Good morning Radicals! Here’s what’s up in music news today:
Metallica has partnered with master distiller Dave Pickerell to create Blackened, a unique blend of straight American whiskey. Pickerell, a chemical engineer renowned in the spirits community, selected the blend of bourbons, ryes, and whiskeys from across North America, housed them in black brandy barrels and inundated them with low hertz soundwaves from Metallica songs that were so intense that they enhanced the molecular interaction and the finish of the whiskey.
Pickerell was inspired by using sound to manipulate whiskey while working as a Professor of Chemistry at West Point, where the sound of world’s largest church organ would reverberate through the walls of the lab and, according to the distiller, “really shake your guts.”
The sound wave on the front of the bottle is the actual digital wave from the Metallica song “Blackened” and each bottle of the inaugural batch is labeled 081, to honor 1981, the year the band was formed. Each batch of 5,000 bottles of Blackened American Whiskey will come with an accompanying Spotify or Apple Music playlist of Metallica songs that were played to shape the flavor of the whiskey.
Metallica said in a statement, “We are fortunate to have a long-time collaboration with Meyer Sound, who have engineered a proprietary subwoofer that amplifies the low frequency sound waves and all the planets aligned. It just so happens that the low-frequency range needed for Dave’s vision was the range you hear in our music and the process of sonic-enhancement we call ‘Black Noise’ was born.”
Blackened will be available in stores, restaurants, and bars surrounding a handful of U.S. tour dates this fall and online at ThinkLiquor.com or SpiritedGifts.com. The band said its goal is to “make a whiskey that fits into the Metallica experience and sets itself apart from all the others. We can’t wait for you to taste it!”
Ironically, Metallica frontman James Hetfield has been sober since 2001 and is unlikely to give Blackened a try. He told us a while back about the moment he decided to get help: “My wife threw me out of the house and I went to rehearsal, and she could not believe that I had done that, and said, ‘You’ve got to check yourself in somewhere,’ and I said, ‘Nah, no way, I’m the singer for Metallica, I can’t get help. I don’t need help.’ A lot of denial. She was very adamant about me seeking the help and I went in, I think, for her and for my family.”
Blink-182 singer/guitarist Matt Skiba opened up in a new interview with Kerrang! about his failed marriage and the impact that and other relationships have had on his life and music. Asked if he would rather have “kept the girl” or the music that his personal life inspired, Skiba replied, “Well, the girl doesn’t pay the rent. And the music doesn’t get jealous or hold things against you that didn’t even happen.”
Skiba added, “Breakups are a motherf**ker. People kill themselves over them and there’s a reason why it can be really painful, but the good news is: we have songs to write about that!” He also said, “I’ve heard the word ‘divorce’ all throughout my life and as I was growing up, but until it happens to you, until you go through it, that word looks, sounds and means something completely different.”
Skiba’s divorce inspired some of the music he’s written with his other band, Alkaline Trio, about which he remarked, “It was one of the best times I ever had, but when money and the ‘this is mine and this is yours’ garbage come into play, you’re writing from a place of anger rather than hurt, because somebody is bleeding you dry — whether it’s monetarily or emotionally or, in my case, both.”
Since coming home after touring with Blink for its 2016 album California, Skiba said he has been dating but added, “I’m not in love right now, but I’m in love with my life. I’m in love with my career and extremely thankful for it.”
Former Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee have reunited for an unknown studio project. A picture of the two bandmates was posted on the band’s Facebook page, along with the caption “28th August 2018.” Also appearing with them in the photo is longtime Motley Crue producer and collaborator Bob Rock. A brief video of Lee playing drums was posted on his Instagram, with the drummer captioning the clip: “It’s that new s**t!!!”
Crue fans have speculated that Sixx, Lee and Rock were working on music for the film adaptation of the group’s biography, The Dirt: Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band. The movie is being produced through Netflix, although a release date has yet to be announced.
Back in late 2016, Sixx shot down any possibility of the Crue returning as a recording act, telling TeamRock, “I see no reason. We couldn’t be creative as a band, so how the hell can we continue? But I’m glad with the way it finished — we did it all, we did what we said we were going to do, and now I’m excited about the future.”
Singer Vince Neil said a while back that the band wanted to go out the way it came in: “You know, we didn’t want to be one of those bands that maybe have one guy left in it or somebody’s brother or something like that. You know, we wanted to be — we wanted to go out with the four founding members of Motley Crue and go out on top, and leave a legacy of a band called Motley Crue.”
Motley Crue’s last studio album was 2008’s Saints Of Los Angeles, with the band completing its farewell tour in 2015 after performing a total of 164 shows in 72 markets, grossing over $100 million.
That’s a wrap, have a great holiday weekend!
