Good morning Radicals! Let’s kick off the day with new music!
First off, we’ve got a new track from Of Mice & Men! They spent much of the fall hunkered down in the studio working on new material with producer Josh Wilbur. They have stormed out of the gates with a brand new, battering ram of a song entitled “How to Survive.”
Badflower has released a fourth song from their upcoming “Ok, I’m Sick” album called “Promise Me.” You can listen to it here. The album arrives on Friday, February 22nd, and lead singer Josh Katz is joining Lou on hardDrive XL next week as featured artist!
A new documentary film about the life of Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell is in the works, according to Variety. The film will be produced by Cornell’s widow, Vicky, along with Brad Pitt and Peter Berg’s Film 45 production company. Berg, whose previous films include Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day will direct the documentary.
Cornell won a posthumous Grammy Award last Sunday night (February 10th) when his song “When Bad Does Good,” one of the last tracks he recorded before his suicide in May 2017, was awarded Best Rock Performance. It was the third Grammy win of Cornell’s career, the other two being with Soundgarden. The track appeared on a box set of Cornell’s music issued late last year.
Cornell began his career with Soundgarden in 1984, performing with the band until they split in 1997. He released three studio LPs with Audioslave and several solo records before Soundgarden reunited in 2010. The band was in the middle of a tour on May 18th, 2017, when Cornell hanged himself in a Detroit hotel room. He was 52.
A benefit concert called “I Am the Highway: A Tribute to Chris Cornell” took place at the Forum in Los Angeles last month. Guest performers included Foo Fighters, Metallica, members of Audioslave and Pearl Jam, Miley Cyrus, Brandi Carlile and others. Pitt and other actors such as Josh Brolin also made appearances.
Ghost has landed its third consecutive Number One track on the rock radio airplay chart with “Dance Macabre,” the second single from the band’s 2018 album Prequelle. “Dance Macabre” follows “Rats,” which spent several weeks at the top of the chart last year, and “Square Hammer,” the opening cut from its Popestar EP that spent two weeks at Number One in 2017.
“Dance Macabre” describes how some people coped with the devastation of 14th century Europe’s Black Plague that wiped out millions — by dancing and partying and having sex until they literally dropped dead. Frontman Tobias Forge told us that the history of the Black Plague still haunts the people of Europe: “Being European, the Great Plague of the 1300s is definitely something that is still in the sort of, the inherited memory, because that was something that was deeply tumultuous for anyone who both perished and survived, I guess.”
Forge recently told Billboard that he has been “working on for months now” on Ghost’s next recording project, with plans to be in the studio again by the beginning of 2020 with a release later that year.
Before getting into the studio, however, Forge and Ghost have to get through the rest of 2019, which is packed with touring in Europe, the U.K. and Australia. The band’s lone North American date right now is on May 18th at the Chicago Open Air festival.
Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor discussed his years-long struggle with drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes over the years in a recent interview on the Let There Be Talk podcast. Taylor said that on their first major tour, the members of Slipknot “tried to stay as clean as possible,” but added, “It just slowly but surely really started to get in. Most of us are natural addicts anyway. I’m a f**kin’ addict from hell.
Taylor admitted that alcohol was his downfall, explaining, “I quit coke and speed when I was 16 so I never had a problem turning that down. But the booze was really where it got me. I’ve never been a pill guy, I’ve never smoked weed, but alcohol to me was the only thing that was getting my brain to shut off. And that’s how all it kind of starts.”
The singer said he quit drinking for three years but started again after divorcing his first wife. He revealed that he had his last drink nine years ago, and quit cigarettes four years ago after smoking since he was 10 years old. He remarked, “It’s actually the best f**kin’ decision besides quitting drinking . . . every time I give up something like that, it has just improved me as an entertainer, as a singer, as a writer.”
The vocalist admitted that losing Slipknot bassist Paul Gray to a drug overdose in 2010 was “one of the hardest f**king things I’ve ever had to deal with . . . he didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to go at all.”
Slipknot is currently recording its sixth studio album and first since 2014, with tentative plans for the LP to arrive this summer.
Pop Evil has released a new music video for the song “Be Legendary.” It marks the fourth clip the band has released from its latest, self-titled album, which came out last year, following “Waking Lions,” “A Crime To Remember” and “Colors Bleed.”
