Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda and Trivium’s Matt Heafy are planning to collaborate on a new song via Twitch. The session will take place on February 8 at 10:00am PDT / 01:00pm EDT.
Shinoda commented:
“I got Matt’s blessing to get weird with the track too. We’re not gonna just make a metal track. We’re not gonna make a Trivium track. If you wanted a Trivium track you could just get a Trivium track. You could go to Matt’s channel and get that. So I’m gonna take his vocal, and even his guitar, and chop them into little tiny bits and run them through a meat grinder and then we’re gonna make a track out of it. I don’t even know what we’re gonna make.”
“The track he sent is so… it’s, like, EPIC! It’s very, like, Matt standing on a mountaintop with a falcon on his wrist who flies away and collects the bones of enemy clans, enemy warriors.”
Ps @mikeshinoda – the way you described the song… I MUST HAVE THAT PAINTED!!! Hahaha. I loved that description so much. I can’t wait to hear what you conjure! GO FRICKIN NUTS!
During a recent interview with RockSverige, Ronnie James Dio’s widow Wendy Dio offered an update on the singer’s long-awaited autobiography. According to her, the book is tentatively set to be released on July 10.
Wendy said the following:
“I have the book, Ronnie’s autobiography, finally finished with [rock journalist] Mick Wall, and I think it’s coming out on Ronnie’s birthday July 10th. Ronnie had written half of it, and Mick Wall and I got together and found lots of interviews, so I wanted it to still be in Ronnie’s voice. I’m very pleased with that.”
On another note, Wendy also offered an update on the new Ronnie James Dio documentary:
“It’s probably coming out next year. We’ve been working on that, and then it had to stop for a little bit because of them having to go to Europe to interview more people, and because of the travel bans [due to the coronavirus pandemic], they haven’t been able to do that. Hopefully it will come out in 2022.”
“We’ve been working on this for a couple of years. I’m not supposed to talk about it because they said they don’t want me to blow everything now and then there won’t be anything to talk about when it comes out. [Laughs]”
KEN mode and Kowloon Walled City have joined forces for a new split release to raise money for Shallow North Dakota‘s Tony Jacome, who is battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer. You can purchase the EP on Bandcamp and donate to Jacome via GoFundMe. The effort features an unreleased Shallow North Dakota song titled “Bearded Burly Man,” KEN mode’s covers of “Outside Dakota” and “Six Foot Foam Lover,“ and Kowloon Walled City‘s cover of “The Milkman.”
KEN mode commented:
“Two new KEN mode tracks.
So, we made a post a few weeks ago on FB and IG about our friend Tony, who plays in one of the heaviest bands of all time – Shallow North Dakota. He’s fighting stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and some people are trying to help raise funds for his fight and his family.
The music community started stepping up, and over the course of the week, we found out that Shallow North Dakota had a song from their final album, Mob Wheel, that never got released, and that they were planning to release this with our pals Kowloon Walled City as a special limited fundraising release LP.
KWC had done a SDN cover back in 2011 that also never got released. So we decided to muscle our way onto this, despite not having any material. We jammed on two SND songs on Jan 13, put down some drums, and ran with it. Jesse spent a bunch of time mixing it, Scott Evans and Sean Pearson (who engineered the other two tracks) helped provide feedback along the way, then Carl Saff was kind enough to rush out a killer mastering job on the whole batch, while our bud Sean Arsenian whipped up some art.
This whole record is one big fundraiser. We’re releasing it on bandcamp to start, with LP pre-orders and digital, and it’ll be available on various other streaming services next week. Think of it as the sickest, heaviest gofundme you’ve ever seen. The cause is heartbreaking and sucks, but we were stoked to be able to mobilize and try to do something under the circumstances.”
Testament’s Alex Skolnick and Arch Enemy’s Alissa White-Gluz have shared a quarantine cover of Queen’s “We Are The Champions.” Skolnick commented:
“Last spring, when lockdown ‘challenges’ were all the rage, we’d been among more than a dozen musicians and singers answering Brian May’s call in a wonderful, elaborate all-star video in tribute to first responders ([go] back to last spring to see the full version, with a different vocalist singing each line). For this we created a straight through ‘jamming’ version, with her voice straight through and remixed by yours truly (not easy, but a fun challenge!). This is a special video posted on both of our Patreon accounts (thank you, patrons!) as a gift during the holidays. Now we are announcing it as it is available to view for all. Enjoy!”
At The Gates have been working on a music video for the first single from their new album. The clip is being directed by Patric Ullaeus and a photo from the shoot can be seen below:
Shawn Drover (ex-Megadeth), Glen Drover (ex-Megadeth), Joe DiBiase (ex-Fates Warning), and Henning Basse (ex-Firewind) have joined forces for a new project. Shawn Drover recently confirmed the news on the “Nothing Shocking” podcast.
Shawn said the following:
“We started working on some music probably a couple of months ago now. It’s been a couple of months. We’ve been talking about doing something. Glen owns his own studio up in Canada, so why not utilize the fact that we don’t have to go and pay huge studio costs and et cetera, et cetera, and get some friends together that we admire and that we respect and work on a record. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.
We have Glen and myself, of course, and we have a bass player named Joe DiBiase, who was in a band called FATES WARNING out of Connecticut for years and years and years. A great player; a friend of ours. So he’s gonna play bass on it. And we have a singer from Germany who was in a band called METALIUM for a number of years, and his name is Henning Basse, who is a fantastic melodic singer. So that’s what we’re doing currently.
