Welcome back all! Hope you had a nice holiday weekend, and you’re caught up on Game of Thrones! Let’s get into the music, shall we?
Foo Fighters main man Dave Grohl and folk singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile delivered a surprise performance on Saturday in Seattle, delivering a brief set that included a rendition of the Beatles’ “Let It Be.”
According to the Seattle Times, the musicians busked for 15 to 20 minutes in the city’s Pike Place Market, closing their jam session with Foo Fighters’ “Times Like These.” The pair were backed up by Carlile’s twin backing guitarist/vocalists, Phil and Tim Hanseroth.
Carlile posted the first few minutes of their set to her Facebook page, later writing on Instagram, “Got nostalgic and decided to swing by my old busking spot at Pike Place Market with the twins and Dave Grohl…honestly one of the most surreal moments of my life.”
Grohl and Foo Fighters have been off the road while Grohl recovered from arm surgery, forcing the band to cancel a pair of February shows in New Orleans. The gigs have been rescheduled for next month, with a number of summer festivals also on the Foos’ itinerary.
Thanks so much for all the happy birthday wishes, much love!! Just finishing up track 10 on the new Alter Bridge record, 4 more to go!
— Mark Tremonti (@MarkTremonti) April 18, 2019
Alter Bridge is currently recording its sixth studio album, with plans to release the LP this fall. Last Thursday (April 18th), which happened to be his 45th birthday, guitarist Mark Tremonti tweeted, “Just finishing up track 10 on the new Alter Bridge record, 4 more to go!”
The new disc will follow up 2016’s The Last Hero, which was the second highest charting album of Alter Bridge’s career. It reached Number Eight on the Billboard 200 and yielded the singles “Show Me A Leader,” “My Champion” and “Poison In Your Veins.”
Since the album’s release, the guitarist released A Dying Machine, the fourth album from his self-named solo act. Tremonti told us a while back that separating material between his solo band and Alter Bridge has gotten harder to do: “The heavier Alter Bridge gets, that’s the difficulty between keeping Tremonti and Alter Bridge sounding different, is Alter Bridge is getting heavier and heavier and more progressive, and Tremonti just started out heavy. You know, I think what helps me keep the stuff sounding different is the rhythm sections are very different and the vocals are opposite.”
Meanwhile, Alter Bridge singer Myles Kennedy issued his debut solo record, Year Of The Tiger, last year as well. Kennedy also linked back up with Slash on another Conspirators record, Living The Dream, and has been touring with the Conspirators in support of the disc.
New Years Day has released the official lyric video for “Shut Up,” the second single from the band’s upcoming fourth album, Unbreakable. The full music video for the song will debut online this week, while the LP, which follows up 2015’s Malevolence, arrives Friday, April 26th. The band will be joining Lou on hardDrive XL every night this week as his featured artist!
Singer Ash Costello said about the track, “‘Shut Up’ was written in a day, which just doesn’t happen. I was going through some heavy personal stuff, and I was just, ‘Don’t tell me what I want. Shut up and give it to me.’” The tune follows last year’s “Skeletons,” the first preview song from the new disc.
Asked how the new LP differs lyrically from Malevolence, Costello told Heavy New York, “Malevolence was mainly very anti-love, spiteful, really-upset-about-relationships album, because when I did that record, I had just found out that I had been cheated on in a five-year relationship. All that anger came out . . . Now there’s kind of, like, a light at the end of the tunnel, so a lot of songs are going to reflect that.”
Costello added that the new disc features a change in musical direction for the band, saying it’s “either the poppiest metal album or the most metal poppy album . . . I wanted music that was fun for me. And I did that. And hopefully people love it too and it’s fun for them.”
New Years Day is on the road this spring with Falling In Reverse and From Ashes To New. The U.S. tour kicked off in Las Vegas last week and next stops in Houston on Wednesday. Check out all the stops on the Road Rage page.
Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash is quite pleased that AC/DC is apparently once again making music with singer Brian Johnson, drummer Phil Rudd and bassist Cliff Williams, after all three left the group at various points during its 2014-2016 Rock Or Bust cycle. Guns frontman Axl Rose even handled vocals on two legs of the 2016 tour.
Slash told Consequence Of Sound, “Where do I start? AC/DC is bar none, with the exception of the Stones, the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band ever. The Stones will always come first for me and then AC/DC. There are no other bands that actually play that brand of really ’50s-influenced straight-up rock ‘n’ roll like AC/DC.”
Slash told us a while back about meeting AC/DC for the first time in 2000, when his then-band Slash’s Snakepit opened for them: “Brian Johnson broke the ice. He came into our dressing room the night of the first show. I was like, I had my pants halfway up when he came in, and everybody was scattered around the room and everything was really quiet. All of the sudden the door flung open and Brian Johnson comes in in a towel and he goes, ‘Hey, nice to meet ya folks. Just wanted ya to have a good show, blah blah blah.’ And we were just like, ‘whoa.’”
Johnson and Rudd, along with guitarists Angus Young and Stevie Young, were photographed outside Vancouver’s Warehouse Studios last August. Based on the pictures, the assumption has been that AC/DC is in the midst of making another album. Online reports have also indicated that Angus Young will dedicate the new AC/DC album to his late brother, co-founder Malcolm Young, who died in 2017.
Slash is currently on tour with his solo band The Conspirators, but will return to the road with Guns N’ Roses this fall. Guns N’ Roses is also planning to make a new album, the first in more than a quarter century to feature Slash, Axl and founding bassist Duff McKagan.
Finally, we want to extend a Happy Birthday to System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian! Make today count, people!
