Good morning Radicals! Here’s what’s up in music news today:
News: “Cross Off” by Mark Morton, featuring Chester, leaks online.
Track will be released as a single on January 8th, 2019 and is the first studio track with Chester to be released after July 2017. Review of the song, lyrics, and more: https://t.co/CcknUIsHPF pic.twitter.com/nldy3cEJTO
— Linkin Park Live (@LPLive) December 19, 2018
Lamb Of God guitarist Mark Morton has spoken with Metal Hammer magazine about “Cross Off,” a song from Morton’s upcoming solo album Anesthetic on which he collaborated with Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington, just three months before the singer took his own life in July 2017.
Morton recalled, “(Chester) just had a lot of creative input at the ready when he came into the studio . . . He had told me he really liked the song, and we had communicated, but I’d never really hung out with Chester until when we started tracking. I was really impressed for a guy at his level, at the place in the career he was at, someone of his stature and celebrity, to have that level of humility and commitment to come in there and treat this like it would be a Linkin Park song, or his own song, or whatever. I was pretty blown away by that.”
Morton said that their chemistry in the studio was “immediate,” adding, “15 minutes after we met, we were standing over a table, one on either side, each with scraps of paper and pencil, crossing off words and trying different rhyme schemes and stuff. And then after the track was laid out, then we took a breath and started talking about more personal stuff — real-life s**t. And yeah, he surprised me the most.”
Bennington and Morton recorded the song together in April 2017. Bennington took his own life at his home in Los Angeles on July 20th of that same year. Anesthetic is due out on March 1st, 2019, while “Cross Off” will be issued as a single on January 8th.
Muse bassist Chris Wolstenholme revealed in a recent interview with New York City radio station Q104.3 that the band’s initial plan for its eighth studio album, the newly released Simulation Theory, was to record an acoustic LP.
Wolstenholme said, “The album was recorded over a two-year period, it was recorded in separate parts, and initially we talked about the idea of doing a really stripped-back, acoustic album . . . I don’t really know what happened, but we didn’t really carry on going down that road.”
As for why the project ended up going in a more electronic direction, Wolstenholme remarked, “Recording individual songs at different times, we just started experimenting a little bit more, and I think we were kind of exploring some of the more electronic things that maybe we hinted towards in the past, so I think that became more of the sort of area that we were looking at really.”
Wolstenholme told us a while back that Muse has always enjoyed making music that gets a strong response: “You know, the best kind of reactions you can get from fans are extreme reactions. You know, I think if you want to get extreme reactions out of the people that are listening to your music, you kind of have to be a bit extreme with the music that you make. That’s something that we really, really enjoy doing, you know. We don’t like sitting in this kind of middle ground, you know. It’s much better to have, you know, 50 percent people love you, 50 percent hate you, than it is 100 percent people to think you’re all right, you know.”
Simulation Theory arrived on November 9th and features the single “Pressure.” The British trio recently unveiled the dates for a massive 2019 world tour in support of the LP. The North American arena leg launches on February 22nd in Houston and wraps up on April 10th in Boston, followed by a run of European and U.K. dates running throughout May, June and July.
System Of A Down circa 2014: Shavo Odadjian, Daron Malakian, John Dolmayan, Serj Tankian
System Of A Down bassist Shavo Odadjian has told Consequence Of Sound in a new interview that he believes the band will eventually get together to record a follow-up to its 2005 albums Mezmerize and Hypnotize. Odadjian said, “I think so. I think we can. Nothing between us has happened that’s so terrible that people can’t get in the studio and work. Nothing! Everything is just (a matter of) taste, and they just gotta get in and forget the past, and kind of move forward. And I think that will happen. I’m not worried. I’m not worried at all.”
This past summer, System guitarist Daron Malakian publicly accused singer Serj Tankian of not wanting to record, with Tankian responding that creative and financial issues with Malakian led to the stalemate. In a message on Facebook, Tankian wrote that Malakian wanted to control System’s creative process, take more of the publishing money and be the only band member to speak to the press.
Odadjian confirmed that disagreements between Malakian and Tankian over the band’s songwriting process have been brewing for a decade, explaining, “That stuff happened a long time ago. So, it’s like, 10 years later, something new came up, but it wasn’t really new. It was something that was really old, and they were just hashing it out.”
Odadjian added that Malakian may have been misquoted or had his comments taken out of context, saying, “We’re not even fighting. When we see each other, we’re so happy and we’re cool. It’s weird that we don’t have a new record, or many records, and it’s weird that we don’t go on world tours. We tour, but it’s so little.”
System drummer John Dolmayan revealed in a 2016 interview that the group had written music for more than a dozen new songs. Odadjian concurred with that, remarking, “Between you and me and this world, and to the people who read this interview, we have material that tops everything we’ve done. And that’s me telling you, honestly. I can’t wait to record that and drop it.”
System Of A Down has several live shows on tap for 2019, including headlining slots at Columbus, Ohio’s Sonic Temple festival and Chicago Open Air, both in May.
Beartooth has shared a music video for the song “Fire,” the next single from the band’s recently issued third studio album, Disease. The clip is a compilation of footage taken at 20 shows on the band’s tour in support of the new LP.
Vocalist Caleb Shomo told Consequence Of Sound that “Fire” is his favorite song on Disease, saying, “I think, sonically, it has every little piece of sound you would could want. There’s heavy stuff and the softer side. I think it offers a little piece of everything and depicts how the record sounds.”
Shomo described Disease itself as the hardest Beartooth album to make so far, telling Kerrang! magazine, “This was hands down the most difficult record I’ve ever made — it’s the most depression and anxiety-fueled album I’ve ever made. It was a really, really hard thing to get through. Emotionally, I mean, good Lord! By the end, I was in a really f**king bad place. It was tough to fight through.”
Disease came out at the end of September, with the title track currently sitting at Number Nine on the rock radio airplay chart. The new disc follows up 2016’s Aggressive, which featured the breakthrough singles “Hated” and “Sick Of Me.”
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl appeared as Satan in a skit that aired Tuesday night (December 18th) on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Grohl appeared alongside Billy Crystal, who played the role of God in a piece that discussed a statue from the Church Of Satan being displayed at the state capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. The presence of the statue has ruffled the feathers of other religious leaders, but by the end of the skit, “God” and “Satan” were “cool” with each other.
Black Sabbath will be among the recipients of the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award from the Recording Academy, along with Dionne Warwick, Sam & Dave, George Clinton & Parliament-Funkadelic, Billy Eckstine, Donny Hathaway, and Julio Iglesias. The awards will be handed out on May 11th at a special presentation ceremony and concert in Los Angeles.
The Lifetime Achievement Award honors musicians who have “made outstanding contributions of artistic significance to the field of recording” over the decades. In a press release, the Recording Academy wrote about Sabbath, “From their power riffs to their dark, gothic imagery, Black Sabbath arguably invented the heavy metal signposts and influenced every heavy rock band that followed.”
Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi told us not long ago that determination has always been the key to his success and longevity: “I’ve always been the same. I always have to try to get over that barrier, whatever it may be, and do it, y’know? And that’s continued in what I do with the music. People have said over the years, ‘Well, why do you still keep playing and why do you still hold Black Sabbath together through the different lineups?’ Because I’m determined to do it, I’m determined to carry on. And it’s been with everything like that.”
In February 2017, Sabbath finished its “The End” tour in Birmingham, England, closing out the quartet’s groundbreaking 49-year career. “The End” was Sabbath’s last tour because Iommi, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2012 and is currently in remission, can no longer travel for extended amounts of time.
That’s a wrap, have a great day!