It’s a slow process, because life gets in the way. We all have things that we deal with, so we do that. But when we have the time, we work on it, and so far it’s turning out to be really exciting. We’re pretty happy with the material we’ve done so far.”
He also added:
“It’s been really similar to the first band that Glen and I did years ago, which was a band called EIDOLON. We released, actually, five records on Metal Blade in the early 2000s, right before we both got into MEGADETH. And the dynamic of that was that I write most of the material. Although Glen does contribute to some of it, I usually have the main germ of ideas, and, of course, he records all that stuff. So he’s kind of a studio guy. He’s the guitar player, but he handles all of the studio recording affairs, and I just kind of take on the job of creating most of the music. And we finetune it — he tweaks it and kind of makes it his own in a way. But that’s kind of the working relationship we have with that. Because if Glen wrote all the music, I’d basically be doing nothing, and he would have to tackle all the work on his own. So we made a decision years ago — that was back in the mid-’90s, actually, when we put out our first bit of music, before we got signed to Metal Blade — that’s always been the working dynamic, is I create most of the material, and he handles all the recording affairs with that. And it’s worked out quite well. So that’s what we’re doing this time as well. At this point, we’re on song four. I think we’re gonna do eight or nine songs, and so far I’ve written all of them. It’s just kind of how it worked out.”
Wolfgang Van Halen has revealed that his solo project Mammoth WVH will be performing on the February 11 episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!.” The band is expected to perform “Distance” on the show.
During a recent interview with Metal From The Inside, Joe Lynn Turner (ex-Rainbow, ex-Deep Purple, etc.) offered an update on his new project with Peter Tägtgren (Hypocrisy, Pain, etc.). The musician says he believes the collaboration is “gonna raise some eyebrows.”
Turner said the following:
“I don’t wanna talk too much about it, because it is a project we’re trying to keep under wraps until we release it and keep some mystery about it — only because nowadays most mystery is gone.
What happened was I played a gig for Tommy, [Peter’s] brother — he’s a big fan of mine — in Sweden. And we got to be friends, Peter and I. And driving back to the train to go back down to Stockholm, he gave me a cassette with a track on it that he wasn’t using, and he said, ‘Why don’t you write something to this?’ I said, ‘Okay.’ So, about a month later, I sent something back, and he just went, ‘Woah! Really?’ And I went, ‘Yeah. I think this is good stuff.’ And it’s gonna be the lead-off track — it’s incredible. So anyway, we said, ‘Let’s do something.’
Meanwhile, he’s touring like crazy with two bands, I’m touring. We were writing a track here and so on and so forth. I finally got up to Borlänge [in Sweden] again, and we got in the studio and the chemistry was unbelievable. We just wrote two or three tracks in two days — I mean, soup to nuts; just as you’re gonna hear them on the record is the way we did them. So we knew we had something.”
He continued when asked about the musical direction:
“I think it’s exciting. It’s different. It doesn’t sound like anyone else. I really mean that. Just because of the input where Peter comes as a writer, artist and producer. And, of course, it’s still melodic, because I make sure that I’ve got those melodies and choruses. When I say ‘heavier’ or ‘darker,’ [it’s] mostly because of the times we live in, [so there were] all these subjects [to write about]. So it is a real piece of art, in a sense of the word, because art should always be a reflection of its time; this is exactly what all great art has been through the ages.
All I can say is that we’re very excited about it. We think people are gonna absolutely love it, because it has all of the building blocks. It’s got a bit of industrial metal, it’s got a bit of classic rock vocals, it’s got subject matter. It’s darker, it’s deeper, it’s broader. So, we think it’s gonna raise some eyebrows.”
He also added the following about release plans:
“What we probably will do is… Say we release a single in April or May — when I say a single, [I mean] a track. Let’s release it then. Because we don’t know what this year’s gonna be like for touring, for anything. We really don’t know if concerts are coming back. And we talked the other day about it and said, ‘Look, we’re not gonna miss out on the touring schedule with a great album like this,’ that I really believe is perfect for festivals and what people are gonna wanna see and hear. So, let’s release something, say, May, let’s release something in June — let’s do it piece by piece till finally we say, ‘Okay, here’s the album. We got promoters interested. We got fans interested. Let’s go out there and actually play it in front of them live.’ So we’re just trying to be smart about it. We’re not trying to be smug about it or anything. It’s just smart. Because who knows when we’re gonna get back on stage? And, really, an artist’s calling card is the record; that’s your calling card. Here’s our sound. Come and see it, come and hear it for yourself.”
Chris Cornell’s widow Vicky Cornell has confirmed that the late frontman’s estate is planning to release a second volume of his covers album “No One Sings Like You Anymore.” The first volume was digitally released in December and physical copies are set to be released on March 19. Vicky told 105.7 The Point’s “The Rizzuto Show” the following about the follow-up:
“There is a volume two. The thing with this volume one, though, that makes it special is that he mastered it, he sequenced it — this is all Chris from beginning to end. And the other one was mastered, not sequenced, volume two. And then, because he was just such a prolific writer, we’re blessed, because he has left us lots of music. Not in completely finished form, but there’s enough to work with, and the Cornell stamp is all over it. So that’s really special. So there’s a lot of music.”
System Of A Down have premiered a new video for their song “Genocidal Humanoidz.” The clip debuted earlier today (January 30) following a virtual fundraising event that the band organized to raise money for Artsakh and Armenian soldiers, who have been injured during the Nagorno-Karabakh war.
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