It’s going to be a short holiday week for most of us, so we hope you’ve got a long four day weekend coming at you! Let’s flip through the pages of Dirt, for the latest:
Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Zoltan Bathory has said in a new video from the band’s current recording sessions that its eighth studio album will be a musical “roller coaster.”
In the latest clip documenting the recording sessions for the LP, Bathory explains, “It feels like it is gonna be a heavier record. I’m kind of in the (second album) War Is The Answer mood . . . Naturally, our records always end up being a mixture. It has to be a roller coaster, it has to be a ride. It has to be a full landscape.”
Bathory told us a while back that Five Finger Death Punch always puts pressure on itself to top its previous effort: “The pressure is self-inflicted, you know. From the perspective of the audience, obviously, you can’t do something that’s not up to par. We have a lot of fans that are expecting a certain quality and expecting certain things from us. That’s just what it is — it’s the relationship between us and them. But the pressure is not necessarily coming from them, the pressure is coming from us, being super-critical and going over everything a million times and make sure that everybody’s happy with it.”
Five Finger Death Punch is recording its new album with its regular producer, Kevin Churko, in the band’s hometown of Las Vegas. The follow-up to 2018’s And Justice For None is due out later this year.
The drums on the disc were laid down by Charlie “The Engine” Engen, who made his live debut with the group during its fall 2018 tour with Breaking Benjamin. He stepped in for original drummer Jeremy Spencer, who left the band in December due to a back injury.
Disturbed frontman David Draiman says that he is glad to see more and more U.S. states moving toward state-legalized recreational or medical marijuana. He said in an interview on SiriusXM, “A lot of the stigmas are being dispelled. It’s not being demonized in the ‘reefer madness’ sense that it had been portrayed for so many generations.”
Draiman listed the advantages of marijuana, saying, “Just the medicinal benefits that it has for so many people and the alternative it provides to people . . . And even just from the perspective of, like, I would rather be hanging out with a bunch of stoned dudes than a bunch of drunk dudes any day of the week.”
Draiman said a while back that as much as 95 percent of the music he’s written for the band has been created while he was high. He even told us that he sang Disturbed’s hit cover of Simon And Garfunkel‘s “The Sound Of Silence” while high: “I was done with the day and I wanted to relax, so I went ahead and I smoked a bowl (laughs). Came back and was high out of my mind and no, no, by no means ready to track vocals by any stretch of the imagination. And they all encouraged me to go into the vocal booth, and I was pretty blown away. I hadn’t heard my voice that vulnerable in a very, very long time.”
Disturbed released a music video last week for its new single “No More” from the band’s current album Evolution. In addition, Disturbed released a digital-only five-song EP on Friday (June 28th) titled Live From Alexandra Palace, London, which features a concert version of “No More” plus four other songs.
We got some new music videos from three of our favorite bands on Friday. If you didn’t see them yet, check ’em out now:
Papa Roach is launching a summer tour on July 27th and has released a new music video for the song “Renegade Music.” The video was captured at a recent gig in Birmingham, England and was shot in one take. The song is off the band’s latest album, Who Do You Trust?
Hellyeah has also shared a second music video from its upcoming album Welcome Home. The clip is for the song “Oh My God,” and it follows the title track from the September 27th release.
Finally, Alter Bridge has premiered the official video for “Wouldn’t You Rather,” the first single from the band’s upcoming sixth album, Walk The Sky. The clip is a performance video and the album is due out on October 18th. It follows up 2016’s The Last Hero.
Former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler was hospitalized last Thursday (June 27th) after stabbing himself in what a representative later said was an accident.
Adler was taken to the hospital after local authorities responded to a call shortly after 6:30 p.m. for a possible suicide attempt at a Studio City, California, home.
But Adler’s representative told TMZ that the stabbing was not a suicide attempt and was simply an accident. The rep would not specify what caused the accident except to describe it as a “very minor, superficial wound.”
Guns guitarist Slash, who remained close with Adler over the years and even once staged an intervention for him, told us a while back that Adler was sort of a kid at heart: “Steven is the epitome of, like, the rock ‘n’ roll teenager. He’s like, you know, the most naive and most innocent of the bunch of us because he was just like, ‘I just want to play drums and f*** girls,’ and that’s all he really, really wanted to do. The more complicated it got, the more he couldn’t handle it.”
Adler, who has reportedly been sober for years, is still planning to perform on July 12th at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.
Vinyl collectible company Funko has created two new figures of Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett as two iconic Universal Monsters: Frankenstein’s Monster and the Creature From The Black Lagoon. The two limited figures will be made available starting July 13th as part of Hammett’s “It’s Alive! Classic Horror And Sci-Fi Art From The Kirk Hammett Collection” horror movie exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Only 1,008 pieces of each figure will be made available.
Finally, congratulations to Halestorm and Marilyn Manson! They both received some long-in-the-making gold and platinum sales certifications last week. Halestorm‘s hit single “I Miss The Misery” off its 2012 album The Strange Case Of… officially went platinum on June 28th for sales of one million copies. The track previously went gold back in December 2015. Meanwhile, Manson‘s cover of “This Is Halloween” from the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas was certified gold for sales of 500,000 copies on June 26th.
Finally, we want to wish a Happy Birthday to Sebastian Danzig of Palaye Royale! Have a great day!
