Archive for the ‘Confirmed’ Category
Bill Kelliher’s illness causes show postponement
Mastodon are currently on an awesome tour with Baroness and Between the Buried and Me. Unfortunately, they were forced to postpone their recent show in Rochester, NY – apparently due to guitarist Bill Kelliher’s hospitalization. According to MetalSucks, the venue’s website said the postponement was due to “an ongoing illness with Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher.”
Obviously, no one can be sure what that ongoing illness is, but it should be remembered that Kelliher suffers from alcoholism and was forced to leave the band’s European Unholy Alliance Chapter III Tour in 2008 when he was hospitalized with an illness related to drinking. It would be pretty devastating if he fell off the wagon and had to deal with this problem from square one again. But again, no one really knows why he had to be hospitalized this time.
It seems as if the tour will be trudging on without him, and they will likely get someone to fill in while he’s gone. [UPDATE: Thanks to MetalSucks, we now know that Peter Adams and John Baizley from Baroness each performed two songs with Mastodon (the first four songs on Crack The Skye). After that, the band continued on as a three-piece.]
Casual observers may think that Brent Hinds is the guitar wizard of the band, and he is that, don’t get me wrong. But Kelliher is a monster in his own right. A lot of people don’t really notice him because he stays off to the side almost in the shadows and doesn’t play many solos, but his rhythm sections are insane. And anyone who’s seen him play “Seabeast” live knows what I’m talking about. Get well soon, Bill.
-Sam
Here’s a look at what’s happening in the world of hard rock and metal:
*Kylesa, the sludgy stoner metal band that released one of 2009’s best albums in Static Tensions, is once again back in the studio for the time being demoing material intended for a new album. They are set to begin officially recording the new album at the end of May.
*Journalist Mick Wall is working on a Metallica book that will cover most of the group’s history. Wall was close with the band in its early days and has recently reconnected with them to conduct interviews. The book should come out in October.
*If any of you cares, here’s a tentative track list for Limp Bizkit’s new album Gold Cobra, and yes, it’s full of terrible song names like “Douchebag,” “GFY,” “Middle Finger,” and the awesomely awful duo of “Introbra” and “Outrobra.”
*The story of how Mastodon chose their name. Thank god they didn’t pick Savage Hamper.
*The Sword has finished work on its third album. If it’s done, why the hell won’t it be released until late this year?
*Serj Tankian’s new album, Imperfect Harmonies, is tentatively scheduled to come out in September. It will have 11 tracks, heavily featuring electronics. One song will be sung in Armenian.
-Sam
Fans of great music everywhere, rejoice!
Tool has finally made an official announcement that they are once again working on writing for their next album. Well, actually, three of the members are doing that. Maynard James Keenan is still out touring with his wacky side project Puscifer. But once he’s done with that, hopefully he’ll get his ass back to his band and ramp up this process.
Here’s an excerpt from the band’s newsletter, announcing the great news:
Members of the band are still in the process of writing new material (three days a week), and with the latest leg of the “Puscifer” tour nearing completion, it shouldn’t be long before the dry-erase board is filled with a bewildering array of color-coded intros, progressions, agitatos, con sordinos, crescendos, diatonics, inversions, resolutions, transitions, variations, obbligatos, consonance, and endings – the arrangements that millions will attempt to down-load off the internet.
I don’t know of any other band that takes as long as Tool does to release an album. Think about it. Tool formed in 1990. Their first studio album was released in 1993. Since then they’ve only seen fit to release three other studio albums, for a total of four LPs in 20 years. Sheesh.
Of course, the trade-off with Tool is always that while you may have to wait five years between records, you know the quality will be unimpeachable.
I think a commenter on Theprp.com summed it up best: “Tool hasn’t made a good record since their last one.”
-Sam
Eminem’s Recovery
Am I the only one not looking forward to Eminem’s next album? Em’s releases are just, well, always the same — whiny, complaining, high-pitched, immature garbage. I get it; it’s his thing, but heck man, some of the best artists in history made changes throughout the years to stay fresh.
