Happy hump day! Let’s take a look at the rock n’ roll newsfeed:
New Years Day has teamed up with YouTube for the worldwide premiere of the band’s music video for “Shut Up,” the new single from the band’s upcoming album Unbreakable. The clip is said to be inspired by the satirical horror film American Psycho and will even include the original axe that Christian Bale wielded onscreen.
Singer Ash Costello said, “When the time came and ‘Shut Up’ was chosen for a music video, I was thrilled because it meant that I’d get to make my vision come to life, which was to recreate one of my favorite horror movies of all time, American Psycho.”
Fans can tune in on YouTube from 1:00 p.m. ET to 3:00 p.m. ET to chat with the band before and after the exclusive live premiere. “Shut Up” is currently Number 21 on the rock radio chart and climbing, with the track just surpassing 1.26 worldwide streams as well.
Unbreakable will be released on April 26th and follows up New Year Day’s 2015 LP, Malevolence, which included the radio hits “Defame Me” and “Kill Or Be Killed.”
Guns N’ Roses are among the acts who will perform at the 2019 Austin City Limits Music Festival in the Texas capital, marking G N’ R’s first show in Austin since 1993 and its first-ever Austin City Limits festival appearance.
Other acts on the bill include Mumford & Sons, The Raconteurs, The Cure, Billie Eilish, Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke, Childish Gambino, Cardi B, Robyn, Kacey Musgraves, Gary Clark Jr., Lizzo, Third Eye Blind, Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett and more. Some acts will play just one of the festival’s two weekends.
The 18th annual Austin City Limits Music Festival will take place October 4th through the 6th and the 11th through the 13th at Zilker Park in Austin, Texas. Tickets are on sale now at www.aclfestival.com.
The Austin show will be part of a short tour that Guns N’ Roses will head out on this fall, with the band already confirmed as one of the headliners at late September’s Louder Than Life festival in Kentucky. The group is also reported to be working on music for a new LP.
System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian has once again said that it’s unlikely the band will make new music anytime soon. The group last issued a new album in 2006.
Speaking with Consequence Of Sound, Malakian said about the chances of a new System LP, “There was a time that I was waiting and rooting for it and hoping it happens,” adding, “As friends, everything is cool and I have no problems with anybody. But then as band members, we tend to have different ways of wanting to do things. And it doesn’t seem like we meet eye to eye as band members. So . . . I don’t see that happening anytime soon that we’re all going to get together and make a new System Of A Down album.”
Last summer, 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.
Regarding those public remarks, Malakian said, “Me and (Serj), we’ve talked about it already through email and it’s between me and him . . . I just didn’t want to do a back-and-forth thing. He gave his point of view. I have my own point of view and my own recollections, I guess you could say, of how things went down 10, 15 years ago. But like I said, it’s not something I want to like hash out in front of the fans.”
Malakian, bassist Shavo Odadjian and drummer John Dolmayan have rehearsed at least 13 new songs for System Of A Down in the past few years, with Odadjian saying that the material “tops everything we’ve done.”
Kid Rock is installing a large sculpture of a hand extending the middle finger in front of his home in Nashville, according to Taste Of Country. Rock, whose real name is Robert Richie, was apparently inspired to erect the statue after seeing a similar sculpture in Vermont.
The Vermont finger, which measures seven feet tall, was erected by Ted Pelkey, who actually got a voicemail from Rock. The singer said, “I like your style. Thanks for getting us the info on that middle finger. I gotta have one of those somewhere on my property here in Nashville.”
Pelkey had originally put up his sculpture to protest town leaders’ refusal to let him develop his land. After hearing from Rock, Pelkey contacted the artist who made it and had a second sculpture constructed for the musician. Pelkey and his wife are headed to Nashville to deliver it to Rock themselves, according to reports.
This is the second time in less than a year that Rock has planned a provocative display on a property of his. Last January it was revealed that he intended to decorate the outside of his Nashville eatery, Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse, with a 20-foot neon guitar shaped like a woman’s buttocks. The city council approved the sign despite the disapproval of some locals and council members.
Rock told us a while back that he’s used to being a target for scandal: “It’s tough in this day and age, because I am somebody who’s out there and has fun and, you know, don’t really hide or…you know, what you see is what you get, obviously. And in this day and age, everybody’s got a camera phone and this, that and the other, so with information, how it can be channeled and given and received, whenever you do something that’s even minimally, like, you know, news…I don’t know, it’s just crazy to me.”
Angels & Airwaves, the band led by former Blink-182 singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge, has returned with a new song and dates and venues for its first tour in seven years. The tune, called “Rebel Girl,” is the band’s first new music in three years and is the lead track from an upcoming Angels & Airwaves album and feature film project.
DeLonge said, “‘Rebel Girl is a space-age love song that combines my enduring obsession for New Wave, pop punk and anthemic rock and roll music. As some of you might’ve heard, I recently took a brief minute to start up an aerospace company, so you never know — I may play this song from a satellite deep in space, beamed toward everyone’s house viciously on repeat.”
DeLonge told us a while back that he saw Angels & Airwaves as an enhancement of the music he started out playing with Blink: “As an extension of what Blink was, a band that really made people feel good and funny, I kinda transformed that into something that made people feel really good, but from the inside out. Like an energy, more of like an electricity that’s coming from in your soul, because I wanted to make a band about this spiritual awakening.”
Angels & Airwaves will take “Rebel Girl” on the road as they launch a North American headlining tour on September 4th in Phoenix. The show will take place almost seven years to the day of their last performance, which was September 2nd, 2012 in Bologna, Italy. Tickets for the trek go on sale this Friday, May 3rd, at noon local time.
Finally, we’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to former Smashing Pumpkins bassist D’arcy Wretzky and Crown the Empire singer & keyboardist Andy Leo! Make it a great day!
