Good morning Radicals! We had a great time with Bring Me The Horizon, Thrice and The Fever 333 last night! They return again tonight for round two with NYC, and you should definitely check out the show when they come through your town! BMTH will also play Jimmy Kimmel Live on February 14th! In the meantime, here’s what’s going on in music news this morning:
Ozzy Osbourne has been forced to postpone the entire European leg of his “No More Tours 2” run on doctors’ orders, just one day after postponing the first four dates on the U.K. stretch of the trek. Ozzy has been diagnosed with a severe upper respiratory infection which his doctor feels could develop into pneumonia, given the physicality of the live performances and an extensive travel schedule throughout Europe in harsh winter conditions.
Ozzy said in a statement, “I’m completely devastated for having to postpone the European leg of my tour. It just seems that since October, everything I touch has turned to s**t. First the staph infection in my thumb and now coming down with the flu and bronchitis.”
He added, “I want to apologize to all of my fans who have been so loyal over the years, my band, my crew and to Judas Priest for letting you all down. However, I promise the tour with Judas Priest will be completed. It’s being rescheduled right now to start in September. Again, I apologize to everyone. God Bless. Love you all, Ozzy.”
Fans who purchased tickets for the shows are advised to hold onto them, as they will be honored for the rescheduled dates. Details of those will be announced in the coming months. Refunds are also available at point of purchase.
Ozzy’s final world tour of this size resumes on Sunday, March 9th in Australia. Shows will follow in New Zealand and Japan before a two-month North American leg.
The news of the tour postponement comes just days after Ozzy said that he coughed so hard that he burst a blood vessel in his eye. Last October, Ozzy contracted a staph infection that required him to have surgery on his hand and resulted in him canceling several shows.
The widow of Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell has said that his passing was “not inevitable” and blamed her late husband’s battle with addiction for his death. Vicky Cornell shared her thoughts in remarks delivered on Thursday (January 24th) during a panel discussion at United Nations headquarters called “Leaving No One Behind: The Opioid Epidemic As A Global Challenge.”
Vicky explained, “As many people know, my husband Chris was in recovery from addiction. He struggled with alcohol and opioids, but he broke the cycle in 2003 . . . Although I supported my husband in his recovery, there was so much I didn’t know. And since his tragic death, I have committed myself to learning about brain science . . . and to learning about treatment and recovery.”
Chris Cornell was found dead in a Detroit hotel room in May 2017 at the age of 52. The coroner declared the cause of death to be suicide by hanging. Several different prescription drugs in therapeutic doses were found in his system, but the coroner stated that these were not a contributing factor to his death.
Vicky disagreed, stating, “My husband had a relapse. He had gotten clean and sober by 2003, and then he had a relapse. And I’d like to clarify that his death was not inevitable.” She went on to say that she believed the doctor who prescribed her husband’s medications was not “properly trained or educated on addiction.” She has continued to insist that the anti-anxiety drug Ativan, which her husband took, altered his state of mind and led him to commit suicide.
Longtime AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson has reportedly confirmed that he will appear on the band’s upcoming studio album, after having to drop off the tour for the group’s last record, 2014’s Rock Or Bust. Johnson apparently broke the news earlier this week when he bumped into the American band Terrorizer at an airport near his home in Sarasota, Florida.
The members of Terrorizer took to their Facebook page on Monday (January 28th) to recap the group’s just-completed European tour. After praising the other bands on the trek and thanking its road crew, they wrote: “We ran into Brian Johnson from AC/DC at the airport today after the flight home and we asked him about the rumors of him being on the new AC/DC album and he said ‘yes’ and that he is ‘sick of denying it.’ So that was a cool surprise ending to the tour.”
Rumors of Johnson’s involvement with a new AC/DC record have been circulating for several months, ever since he and drummer Phil Rudd, along with guitarists Angus Young and Stevie Young, were photographed outside Vancouver’s Warehouse Studios. Both Rudd and Johnson left the lineup at different points in the Rock Or Bust cycle, Rudd due to a drug arrest and Johnson because he was warned that he faced total hearing loss if he did not leave the road.
While AC/DC has yet to reveal any details of a new studio recording, online reports have also indicated that Angus will dedicate the new album to his late brother Malcolm. The latter left the band that he co-founded 40 years earlier in 2014 after being diagnosed with dementia and passed away in 2017.
Former Flyleaf singer and current Christian rock solo artist Lacey Sturm will fill in for Skillet drummer and female vocalist Jen Ledger on five dates during the latter band’s upcoming tour with Breaking Benjamin. Sturm will not play drums at these shows, but will lend her vocals to the group in Ledger’s absence.
Ledger will miss the Skillet concerts because they overlap with the “Winter Jam Tour Spectacular,” on which Ledger is a featured artist this year. Ledger released her self-titled debut solo EP in April 2018 through Hear It Loud, a label imprint launched by Skillet frontman John Cooper and his wife, Skillet keyboardist Korey Cooper.
Cooper told us a while back how he decides to use female vocals on Skillet songs: “Some people say, ‘You know, that’s really cool you do it, you just don’t do it enough. You need to do it more.’ Some people are more thinking of, ‘It’s really cool, and if you did it all the time, it might get annoying.’ I’m kind of more along the lines of, if we’re gonna do it, I want to write a song for that purpose, as opposed to we have a song and going, ‘Oh, hey, you know what? You can come in and sing that line,’ or something like that. That to me seems a little random, so when I do it, it’s something that I’ve written for it.”
This isn’t the first time Sturm has collaborated with Skillet. She sang on the group’s recent single “Breaking Free,” which appeared on the deluxe version of Skillet’s latest album, Unleashed Beyond.
Tool has rolled out some visual teasers as speculation about the arrival of the band’s long-awaited new album heats up. The teasers feature new 3D visuals but no music, with one available only to members of the Tool Army fan club, and the other appearing on the homepage of the band’s official website. Last weekend, Tool drummer Danny Carey indicated to fans at a convention that the quartet’s first new LP in 13 years was arriving in April.
That’s a wrap, have an awesome day!
