Good morning Radicals! Who likes new music? ‘Cuz we got some fresh bangers for ya today:
Late Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington‘s first band, the Arizona-based Grey Daze, has released “What’s In The Eye,” the first track from the band’s upcoming album. An official radio single, “Sickness,” will arrive on February 5th.
The songs are from a new collection of re-recorded material from the two albums Grey Daze released independently, Wake Me and No Sun Today. The surviving band members have reconstructed and reworked the songs with the help of guest musicians like Chester’s 23-year-old son Jaime Bennington, Korn‘s Brian “Head” Welch and James “Munky” Shaffer, Bush‘s Chris Traynor and more.
The members of Grey Daze spoke with Kerrang! magazine about first working with Bennington. Grey Daze drummer Sean Dowdell said, “He and I had a connection in writing music together . . . He was a genius in the ability to express his emotions into metaphor.”
The Grey Daze album will arrive later this year. Chester’s widow Talinda said that its release will “hopefully give fans a better understanding of his art and a more full picture of his journey through this incredible music.”
Bennington was found dead in his Los Angeles-area home in July 2017 after hanging himself. Linkin Park headlined an all-star tribute concert for Bennington in October 2017 in Los Angeles.
Avenged Sevenfold has shared a previously unreleased track called “Set Me Free,” which was originally recorded for the band’s 2013 album Hail To The King. The song will be included on the streaming version of the group’s 2008 B-sides collection, Diamonds In The Rough, which will arrive on February 7th.
Hail To The King was the only Avenged Sevenfold album to feature Arin Ilejay on drums. Ilejay joined the band in 2011, more than a year after the late 2009 death of founding drummer James “The Rev” Sullivan. Ilejay stayed with the group until 2015, when he was replaced by Brooks Wackerman.
The last full-length Avenged Sevenfold LP, The Stage, was a surprise release on October 28th, 2016, premiering after just a few days of promotion. But the tour in support of the disc in 2014 was cut short when frontman M. Shadows was directed by doctors to rest his voice.
We asked Shadows a while back what his goals were for the band as their career moves forward: “I just want to put out a consistent amount of records that are completely top of the line. You can put any record on shuffle and you’re just gonna be bombarded with what I think are cool songs. I think a lot of bands, they get lost and they don’t really follow their heart as much as they should, and they kind of get, you know, ‘Oh, we have all these radio singles and if we put this out, the radio will never play that.’ I want to be a band that always keeps that out. You try to make people change with you, you don’t try to change to become what the people want you to be.”
Avenged Sevenfold kept a low profile in 2019 but is expected to return to the road this year. The band has also hinted that a new album is in the works.
A new documentary on the Beastie Boys, called Beastie Boys Story, will premiere this spring on Apple TV+ and in selected IMAX theaters.
The movie is directed by filmmaker Spike Jonze, a longtime collaborator with the legendary trio, and is based in part on a stage show that Jonze put together last year with surviving Beastie Boys members Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond. The third member of the act, Adam Yauch, passed away in 2012.
The film, which also grew out of the Beastie Boys Book that Horovitz and Diamond published in 2018, is described as “an intimate, personal story of their band and 40 years of friendship.” It reunites Jonze with the band more than 25 years after he first worked with them on the video for their classic single “Sabotage.”
Beastie Boys Story will open in select IMAX theaters for a limited engagement starting on April 3rd, and hits Apple TV+ on April 24th.
Metallica frontman James Hetfield will make his first major public appearance since entering rehab last fall on January 30th, when an exhibit featuring 10 of his classic custom cars opens with a ticketed reception at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
Hetfield will take part in a chat and help auction two of his ESP guitars at the event. The exhibit officially opens to the public on February 1st and will also feature guitars and other memorabilia in addition to the cars. It’s expected to remain at the Petersen into October.
Hetfield has been largely out of the public eye since last fall when Metallica canceled an Australian tour and announced that Hetfield was returning to rehab to battle his addictions. The singer/guitarist first got treatment in 2002, a process that was chronicled in the 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster.
Among the cars on display at “Reclaimed Rust: The James Hetfield Collection” will be Voodoo Priest, based on a ’37 Lincoln Zephyr, a ’36 Auburn roadster named Slow Burn, a Delahaye inspired ’34 Packard, a ’36 Ford in bare metal called Iron Fist, a purple ’56 Ford F-100 pickup truck and Skyscraper, Hetfield’s 1953 Buick Skylark. If you want to see some sweet pics of these one-of-a-kind vehicles, check out the gallery at Autoblog.com.
The votes are in for the 35th annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with this year’s class inducting Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, the Doobie Brothers, T. Rex, Whitney Houston and the Notorious B.I.G. Jon Landau — Bruce Springsteen‘s manager and producer, along with music mogul and Eagles manager Irving Azoff, will be both receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
To be eligible for this year’s ballot, each nominee’s first single or album had to have been released in 1993 or earlier. The Rock Hall induction ceremony will take place on May 2nd at Cleveland’s Public Hall with the event airing live on HBO.
The other artists shortlisted for induction that didn’t make the final cut this year are: Soundgarden, Judas Priest, Motörhead, Pat Benatar, Kraftwerk, MC5, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, Todd Rundgren, Thin Lizzy and Dave Matthews Band.
2020 marks the first time an artist — the Dave Matthews Band — won the fan vote but failed to secure induction.
NIN’s Trent Reznor admitted he changed his attitude regarding awards when he was honored with both an Oscar and a Golden Globe in 2010 for the score to The Social Network: “I’ve got ’em up on the mantle and, I’ve got to say, never been much one for trophies or recognition, but when it’s coming from someplace that feels legitimate, it makes a difference. And what happened I felt was unexpected and it was flattering and I’ve allowed myself to feel pretty good about it.”
Reznor, who also just had his fifth child last weekend with wife Mariqueen Maandig, told Rolling Stone he was “pretty freaked out” about being inducted, saying, “When I look back at how Nine Inch Nails are received, it always seems like we fall between the cracks or we’re not in this category or ‘that thing’ . . . I’m pleasantly surprised to see us acknowledged. It feels pretty good.”
Depeche Mode keyboardist Andrew Fletcher told us that there was time when he couldn’t imagine a career that lasted a few years, let alone one that spanned decades with millions of fans spread across the globe: “I don’t think we ever considered, really, that we were gonna last 20 years, two years, three years. I don’t know. When we first started we were just having fun and it was a gradual thing. I mean, we were on Top Of The Pops — a famous pop program in Britain — and I was still at work at the time, y’know, which was a bit bizarre. That’s what being on an independent label was about. So I sort of did Top Of The Pops to about half the population of the country and I went in to my work the next day.”
The Rock Hall induction ceremony will take place on May 2nd at Cleveland’s Public Hall with the event airing live on HBO.
Ok, back to work slacker!
