Good Morning Radicals! Hopefully, you’re almost done with your holiday shopping! We’ve got one more week of work before the holiday vacation, so let’s get to it!
Five Finger Death Punch has released an official music video for its cover of “Blue On Black,” a blues rock song originally recorded by the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band in 1998. The clip is based on a treatment written by Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Zoltan Bathory. The song is on the band’s current LP And Justice For None.
Bathory told Los Angeles radio station KLOS about the track, “I just didn’t see this one — I just didn’t see that this would work — and it came out great, in my opinion. And it’s another flavor that we’ve never really done before. So I think it actually adds to the album another dimension, another kind of flavor that we wouldn’t have otherwise.”
Breaking Benjamin has released an official music video for the song “Tourniquet.” The clip completes the visual trilogy of videos released to date from the band’s sixth studio album, Ember. The LP debuted at Number Three on the Billboard 200 chart and has spawned two Number One rock radio hits with”Red Cold River” and “Torn In Two.”
Rival Sons have released an official visualizer for the title track of their much-anticipated new album, Feral Roots, which arrives on January 25th. The clip was shot by Rival Sons vocalist Jay Buchanan and director Steven Bradley in the woods of Franklin, Tennessee.
Asking Alexandria has released an animated music video for its latest single, “Vultures.” The track is taken from the band’s self-titled fifth studio album, which was released in December 2017. Guitarist Ben Bruce told Rock Sound about the song, “It’s about everyone in suits behind the scenes pulling the strings. It addresses the inner struggle that we faced. It’s a sad song. It’s very raw and it’s very honest and it’s very open . . . It was the last thing that Danny (Worsnop, vocals) and me wrote together before his departure and it was the first thing that we recorded when he joined Asking again.”
Papa Roach is counting down to the release of its 10th studio album, Who Do You Trust?, with the arrival of a new song called “Elevate.” The track is the fourth to be previewed from the new disc, following “Renegade Music,” “Not The Only One” and the title track, which is currently Number Seven on the rock radio chart.
A lyric video has also been shared for “Elevate.” Who Do You Trust? will arrive on January 18th and follows up 2017’s Crooked Teeth. Guitarist Jerry Horton told Morgan Richards Interviews that Papa Roach’s new material sees him and his bandmates “really trying to explore more dynamics and not just be a wall of guitars all the time.”
Even though Papa Roach likes to explore new sounds, Horton told us a while back why he’s not a fan of pop: “You kind of have to look at pop as something that’s, at this point in time it’s kind of just candy, you know. It’s just, okay it might taste good but it’s not good for you and it goes away after a couple of seconds. I would love to see pop stuff like Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall — yeah, it’s pop, but there’s so much musicianship in records like that. At least it’s done in a way that’s not just so simple and bland.”
Papa Roach will play a special run of five shows in its home state of California to celebrate the release of the new disc, starting on January 18th in Sacramento and including three concerts at the landmark West Hollywood venue The Roxy in Los Angeles. The band will also join Shinedown and Asking Alexandria on tour in early 2019.
Guitar legend Slash spoke in a new interview with Billboard Radio China about the state of rock music right now, following the recent news that urban music has passed rock as the world’s favorite genre of music for the first time.
Slash stated, “The commercial approach to rock and roll that the industry forces on bands, or forces people to think that this is how they have to go about it to succeed . . . (just turns it into) this generic mishmosh that manages to get on the radio but doesn’t really turn anybody on, and it’s just dull and boring and people start looking elsewhere. And I think that was, really, what happened to the industry, as far as rock and roll is concerned, after 2006 up until just recently.”
The Guns N’ Roses axeman added, “But it seems to be turning over a new leaf right now. So I’m really interested to see where it goes over the next few years, ’cause there’s a lot of really hungry young rock and roll bands getting together right now that I’m aware of. And, obviously, Greta Van Fleet have done amazingly well and made everybody perk up and go, ‘Oh, wow!’ Now there’s people out there looking for young, teenage rock and roll bands to sign. So it’s interesting.”
Slash did admit to us a while back that musicians now have it harder in some ways than his generation: “Right now, for kids starting a band and all that, it’s like the Wild West out there. There’s no set path. There’s a lot of great opportunities, there’s a lot of different avenues that are available to you now that weren’t available back in the day, but they’re all hit or miss. You know, you’ve just got to take your chances.”
Slash’s latest album with his solo band, Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators, Living The Dream, was released in September and is Slash’s fourth solo effort.
Ozzy Osbourne and his wife/manager, Sharon Osbourne, now share passwords to their online accounts with each other, more than two years after Sharon discovered that Ozzy had been having multiple affairs. Speaking on The Talk, Sharon said, “Since my husband and I had troubles, we now have the same passwords, so he can look at my phone. There’s nothing except bills on mine, and I can look at his and it’s just fine. ‘Cause I have no desire to.”
Sharon added that she had no regrets about her decision to stay with Ozzy after she learned of his infidelity, explaining, “I’m glad I didn’t give up — so glad. It’s very easy to just walk out and go, ‘I’ll be fine’ . . . but (I) wouldn’t be, because I wouldn’t be with my soulmate.”
Sharon’s latest comments came several months after Lisa Osbourne, the wife of their son Jack, filed for divorce from her husband, citing irreconcilable differences. Sharon remarked, “I look at my son and he was married five and a half years, and it’s, like, did he give up too early? Did they both give up too early? They both are happy with the situation now . . . should either one of them have stayed?”
After Ozzy’s affair with celebrity hairstylist Michelle Pugh was made public in May 2016, he underwent therapy for sex addiction. Sharon and Ozzy later reconciled and they even renewed their vows.
The promoter behind the newly announced Epicenter Festival, Danny Wimmer, told Consequence Of Sound in a new interview that the event will be curfew-free, allowing artists to play as long as they like. Wimmer explained, “We’re not having a curfew, so we’re able to do things differently at night. We can create super jams late at night, we can basically go all night and we can invest in nighttime activities.”
Wimmer added that Epicenter, which will be similar to European-style festivals, will be more camping-focused that other festivals around the country. He remarked, “Epicenter is really our first full-on immersive camping experience. We have camping elements at a lot of the festivals, but not where we expect 80 percent of the audience to camp, like we do at Epicenter . . . The camping is attached to the festival, so fans will be able to go in and out.”
Epicenter takes place next May 10th through the 12th in Rockingham, North Carolina the newly created Rockingham Festival Grounds. The lineup features headliners Tool, Foo Fighters, Korn, Rob Zombie, The Prodigy, Judas Priest, Bring Me the Horizon and dozens of other acts.
It replaces the Carolina Rebellion festival, which Wimmer co-promoted with AEG. Wimmer is also replacing another festival he co-promoted with AEG, Ohio’s long-running Rock On The Range, with Sonic Temple. AEG is suing Wimmer, claiming that Wimmer illegally shut down the two older festivals and relaunched new competing events under Wimmer’s sole ownership.
Finally, a slew of Happy Birthdays to some of our biggest musician friends! Sam Loeffler of Chevelle, A Day To Remember singer Jeremy McKinnon, Three Days Grace drummer Neil Sanderson and last but certainly not least, Maria Brink of In This Moment! Happy Birthday to all!
