Good morning Radicals! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a little break for the holiday! Let’s get back into the swing of things with a look at today’s music news!
Having revealed the details for its new album, titled F8, and debuting the first single from it, “Inside Out“, on Sunday night (December 1st), Five Finger Death Punch has now 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. Ticket and VIP pre-sales have started at fivefingerdeathpunch.com using the code “5FDP2020,” while public on sales will begin this Friday (December 6th).
Five Finger Death Punch is in the midst of a tour right now, and guitarist Zoltan Bathory told us that his band’s work ethic is what separates them from other rock acts: “If anything is different from this band or any other band — I mean, there are a lot of hard-working bands, but basically that’s what’s always our ideal — work harder. You know, we put out, like what, like this is gonna be eight records in 11 years or something like that.”
F8 will arrive on February 28th and follows up last year’s And Justice For None.
Stone Temple Pilots will release their first-ever acoustic album, titled Perdida, on February 10th, 2020. According to a press release, it features “10 deeply personal songs that weave introspective lyrics together with unexpected instruments to take listeners on an emotional and musical journey through letting go and starting over.”
The word “perdida” is Spanish for “loss,” and bassist Robert DeLeo said that music has helped the members of STP process grief and other emotions. He explained, “When I’ve gone through things in my life, I’ve found that sitting down and having an honest conversation with my guitar is the best therapy.”
The band recorded Perdida at drummer Eric Kretz‘s Bomb Shelter Studios. The band utilized a variety of instruments that haven’t been associated with STP in the past, including flute, alto saxophone, guitarrón, viola, cello and vintage keyboards. Robert DeLeo remarked, “We’ve done similar things before — like the trumpet solo on ‘Adhesive’ from Tiny Music — but never on such a large scale.”
DeLeo told us not long ago that STP has never stuck to one formula when it came to creating new songs: “There’s no rules to writing music and that’s what I enjoy about it, you know. You’ve always got ideas stored away somewhere, you know. There’s those ideas and there’s also ones that hit you at the moment and you realize that this could be something that we could all dig into and bite into, and that’s really exciting when it’s one of those.”
The band has released the album’s opening track, called “Fare Thee Well.” In addition to the album, STP will also launch an acoustic tour in early 2020. You can see the full run of dates on the Road Rage page!
The complete lineup for the second annual Sonic Temple Art + Music Festival has been revealed, with previously announced headliners Metallica joined by fellow headliners Slipknot, along with Deftones, Bring Me The Horizon, Evanescence, Staind, Sublime With Rome and many more.
The rest of the lineup includes Dirty Honey, Royal Blood, The Pretty Reckless, Alter Bridge, Pop Evil, Hellyeah, Fire From The Gods, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Saint Asonia and others.
The event, which replaced the 12-year-old Rock On The Range festival in 2018, returns to MAPFRE Stadium in Columbus, Ohio on Friday, May 15th, Saturday, May 16th and Sunday, May 17th, 2020. Metallica will headline on Friday and Sunday, playing two completely different sets, while Slipknot will close on Saturday.
As previously announced, Metallica will exclusively headline all five Danny Wimmer Presents hard rock festivals in 2020, including Sonic Temple. The three-day destination festival will feature three music stages, premium food and beverage selections and enhanced onsite experiences including a vast array of live art and installations.
Pearl Jam will embark on a European tour next summer, the clearest sign yet that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame act is gearing up for a return to action in 2020. The 13-date trek, which will feature support from Pixies, Idles and White Reaper, will mark the band’s first live appearances in nearly two years.
Pearl jam’s tour will kick off on on June 23rd in Frankfurt, Germany and will include three festival appearances — Lollapalooza Stockholm in Sweden on June 27th, Rock Werchter in Belgium on July 2nd and Lollapalooza Paris in France on July 19th. The latter will mark the band’s first performance in Paris since 2006.
Other countries on the group’s itinerary include Denmark, Italy, Austria, England and Hungary, with the trip ending on July 21st in Amsterdam.
As usual for Pearl Jam, fans can expect the band to change the set list from show to show. Bassist Jeff Ament told us a while back that it keeps things fresh for the group: “Probably 30 of the songs, or 20 of the songs that we end up playing, like, maybe we got to rehearse them once or, maybe we were, like, backstage right before the show, like, ‘OK, what’s the bridge to that song?’ Like, that just makes it more exciting, you know? You’re out there going, like, ‘OK (chuckles), that song we haven’t played in three years is coming up,’ you know, and everybody’s kind of excited and on the edge a little bit.”
Earlier this year, Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard confirmed to Rolling Stone that Pearl Jam was “in the middle” of the songwriting sessions for the band’s long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s Lightning Bolt album. Guitarist Mike McCready told the magazine last month that the band is in the process of recording its 11th studio LP.
Members of a Facebook page called “Justice For Oli Herbert,” started by friends and fans of the late All That Remains guitarist, have put a billboard near his home in Stafford Springs, Connecticut seeking information regarding his passing.
Herbert was found dead on October 16th, 2018 at a pond on his Stafford Springs, Connecticut property. He was reported missing by his wife Elizabeth a few hours earlier, and his body was discovered by police face down at the edge of the pond where the water was only a few inches deep.
The Connecticut State Police Eastern District Crime Squad has been investigating Herbert’s death, which is being treated as suspicious. They are looking at the will he signed a week before his death as well as a life insurance policy mentioned in the will. The will named Elizabeth Herbert as executor and sole benefactor, while stating that Oli’s sister, Cynthia Herbert, should receive nothing.
Elizabeth wrote on Facebook a short time after her husband’s death that anti-depressants were found in his system by a medical examiner and that he had been “self-treating” for manic depression.
Herbert began playing guitar at 14 and co-founded All That Remains with singer Phil Labonte in 1998. The latter referred to Herbert’s wife as a “garbage human being” and claimed that he urged the guitarist to divorce her.
Finally, we want to wish a Happy Birthday to the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne!
