Entertainment

It comes as no surprise that Kanye West‘s DONDA album finds itself with a large list of creators stemming from different backgrounds. In a recent tweet from the Kaufman Music Center, they revealed that one of their students was featured on one of Kanye’s tracks. Specifically, a sixth-grader by the name of Zen Micheline Hung was the pianist who played on the emotional DONDA track. “Come To Life” is the album’s twenty-second track and features an instrumental ensemble with a prominent piano interlude. The Kaufman Music Center wrote on Twitter to confirm the Zen Michelline Hung’s contribution to the track, “How cool is this? 6th grader Zen Micheline Hung (far right), a student at #SpecialMusicSchool, our K-12 NYC public school that teaches music as a core subject, plays piano on a song called...

The Pokémon Company International and Universal Music Group have announced an October 15 release date for its upcoming compilation project, Pokémon 25: The Album. The record is a celebration of Pokémon‘s 25th anniversary, which Post Malone kicked off with his version of “Only Wanna Be with You.” Other artists who are set to contribute are Katy Perry, Lil Yachty, J Balvin, Vince Staples, Tierra Whack and more. “I’ve always been a huge Pokémon fan and I jumped at the opportunity to be on the album. I love the record I did for it called “Believing” and I hope it inspires my fans to chase their dreams,” Lil Yachty said in a statement. “P25 Music has been an incredible journey in which we’ve been able to collaborate with so many amazing musicians to help us celebrate 25 years of Pokémon,” said ...

RATING: 8/10 Born in the early nineties in Chile, CRIMINAL has marched forward through trends and adversity with the act’s sole original member, vocalist and guitarist Anton Reisenegger. The South American metal pioneer had already made his mark as a young teenager in the mid-eighties with legendary Chilean blackened death metal band PENTAGRAM, now known as PENTAGRAM CHILE, not to be confused with the classic American doom metal band. The ubiquitous metal maniac has his hands in many pots — including LOCK UP, BRUJERIA and UNITED FORCES — but his main project seems to be the mighty CRIMINAL. “Sacrificio”, album number nine from the band, is an effort that sounds true to the act’s roots, contemporary in appeal, accessible, roaring and robust all at once. One of the ba...

Former JUDAS PRIEST guitarist K.K. Downing has offered more words of support for David Ellefson who was fired from MEGADETH in May after sexually explicit photos and video of the bassist leaked online along with allegations that he had been grooming a fan, which he vehemently denied. Ellefson performed a full-length set of PRIEST classics with Downing, former PRIEST singer Tim “Ripper” Owens and ex-JUDAS PRIEST drummer Les Binks in November 2019 in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom. A couple of months later, Downing, Owens and Binks announced the formation of a new band called KK’S PRIEST, along with bassist Tony Newton, a founding member of the long-running British hard rock act VOODOO SIX. At the time, it was assumed that Ellefson‘s non-involvement with KK’S PRI...

Ian Gillan says that a DEEP PURPLE reunion with Ritchie Blackmore would be a “circus” and “it would be no fun at all.” Blackmore is a co-founder of DEEP PURPLE and wrote many of their most memorable riffs, including “Smoke On The Water”, but he has not played with the group since his 1993 exit. Steve Morse effectively took over Blackmore‘s slot in 1994 and has since been in the group longer than Ritchie. Gillan addressed his longstanding feud with Blackmore in a new interview with Vikram Chandrasekar of Tales From The Road. Asked if he is still in contact with Ritchie and whether there is any chance at all of the guitarist ever sharing the stage with DEEP PURPLE again, Ian said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “No. The answer to your que...

RATING: 8/10 The news that DELAIN had reverted back to their original incarnation as keyboard maestro Martijn Westerholt‘s one-man project was met with a degree of bewilderment by the band’s ever-growing fan base. Last year’s “Apocalypse & Chill” album was a certified smash, arguably the strongest DELAIN album yet and a neat side-step away from the symphonic metal norm, with vocalist Charlotte Wessels, in particular, in the form of her life. But regardless of the ins and outs of band politics, one very welcome result of that unexpected shake-up — coupled, as ever, with recent pandemic-related circumstances — is that Wessels has grabbed the opportunity to make her first solo record, noticeably free from expectation or the burden of past glories. Appearing a...