new music with the current lineup of the band, which features three-fifths of the original lineup. Asked in a rare interview with Iceland magazine if he has considered going into the studio, Axl said, “Right now our focus is on touring and the shows, but everyone seems to be getting along, so you never know.”
Guns N’ Roses kicked off its long-rumored and long-awaited reunion tour in April 2016 with a club show in Hollywood and been on the road around the world ever since. The “Not In This Lifetime” tour features founding members Slash on guitar and Duff McKagan on bass in addition to Axl, backed by guitarist Richard Fortus and drummer Frank Ferrer, plus keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Melissa Reese.
The last Guns studio album, Chinese Democracy, came out in 2008 and featured only Axl from the original lineup. Dizzy Reed mentioned a while back that there was unreleased music from the sessions for that LP that could be completed and released: “We recorded a lot of material back, you know, when we started working on Chinese Democracy, so there’s a quite a bit of unreleased stuff, I think, that would be really cool to be finished and put out. Eventually something’s got to give, you know, and it’s gonna come out.”
The last album on which Rose, McKagan and Slash appeared together was 1993’s covers set “The Spaghetti Incident?” Slash is releasing his fourth solo album and third with his band The Conspirators, Living The Dream, in September.
Finally, we;d like to wish a Happy Birthday to Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham, and Pantera bassist Rex Brown! Tomorrow, Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach celebrates his birthday, and Sunday, Paavo Lötjönen of Apocalyptica celebrates, along with the legendary Geddy Lee of Rush!
