Good morning Radicals! Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving, and you’re ready for a new week of rock and roll!
One of the earliest recordings to feature Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl is surfacing on a new soundtrack. The song, called “Now I’m Alone,” was recorded in 1985 by Washington D.C. group Mission Impossible, which included a young Grohl on drums. The tune appears on the soundtrack to Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, D.C., a documentary about that city’s punk scene.
Filmmaker Scott Crawford said, “Mission Impossible were a phenomenal, albeit short-lived, live band. I went to several of their practices in Virginia and just sat back and watch them go nuts. They were all superb musicians and watching Dave behind the drum kit was always a thrill.”
The film, which chronicles the evolution of punk in the city from 1980 to 1990, came out in 2014, but Crawford is finally putting together a compilation of songs from the movie due to demand. He recently remastered the tracks and is taking pre-orders for the album, which will officially come out December 10th.
The rest of the soundtrack contains music from seminal D.C. bands such as Government Issue, Jawbox, Shudder To Think, Youth Brigade. Soulside, Void and others.
Shinedown now holds the record for the most Top 10 hits in the history of Billboard‘s Rock Airplay chart. The band has just scored its 11th Top 10 song with “Get Up,” the second single from its latest album, Attention Attention. Shinedown was previously in a tie with Foo Fighters for the most Top 10s in the chart’s nine-year history.
Shinedown had its last top 10 on the Billboard survey with “Cut The Cord,” which peaked at Number Eight in August 2015. The band’s four subsequent singles made the Rock Airplay’s Top 15 but were unable to crack the Top 10.
Frontman Brent Smith told us that he thinks the honesty in Shinedown’s songs has been the key to the band’s success: “The one thing that this band will always kind of give to everyone is the honesty. If something is not right, we’ll say it’s not right. If it’s going really, really good, we’ll say it’s going really, really good. And I think that why we’ve been able to stay in this game as long as we have is because we’ve just been honest from day one. Because if you’re faking it, they’ll see right through you.”
Other acts that are right behind Shinedown include Cage The Elephant and Muse with nine Top 10s apiece and Imagine Dragons with eight. Meanwhile, on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock Songs chart, “Get Up” needs to rise one more slot to tie with Van Halen for second with 13 Number Ones, trailing Three Days Grace‘s 14 chart-toppers.
Shinedown will embark on a U.S. headlining tour in February. Support on the trek will come from Papa Roach and Asking Alexandria.
Five Finger Death Punch‘s current temporary drummer, who has been identified in recent weeks only as “The Engine,” has been confirmed as Charlie Engen, a 33-year-old resident of St. Paul, Minnesota who has been teaching drums for more than 15 years and offers private and Skype lessons at his home studio. He also plays in the bands Scale The Summit and Ideology.
Engen is filling in for Five Finger Death Punch’s founding drummer Jeremy Spencer, who stayed home to undergo a second back surgery for an undisclosed condition. Engen played his first show with the band on November 6th in Wichita, Kansas. Their co-headlining trek with Breaking Benjamin ends on December 11th in Portland, Maine.
Spencer himself was a session musician for a long time before making it big with Five Finger Death Punch. He gave us his advice for new artists a while back: “It’s certainly different now than it was even whenever we first got signed, that the industry’s changed a lot. But you know, first things first, you have to stick with it and you have to form kind of your path in your mind of what you want to achieve and go after it. Stick to your gut, stick with what’s inside of your heart, man. Things may not feel right, you may get off track, but always just stick with what’s in your gut and you’ll get back on the path.”
Five Finger Death Punch is continuing to tour in support of its latest album, And Justice For None, which came out in May.
Hellyeah has confirmed that it will release its new album in 2019. The LP will mark the band’s final recordings with drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott, who passed away in June. Hellyeah revealed its plans to issue the LP in a short Thanksgiving message on the group’s Facebook page, writing, “Happy Thanksgiving Hellions!! See you all next year and with a new record that is going to blow you away!!”
Abbott died of dilated cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart, as well as severe coronary artery disease. His death was the result of chronic weakening of the heart muscle. But not long before his death, Abbott laid down the drum tracks for Hellyeah’s sixth studio album.
Abbott revealed last January that Hellyeah was “close to about halfway” done recording the follow-up to 2016’s Unden!able, which he said was sounding “amazing.” He added, “Every record since Blood For Blood has just been a big, gigantic mountain for us to build and build and this one has already reached a plateau that I know is gonna be . . . It’s gonna top Unden!able.”
Hellyeah reportedly intends to tour behind the new album but has not revealed who will sit behind the drums.
Guns N’ Roses played an abbreviated show in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday night (November 25th) after frontman Axl Rose became “severely ill.” The band performed almost 20 songs in Abu Dhabi before cutting the show short. The singer addressed his medical condition at one point during the concert, telling the crowd, “They’ve got me on IVs and a bunch of injections, ’cause I got sick today, I’ve been throwing up for about the last five hours. So, instead of canceling, I’m gonna do the best show we can for you.” Bassist Duff McKagan later tweeted that Rose “was beyond ill, and pulled off something I’ve never seen in my 40 years of playing.”
Halestorm‘s Lzzy Hale got a chance to sing the National Anthem on Friday night (November 23rd), as the home team Syracuse Crunch squared off against the Binghamton Devils in an American Hockey League game. Hale later posted on Instagram, “Thank you so much to the @syracusecrunch for having me to SING the National Anthem tonight… what an honor.” The team also gifted Hale with a custom jersey bearing her name and her favorite number, 10.
Don’t forget that the lineup for Sonic Temple is coming out today! We’ll have the announcement at noon!
