Good morning Radicals! Here’s a warm bundle of music news to start you off on this chilly day:
Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Jason Hook told Virginia radio station FM99 WNOR in a new interview that he enjoys touring a lot more these days, explaining, “Actually, these days, it’s pretty good. I mean, we’re spoiled. Each of us has an assistant and our own dressing rooms and we have a masseuse.”
Hook continued, “It’s hard to explain to the public, but there are many micro frustrations that come with changing cities and changing buildings every day. Just micro frustrations — these are not real problems. A brain tumor is a real problem. The air conditioning in the room every day is not a real problem. But it’s frustrating . . . if you don’t know how to process it, it can burn you out a little bit, emotionally.”
Asked what his favorite thing to do on tour is, Hook replied, “Well, to be honest, I really enjoy playing the show. It’s the best 90 minutes of the day. ‘Cause the rest of it, really, is sitting around and waiting to play the show. I do maintain that I do like to play my guitar.” Hook also revealed that he likes to read and write music on the road and lifts weights before he goes onstage.
Five Finger Death Punch will release its eighth album, F8, on February 28th. Guitarist Zoltan Bathory told us that singer Ivan Moody almost can’t wait to start playing the new songs live: “Ivan is, ‘I want to play this whole record now.’ And it’s like, ‘Well, hold out for a second,’ you know. Everybody’s coming to the show expecting songs that they love and want to hear. You can’t drop 10, 12, 13, 14 brand new songs they never heard of in a live set. But I can tell you that Ivan is super excited to start to put as many of these as he can into the new set.”
Five Finger Death Punch recently announced the dates for a new spring North American tour. The trek kicks off on April 8th in Sunrise, Florida, winding down on May 20th in St. Paul, Minnesota. Papa Roach, I Prevail and Ice Nine Kills will join Five Finger Death Punch on the upcoming road trip.
Late Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington‘s previous band, Grey Daze, is planning to issue an album featuring material re-recorded by the group both before and after Bennington’s tragic suicide in July 2017.
Bennington himself was in the process of revisiting and re-recording the Grey Daze material prior to taking his own life. While it unclear on how far Bennington got with the songs in the studio, his friends and family have united to complete the project.
Chester’s widow Talinda announced on Tuesday (December 10th) that plans are in the works to release the Grey Daze material via 320 — the suicide prevention organization Talinda launched following Chester‘s passing. She said in a statement, “For us, releasing a new Grey Daze album will shine a light on where my husband started and hopefully give fans a better understanding of his art and a more full picture of his journey through this incredible music.”
Grey Daze has reportedly enlisted numerous guests on the album, including Bennington‘s own son Jaime, Korn‘s Brian “Head” Welch and James “Munky” Shaffer, Chester‘s former Dead By Sunrise bandmate Ryan Shuck, P.O.D.‘s Marcos Curiel, Bush‘s Chris Traynor and others.
Green Day will make an appearance at the 2019 Game Awards on Thursday (December 12th), where the band will give a special performance and also make a “game-related” announcement. Game Awards founder Geoff Keighley described the news as a “really awesome video game announcement.”
In other news, Green Day will also help ring in 2020 on the West Coast edition of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest. The trio will perform as part of a pop-heavy lineup including Dua Lipa, Paula Abdul, Salt-N-Pepa and country duo Dan + Shay. The fun starts on New Year’s Eve (December 31st) at 8:00 p.m. ET on ABC.
The punk vets are no doubt starting to warm up for their two high-profile guest spots: they played an intimate show in Costa Mesa, California on Saturday (December 7th) as the Coverups. The Coverups are a side project in which the members of Green Day perform mostly punk cover tracks.
But this time Green Day tore through their 28-tune cover set and then surprised the small venue with a six-song Green Day stretch that included their new single “Father Of All…”, “Revolution Radio,” “Hitchin’ A Ride,” “Welcome To Paradise,” “Burnout” and “Jesus Of Suburbia.”
Green Day will release its 13th studio album, Father Of All Motherf**kers, on February 7th, 2020. Two singles have already been issued and the band will hit the road next summer on a massive stadium tour with Fall Out Boy and Weezer.
Royal Blood will return to these shores for a number of high profile U.S. festival gigs in May, with the U.K. duo also booking a run of headlining shows to fill in the gaps.
Singer/bassist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher will kick off the trek with a May 1st appearance at the Epicenter Festival in Concord, North Carolina, and wrap it up with a set at Sonic Temple, which takes place May 15th through the 17th in Columbus, Ohio.
In between, they’ll play headlining shows in such cities as Nashville, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh, while also performing at the Shaky Knees Fest in Atlanta, and Welcome To Rockville in Daytona Beach, Florida.
The band has not announced yet whether it will have a new album, its third, out to coincide with these shows — although they did debut two new songs live earlier this year.
Tickets for the band’s headlining shows go on sale this Friday (December 13th) via Ticketmaster. Check the Road Rage page for the full list of dates.
Metallica‘s self-titled fifth studio LP, released in 1991 and nicknamed “the black album,” has now spent 550 non-consecutive weeks, or just over 10 and a half years, on the Billboard 200 chart.
The LP is the fourth release in American history to hit the 550-week milestone, behind Pink Floyd‘s The Dark Side Of The Moon — which is approaching 1,000 weeks on the list — Bob Marley & The Wailers‘ Legend and Journey‘s Greatest Hits.
The “black album” surpassed Shania Twain‘s 1997 record, Come On Over, in 2009 as the best-selling CD of the SoundScan era. In 2014 it became the first album to sell 16 million copies since SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991.
The “black album” was Metallica’s biggest commercial breakthrough, producing five singles and making them one of the most popular rock bands in the world. Former bassist Jason Newsted told us that at the time, Metallica was eager to make a big leap forward: “Everybody was ready. We pulled in somebody that could control us for a second and harness us for a second. That transpired. Everybody put their nose to the stone and worked hard, like Metallica always did, and then we got the fruits from it. Years later, it’s still, well, maybe is the biggest selling album in America for, I don’t know, for a long time.”
System Of A Down singer Serj Tankian has said that he is in favor of putting out a collection of previously unreleased songs by the band. Tankian was responding to a question about a petition recently launched online by fans, asking for the band to release material left over from System’s past album sessions.
Asked about the petition, Tankian replied via his Patreon, “For the unreleased SOAD songs? Yes. I’m all for it. Convince everyone else.”
Nothing seems to have changed with regards to new System music. The band has not recorded an album since 2005, with guitarist Daron Malakian saying in an interview last May, “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.”
Malakian publicly accused Tankian in 2018 of not wanting to record, with Tankian responding that creative and financial issues with Malakian led to the stalemate. 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.
Meanwhile, 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.”
Despite the stalemate on recording, System Of A Down will tour Europe next summer.
Today, we want to wish a very Happy Birthday to the one and only Zacky Vengeance of Avenged Sevenfold, Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue and Sixx A.M., and Black Stone Cherry drummer John Fred Young! Have a fantastic day!