What I do like about Eminem though? When he’s in other artist’s tracks. Some of his best work is his music not on his own albums. Just my two cents.
With that being said, Eminem has announced there will not be a Relapse 2. Instead, he’ll release Recovery on June 22nd. After taking much time off fighting drug addiction, Eminem released Relapse last year. It was rumored that Eminem would follow with Relapse 2 — that rumor was put to rest this week.
The rapper explained: “I had originally planned for Relapse 2 to come out last year. But as I kept recording and working with new producers, the idea of a sequel to Relapse started to make less and less sense to me, and I wanted to make a completely new album. The music on Recovery came out very different from Relapse, and I think it deserves its own title.”
Rumours have been spreading like wildfire. Could it be? Has the ‘Tell All Your Friends’ era Taking Back Sunday been reborn? Well, it looks very bloody likely.
Just yesterday, Matt Rubano and Matthew Fazzi both announced that they were leaving TBS, and the identities of their replacements seem quite obvious upon visiting the official TBS site. This picture shows former members John Nolan and Shaun Cooper with the three remaining members of the line-up. To add further credibility to already strong evidence, John Nolan has been banging on about it all in cryptic Facebook posts (for example: “Hey everyone, I have a big announcement”; “I know, big news, right?”).
I don’t know about you, but this is all music to my recently sad ears. After the disbanding of Straylight Run, I was absolutely gutted. But even the possibility of a TBS album that could rival ‘Tell All Your Friends’ has really lifted my spirits. If I’m being honest, I don’t think TBS has made a good album since their full-length debut, and I chalked that up to John’s absence. Hopefully he will carry over his prolific writing to TBS and we’ll get a grown-up version of a band I thought I’d lost long ago.
* Taproot has pushed back the release date for their new album, Plead The Fifth, from April 13 to May 11. I get the sense that their label (Victory Records) is really pushing them to get this record released ASAFP so they can’t be happy about having to push it back another month.
* Guitar Hero heroes DragonForce have confirmed that lead singer ZP Theart has left the band “due to insurmountable differences of musical opinion.” The remaining members have started writing a fifth album while they search for a new singer. Think you’ve got the soaring vocals to front this band? Well you’re in luck since they are holding an open audition for anyone who wants to enter. Here’s the deets.
* Speaking of auditioning for bands, Smashing Pumpkins (aka Billy Corgan) is holding an open audition process to find a new bassist and a new keyboardist who can play prog-rock styles. The band’s previous bassist, Ginger Pooley, left to be with her husband and new baby. You’ve only got until March 31, so if you think you’ve got the skills and the patience to deal with Corgan’s crazy personality check out this site.
* The Sword are about halfway through recording their third album. Singer J.D. Cronise said that the band’s sound on this new record will lean more towards Guns N’ Roses and Thin Lizzy than their prior Black Sabbath style sound. He also adds that the group’s traditional swords-and-sorcery lyrical themes will be taking a backseat to new science fiction concepts.
* Canadian heavy metallers BISON b.c. have debuted their new song “Stressed Elephant” (so metal!) over at ExploreMusic. I hadn’t really heard much of this group before this song, but I must say I am now VERY intrigued to listen to their new album, Dark Ages, which is set to be released on April 13.
* March Is Metal Month. So head over to Amazon to get your free 2010 sampler featuring bands like Fear Factory, Five Finger Death Punch, and Lacuna Coil. Did I mention it’s absolutely free?
-Sam
First it was a quadriplegic falling off a platform and getting his eye impaled, leaving him blind. Now, it’s a fan getting “glassed in the neck.”
Holy cow, seeing AC/DC perform in Australia is a death wish.
The latest report comes from Perth, where a 39 year old man wanted to attend an AC/DC show with his friends but couldn’t afford the tickets. So he did what any reasonable person would do in that situation; he parked his van outside the club, cranked his favorite AC/DC tunes, and started getting shit-faced.
