Good morning Radicals! Hope everyone had a good weekend. Let’s catch up to the news in rock and roll:
Grey Daze, the Phoenix-based rock band that featured late singer Chester Bennington in his pre-Linkin Park days, has released a new music video for the song “B12.” The track is taken from Grey Daze’s forthcoming album, Amends, due out on June 26th.
The clip features live performance footage of the track, intercut with footage from the recording sessions, which featured Korn guitarists Brian “Head” Welch and James “Munky” Shaffer.
Drummer Sean Dowdell told us how the Korn guys got involved with the project: “I was on the phone with Brian from Korn and I said, ‘You know, we’re doing this thing,’ and he’s like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know about it.’ And I said, ‘Would you mind if I sent you a track and just give me your honest opinion? I want to make sure I’m not off the mark here.’ So I sent him the track, and then literally he called me like five minutes later and he goes, ‘Dude, oh my God. This is insane. This is really good.’ And then I just kind of said, ‘Would you want to play guitar on this track?’ And he’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?” So Munky and Head ended up playing on a track.”
Amends features newly recorded music with remastered vocals from the two long out-of-print LPs Grey Daze released independently.
The album was made with the blessing of Chester’s widow, parents and family. Additional guests on the LP include Bush‘s Chris Traynor, P.O.D.‘s Marcos Curiel, Breaking Benjamin‘s Jasen Rauch and others, as well as Chester’s 23-year-old son Jaime.
The world INFESTation continues! Saturday, June 20 at 2pm Pacific #INFEST20 https://t.co/KBIm0TPPTv pic.twitter.com/qezS2ptOyH
— Papa Roach (@paparoach) June 12, 2020
Papa Roach has announced its second live streaming experience, called “Infest In-Studio,” a virtually ticketed, live HD broadcast set to take place Saturday, June 20th at 5:00 p.m. ET from Sacramento.
The program will feature the band performing its breakthrough 2000 album Infest live in its entirety to celebrate the LP’s 20th anniversary. Also featured will be exclusive discussions and reflections in a unique studio environment.
Singer Jacoby Shaddix remarked, “We couldn’t take not performing any longer. Having performed the Infest album in full as a surprise one time before (during the band’s sold-out 2015 gig at London’s Roundhouse on the album’s 15th anniversary), we decided to open this infestation to every living-room in the world to celebrate the 20th anniversary with us!”
Tickets for “Infest In-Studio” start at $14.99 and include a physical commemorative ticket for the event fulfilled after the performance. Additional packages including exclusive merchandise, official store discounts and other expanded experiences. Purchasers will also be able to add a donation, which will go to Doctors Without Borders, the NAACP and the World Federation For Mental Health.
Rage Against The Machine‘s classic 1992 self-titled debut album has returned to the Billboard 200 and the iTunes’ Top Albums chart, nearly 30 years since the LP was originally issued.
The renewed interest in the effort comes in the wake of nationwide protests against police brutality following the police-involved death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
According to Forbes, Rage’s debut landed at Number 174 on this week’s Billboard 200, and as of Thursday afternoon, June 11th, it had reached Number Eight on iTunes’ Top Albums chart. The band’s other two LPs of original songs are also on the Apple Music chart’s Top 30.
Last week Rage guitarist Tom Morello roasted a self-proclaimed former fan who disliked the band’s political stance. Morello told us a while back that Rage’s message has been in plain sight all along: “I would say that the message is not very well-hidden. In the lyrics of every song and on every T-shirt it’s pretty clear what we’re about. I think that it’s insulting to, you know, members of the audience to say that, ‘Oh they don’t get it,’ or, ‘They don’t pay attention.’ Because I know when I was in the Clash’s audience, I got it. When I was in Public Enemy’s audience, I got it. When I’m in Fugazi’s audience, I get it.”
Had it not been for the pandemic, Rage Against The Machine would have been touring North America on a massive reunion trek this year. Instead, the tour will take place in 2021, kicking off in June.
Slipknot and Stone Sour singer Corey Taylor has penned the foreword to Nothin’ But A Good Time, an upcoming book about the hard rock music explosion of the 1980s.
Aside from the intro by “avowed glam metal fanatic” Taylor, the bulk of the hefty 576-page oral history draws on over 200 new interviews with members of Van Halen, Motley Crue, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row and more. Authored by Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock, the “Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion” is due out in March 2021.
A synopsis said that the book “captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians, managers, producers, engineers, label executives, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies and hangers-on who lived it.”
It added, “1980s hard rock was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated — and maybe even helped to define — a spectacularly over-the-top decade.”
Taylor is such a fan of ’80s hard rock that he once tried out for — and almost got — the lead singer spot in Velvet Revolver, the band formed by several then ex-members of Guns N’ Roses. He told us a while back about the experience: “We did a bunch of stuff, you know. We did a bunch of stuff from the first album, we did a bunch of stuff that we had been kind of demoing back and forth and whatnot, seeing if it would work, you know, just like that, and it was a lot of fun, man. You know, we ended up writing a bunch of stuff as well and just kind of seeing what would happen in that creative sense, you know.”
Deftones drummer Abe Cunningham revealed in a new interview with Download TV why the band has never released its long-shelved 2008 Eros album. Cunningham explained that the LP — the last to feature bassist Chi Cheng before a car crash put him in a coma that lasted until his death in 2013 — was never completed.
Cunningham explained, “It was never completed, and that’s what people don’t get, like ‘what, you’re just sitting on it?’ and I mean no, we’re not just sitting on it, we never finished it . . . there’s a lot attached to it as well, you know? And I understand that people are passionate about that and they want to hear Chi‘s last musical contribution.”
Deftones singer Chino Moreno told us a while back why the band decided to keep Eros under wraps: “Some of it was out of respect for Chi — ‘Let’s just put this album, you know, in a vault for a while and, you know, hold onto it.’ It’s the last thing that Chi’s played on, so we hold it very dear to us. It’s something that we have under our belt and when we feel the time is right we’ll put it out.”
Cunningham added that the band has talked about issuing some of the material from the record, saying, “We’ve talked about putting out maybe a condensed version or an EP of four or five songs, something like that, and that kind of makes sense. But we have to get into all the legalities of it and all that stuff and also we have to finish it. But yeah, it would be nice for that to see the light of day, definitely.”
Deftones have completed their ninth studio album during the COVID-19 quarantine, with Cunningham hinting at a possible September release.
That’s a wrap, have a great Monday!
