Good morning Radicals! /i hope everyone had a fantastic weekend! Here’s what’s up in music news this morning:
Papa Roach were awarded Pandora’s “Billion Streams” plaque in celebration of the band’s catalog reaching two billion streams on the music service. The band was awarded the plaque on Thursday (January 24th), the last of its three-night run at the Roxy in Los Angeles to celebrate the release of its new album Who Do You Trust?
The band said, “We’re thrilled to be Pandora billionaires — it means so much that our fans support us through the years and that Pandora gives them the opportunity to stream how they want. Thanks to the fans and thanks to Pandora – big thumbs up from Papa Roach!”
Who Do You Trust?, Papa Roach’s newly released 10th studio LP, already has some pretty impressive numbers. Besides reaching Number One on the iTunes Rock Albums chart, it also accumulated 4.1 million album streams in just four days.
Singer Jacoby Shaddix told us not long ago that Papa Roach is always itching to prove itself all over again: “We’ve always had that hungry, you know, fighter spirit, that hustler spirit, you know, and that’s just something that’s been ingrained in our band since the beginning. We’re still excited about this rock and roll band that we’re in, and we’re still…it doesn’t feel like a job to us. When we get in that room and the four of us start jamming, it’s like there’s something magical that happens there and, you know, we just can’t deny that.”
The band will next join Shinedown‘s North American tour in February, before headlining its own trek in July with Asking Alexandria and Bad Wolves along for support.
Tool drummer Danny Carey may have casually revealed over the weekend when the band’s long-awaited new album is finally arriving. In a fan video taken at the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) convention in Anaheim, California, Carey is asked during an autograph session if there is any news on the LP. He responds, “Yeah, it should be out mid-April . . . That’s the plan anyway.”
Carey has made other predictions before about Tool’s fifth full-length album, including saying at one point in late 2017 that the record would be out in 2018. Tool officially entered the studio last March to begin recording its first full-length album since 2006’s 10,000 Days, with singer Maynard James Keenan tweeting earlier this month that he had finished laying down his vocals “months ago.” The band has a number of festival appearances already booked in May and June.
In other news, Keenan told AZ Central that he will open a tasting room for his northern Arizona wineries, Merkin Vineyards and Caduceus Cellars, in downtown Scottsdale, Arizona in early March. He already operates one in his central location of Jerome, Arizona. Keenan explained, “I just wanted to bring some of the northern Arizona (wines) down to that area to be there with the Sonoita and Willcox wines.”
Keenan told us a while back that making wine in northern Arizona was difficult but doable: “Back in the ’40s, in this particular area that I’m in, they had geologists and various people come in to study the whole area, ’cause they wanted to know what would be, you know, something that would sustain a community here — what would be the industry? Based on the geology and the scientists and all the stuff that they looked at, they all said vineyards.”
The Scottsdale location will pour all of Keenan’s wines, including Caduceus Cellars, Merkin Vineyards and Puscifer canned wines, while serving tapas-style food. Like the northern Arizona tasting room and restaurant, much of the produce for the Scottsdale location will be grown by Keenan’s father and his team, who oversee several greenhouses, gardens and raised beds.
Metallica frontman James Hetfield can be seen several times in the first trailer for a new film called Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile, which appeared on Friday (January 25th). The film follows the life of infamous American serial killer Ted Bundy, played by Zac Efron. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday (January 26th) and will screen there again on February 3rd.
Hetfield plays Bob Hayward, a Utah highway patrol veteran who was the first law enforcement officer to arrest Bundy in 1975 after pulling the killer over and discovering burglary tools in his car but suspecting much worse. While Hetfield has played himself in other films and television shows, this is his first dramatic role.