Around 1 AM, a group of people who knew the men approached. Somehow a fight broke out. Who knows, maybe some heated words were exchanged. Maybe one guy thought Brian Johnson is better than Bon Scott. Maybe they were arguing whether “High Voltage” is better than “Jailbreak.” The point is, this whole fracas ended with the van-guy getting stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle. He was taken to the hospital where his injuries were described as serious (duh).
So all you Aussie AC/DC fans, you might consider wearing some kind of armor to their next show.
-Sam
Back in January, fellow writer Dan argued that Dave Grohl is the greatest rock artist of at least the modern era, if not ever. So he should be ecstatic to hear that Grohl’s main band, Foo Fighters, are preparing to record their seventh album.
Grohl announced the news on Friday at the Independent Spirit Awards, saying that Butch Vig would produce the record.
In a change of pace from previous albums, which were recorded in a high-tech studio in California, the new disc will be recorded entirely in analog in Grohl’s garage. No release date has been set, but September has been discussed as a possibility. The album will be accompanied by a documentary on the band’s history and the making of the newest album.
And of course, the news was accompanied by the obligatory, and profusely infuriating insistence that, according to Grohl, “I think this could be our heaviest album yet.” I really need to start keeping track of how often that phrase is used in the run-up to a new album.
-Sam
Here’s a sampling of some interesting stuff going on in the world of metal:
* Mudvayne has debuted their new video for the song “Beautiful and Strange.” It’s the second video in a three part series. And it didn’t take long for the video to be banned from all major outlets. One viewing and you’ll understand why. Censors don’t usually take kindly to buried-alive fallen angels digging up the graves of surprisingly full-chested naked, dead women and then proceeding to mount them and bang them silly all while images of torture and a girl actually getting her lips sewed together flash on screen. But hey, that’s fuckin’ metal! Go watch the necrophiliac’s dream over on VampireFreaks.com.
* Killswitch Engage have a new song, “My Obsession,” on the new God of War video game. Stream it at Noisecreep. (It’s really good.)
* Check out the cover art for Sevendust’s new album, Cold Day Memory, and prepare to be severely underwhelmed. Seriously, that’s the best you could come up with?
* Deftones have released the track list for their new album, Diamond Eyes.
* If anyone (like me) was hoping Limp Bizkit might return to the sound of their first album and/or their last album (aka more emphasis on the band, less on Fred Durst and rapping) this news should dash those hopes: Rappers Raekwon and Paul Wall will both have guest appearances on Gold Cobra.
* Dutch violin player, Karianne Brouwer, has a really cool cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”:
http://www.vimeo.com/9758791-Sam
The Black Keys released one of my favorite albums of 2008, Attack & Release. Produced by Danger Mouse, it featured a noticeable progression of the band’s sound and the songs were catchy as hell – just a bunch of really tasty southern psychedelic riffs and anguished crooning.
But after the record came out, the two band members started dabbling in all sorts of side projects like their rap-rock project Blakroc, Dan Auerbach’s solo album, and Patrick Carney’s band Drummer. It seemed like it would be a long time before we heard them together again in The Black Keys.
Thankfully, that’s not the case. And we will actually get to hear new Black Keys music much sooner than I ever anticipated. How soon? Well the band announced that their sixth album, Brothers, will be released on May 18th.
This time, however, Danger Mouse is only producing one track, “Tighten Up.” Carney and Auerbach will be handling most of the other production work themselves. So it will be interesting to see whether they can carry over the same magic from Attack & Release without a heavy Danger Mouse influence. Personally, I think they can.
Perhaps the coolest bit of news about this new album is that there will be a cover of Jerry Butler’s “Never Give You Up” (as opposed to Rick Astley’s more famous “Never Gonna Give You Up”, although a cover of that would be awesome as well.)
They chose a great album cover too:
Full track list after the jump.