Good morning Radicals! Here’s a fresh dose of music news for you:
Ghost frontman Tobias Forge said in a new interview with Atlanta radio station Rock 100.5 there does not seem to be a lot of bands on the current rock scene who are, as he put it, “interested in becoming a ‘big band.’” Elaborating on that, the Swedish singer explained, “What I meant was from more of an arena rock point of view, where there isn’t a whole lot of apparent new bands out there (who people say), ‘That band will make it. That band will become big.’”
The singer, who performs in mask and costume as Cardinal Copia, added, “I think that the problem is especially in (the) current rock climate — 10, 15, 20 years maybe — is that there seems to be a lack of ingenuity. A lot of bands don’t want to be part of something that isn’t sort of current. Most bands in rock history, even though you were a prog band in 1973, you didn’t want to sound like a prog band from 1972. You wanted to sound like a prog band from 1974.”
Ghost’s latest album, Prequelle, debuted at Number Three on the Billboard 200 chart with first week sales of 66,000 physical and digital copies. Prequelle marked Ghost’s highest first-week sales of Ghost’s career. The LP contains the single “Rats,” which has logged nearly two months at the top of the rock radio chart.
Ghost will hit the road this fall for its “A Pale Tour Named Death” tour that commences October 25th in Dallas, Texas, and includes two headline arena shows, at the Forum in Los Angeles on November 16th, and New York City’s Barclays Center on December 15th.
Halestorm singer Lzzy Hale was asked in a new interview with Consequence Of Sound if the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements had an impact on her lyrics for the band’s new LP, Vicious. Hale answered, “Traditionally, we stay away from religion and politics. That’s just not something we necessarily write about. But, especially now, it’s not just about politics — it’s the state of the world we live in . . . so, yeah, I think it was kind of unavoidable, that even if we didn’t want to have some of those things creep in, I think there was really no choice.”
As for whether the movements have had an effect on the music business after turning the movie industry upside down, Hale responded, “I mean I am a part of the rock world, and I talk about sex, and sex, drugs and rock n’ roll is very much alive in our world. Thankfully, we’ve never been in any situations where we can get called out on anything like that. But it’s interesting, I don’t think it’s that the rock industry hasn’t been affected by it. I just think it’s gonna take a second for all of that to start coming out.”
Halestorm is currently on the second leg of a successful tour consisting of all-female-fronted rock bands, including In This Moment and New Years Day. Hale told us a while back that previous generations of female artists had a harder time of it: “You know, there are people that have paved the way for myself and, you know, you hear stories about trying to get your record played on radio and, you know, trying to break into anything. It was just such a different time.”
Hale noted that she’s seen a shift in audiences at the shows, with more women coming than before. The current leg of the tour ends later this week in California, with a third leg starting on November 16th in Norfolk, Virginia and running through December 16th in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich will interview photographers Herring & Herring for an intimate conversation at The Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City on Friday, October 19th. The event is free and open to the public, although seating is on a first-come basis. An RSVP does not guarantee admission.
Photography duo Herring & Herring — a.k.a Dimitri Scheblanov, a 2005 graduate of The Cooper Union’s School Of Art, and Jesper Carlsen — will be in conversation with Ulrich to discuss their collaborative work together, the process of creating art, and more.
Herring & Herring have photographed the members of Metallica on multiple occasions, most notably for their 2016 platinum-selling album Hardwired… To Self Destruct, providing photography and creative direction for the album cover art, as well as directing music videos, shooting band portraits and capturing their live shows.
Ulrich has been gaining experience as an interviewer since launching his online music show, “It’s Electric!”, at Apple Music in 2017. The program allows Ulrich to play music he’s excited about, as well as interview guests like Maynard James Keenan, Iggy Pop, Noel Gallagher, Royal Blood, Jack White and more.
Starset will release a deluxe version of its sophomore LP Vessels on September 28th. Titled Vessels 2.0, the set will include a reworked version of “Bringing It Down,” acoustic versions of songs and remixes. The band intends to share a new track from the release every week until the album’s street date.
Vessels came out in January 2017 and continued Starset’s fascination with sci-fi themes, although frontman Dustin Bates told us that he wouldn’t call the band “space rock”: “A lot of people see what we wear onstage and they assume — partially correctly, and because of the songs — that we’re a ‘space band’ but it’s not, that’s not quite accurate. There’s more of a science and sci-fi bent to it, so it’s larger than that and I think people are starting to see that.”
The follow-up to Vessels is due out sometime in 2019. Vessels featured the Number Two hit “Monster” and the Top 15 rock track “Satellite.”
Aside from a September 28th show in Columbus, Ohio, Starset will fill the rest of their touring year with a residency in Tokyo, plus U.K. and European shows in October and November.
Deftones have confirmed via social media that the band is working on music for its ninth studio album. Programmer and keyboardist Frank Delgado posted photos on Instagram taken at the band’s rehearsal space during last week’s sessions, adding hashtags like “#writing.”
The new photos show frontman Chino Moreno and bassist Sergio Vega working on material, while previous pictures showed guitarist Stephen Carpenter and Moreno hashing out ideas. The group has been working on new material in their hometown of Sacramento.
Moreno admitted a while back that it’s harder these days for the band to get together in one place and write new songs: “I live now in Oregon, Stefan (Carpenter), our guitar player, lives in Los Angeles, Abe (Cunningham, drummer) and Frank (Delgado, keys and turntables) live in Sacramento, and Sergio (Vega, bassist) lives in New York. So for us, you know, to get together to make a record, it’s one of those things that has to be really planned out: ‘Okay, we need three weeks for us to go and lock ourselves in a room somewhere, you know, some neutral ground somewhere where we can all meet up.’”
Writing sessions earlier in the year yielded around five or six new song ideas, although at this stage it is not known how many of the pieces the band has worked on will make it to the final album. The new LP will follow up 2016’s Gore, which featured the singles “Prayers/Triangles” and “Phantom Bride.”
Finally, we’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian, and Deep Purple and former Black Sabbath bassist/singer Glenn Hughes!