The film is directed by Joe Berlinger, co-director with the late Bruce Sinofsky of the acclaimed 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster. Berlinger said about casting Hetfield in Extremely Wicked, “Having spent hundreds of hours behind the scenes with James and the rest of Metallica, I have experienced his charisma and powerful presence close up. It seemed only natural that he would bring that same power and magnetism to a dramatic role, so when he agreed to my pitch that he be in the movie, I was thrilled.”
The film also stars Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory, Haley Joel Osment of The Sixth Sense fame, John Malkovich from Bird Box and others. There’s no word yet on a release date beyond Sundance.
Ozzy Osbourne‘s wife and manager Sharon has told Variety that she is developing a biopic about her childhood and early days with her husband. Sharon explained, “I don’t want to do another rock and roll, sex, drugs and money movie about a musician. That’s not what I’m doing. There hasn’t been a movie about a woman that actually works on the management side — that’s a true story — and somebody that succeeds through the struggle and you come out the other side.”
Sharon has approached Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle about helming the film, which will end when she and Ozzy get married in 1982. She remarked, “It’s everything before we get married. It’s the madness of my childhood, growing up in the industry with a powerful father who was somewhat violent.”
Sharon added that she would get a “complete unknown” to play Ozzy, saying, “It’s Ozzy at a very young age. It’s Ozzy at 20.” She also mentioned that she has someone in mind to play herself but declined to say who it was.
Sharon recently learned that a script about her and Ozzy was making the rounds in Hollywood, remarking, “I looked at it and I’m like, ‘What a load of crap.’ It didn’t make sense. It didn’t have a heart. It just wasn’t me.”
Ozzy will resume his “No More Tours 2” trek on January 30th in Dublin, Ireland, hitting the U.K., Europe, New Zealand, Australia and Japan before returning to North America in late May.
Foo Fighters‘ Dave Grohl, Corey Taylor of Slipknot and others got together to jam on Thursday night (January 24th) at Santa Ana, California’s Observatory OC for “Dimebash”, a tribute to late Pantera guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott. Footage of Grohl, Taylor, ex-Pantera bassist Rex Brown, members of Anthrax and others performing the Pantera classic “Walk” has surfaced online.
The show also featured performances by Kill Devil Hill and Fireball Ministry. It has been a highlight of this week’s activities related to the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) convention held at the nearby Anaheim Convention Center.
Corey Taylor was close with Dimebag and shared his memories of the guitarist a while back: “Every time I hung out with Dime, dude, it was just laughing. I just remember laughing my ass off, ’cause he was just one of the funniest guys, you know. And he was just one of the best dudes, man, and probably one of the best guitar players I’ve ever seen. Not only live, but just everything, you know. He just made it look f***in’ effortless.”
Dimebag was co-founder and lead guitarist of Pantera. When Pantera broke up in 2003, Dimebag and his brother, drummer Vinnie Paul, formed Damageplan. On December 8th, 2004, while performing with Damageplan at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, Dimebag was shot and killed onstage by a disturbed gunman. He was 38 years old. His brother Vinnie went on to record six albums with Hellyeah before passing away last year from heart disease at the age of 54.
Bring Me The Horizon singer Oli Sykes has dedicated a new song called “I Don’t Know What To Say” to a late friend, writing on Twitter, “This song is for my friend, Aidan, who sadly lost his battle to cancer & also for anyone who has gone through this hell, don’t you think it’s incredible how brave, strong, and fearless people can become when dealt with such a soul crushing fate?” The track is found on the band’s new LP Amo, which arrived on Friday (January 25th). Regarding the divided reaction to the band’s new pop direction, Sykes posted on Instagram that fans of the group’s earlier metal sound are “well within your right to hate this.”
Congratulations to Five Finger Death Punch, who were bestowed with the honor recently of being part of a question of Jeopardy! recently. They join a long, illustrious line of metal artists that have been mentioned on the game show, including Slayer, Slipknot, Mötley Crüe, Rob Zombie and others.
Finally, we want to wish a Happy Birthday to Trivium frontman and new papa Matt Heafy! Have an awesome day!