“Be Legendary” currently sits at Number 11 on the Active Rock chart, but frontman Leigh Kakaty told us he wasn’t even sure about putting the song on the LP: “Yeah, it was a tough one. I almost held it off the record. You know, I didn’t like the mix, then I didn’t like this…you know, I wrote the song so I was real close to this particular song, and the band kept saying, no, no, no, that we just need to stay confident in it, the message is so positive, the music is, it’s just classic Pop Evil, vintage guitars grinding, and they really believed in it. So it was, I got to fess up and be like, ‘I guess they told me so,’ right?”
Kakaty said about the track, “I just felt like this was going to be a great opportunity to write an anthemic type of lyrical song that could positively motivate people. Now we see all our fans posting on social media how this song motivates them in their daily lives. Plus, to see how passionate they are whenever they hear us perform it live.”
Pop Evil is in the middle of a headline tour in the U.S. that brings the band to Kansas City on Friday (February 15th). After this run is done, the band will head out on a 10-day European trek followed by its first-ever visit to Australia. Pop Evil will then return home to the U.S. for eight additional shows in April.
— Foo Fighters (@foofighters) February 14, 2019
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl appeared to criticize Variety’s transcription of his comments about singer Billie Eilish during an interview at a Pollstar conference in Los Angeles, saying it was a paraphrase that missed the point rather than a direct quote.
Grohl tweeted, “For a VARIETY of reasons, and out of respect for Billie Eilish, I’d like to share the transcript of what I actually said at the Pollstar convention the other day, rather than some lazy paraphrasing that completely misses the point.”
Grohl was quoted as saying, “My daughters are obsessed with Billie Eilish. The same thing is happening with her that happened with Nirvana in 1991. People say, ‘Is rock dead?’ When I look at someone like Billie Eilish, rock ‘n’ roll is not close to dead!”
But his full remarks made it seem less like he was comparing Eilish directly to Nirvana on a musical and cultural level, which is what some fans initially got out of the Variety quote.
According to the transcript, Grohl said, “My daughters are listening to Billie Eilish and they’re becoming themselves through her music. She totally connects to them. So we went to go see her play at the Wiltern, and that connection that she has with her audience is the same thing that was happening with Nirvana in 1991.”
He continued, “Her music is so hard to define . . . But it’s authentic. And I would call it rock n’ roll. I don’t care what sort of instruments you use to do it. When I look at someone like Billie Eilish, I’m like, ‘S**t man, rock n’ roll is not even close to being dead.’”
Grohl also revealed at the conference that the Foos had to postpone two shows this week in New Orleans due to him having long-overdue surgery on his arm. The band will make up the shows in May.
Alter Bridge tentatively plans to release its sixth studio album, the follow-up to 2016’s The Last Hero, album in October. Guitarist Mark Tremonti told Audio Ink Radio that he is fully into the songwriting process for the LP now, explaining, “I’m in the process now where I’m up till four in the morning every night writing, writing, writing . . . I’ll be going right into the studio with Alter Bridge through March and April.”
As for the direction of the new Alter Bridge material, Tremonti remarked, “We always try to reinvent ourselves with every record. Right now, it’s a little early, ’cause me and Myles (Kennedy, guitar/vocals) haven’t gotten together. So far, it’s been me writing stuff and Myles writing stuff, and when we come together and combine the stuff, we really see what it’s gonna sound like.”
Tremonti told us that Alter Bridge wants to keep moving forward with each record it makes: “I think we work hard to put out records that in some way or shape or another outperform the one we previously did. I think that’s the only thing we can try to do, is become better artists with every record.”
Tremonti has been on the road for much of the past year with his self-named solo act, and intends to hit the road with that band one more time in the late spring and summer. After that, he said, “We’ll be setting up for the tour later on with Alter Bridge at the end of the year.”
Kennedy is currently on tour as part of Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash‘s solo band, The Conspirators, who issued their latest disc, Living The Dream, last fall.
Finally, we want to wish a Happy Birthday to Incubus singer Brandon Boyd and Avenged Sevenfold drummer Brooks Wackerman! Have a great weekend!
