Entertainment

GREAT WHITE guitarist Mark Kendall says that his band was unfairly criticized for playing a concert in Dickinson, North Dakota just a few months after the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Video footage of GREAT WHITE‘s July 2020 outdoor performance — which was part of the town’s “First On First: Dickinson Summer Nights” series — showed there were no safety restrictions at the event, with attendees standing shoulder to shoulder and not a single person wearing a mask. Although North Dakota health officials at the time recommended social distancing and wearing masks when possible, there was no legal requirement to do so in the state. Steven Peterson, a GREAT WHITE fan who attended the Dickinson concert, told CNN that “maybe 5%” of the audience wore ma...

A New Zealand mother has reportedly named her three children Metallica, Slayer and Pantera. The news of the unidentified woman’s choice of names for her kids was first broken by New Zealand journalist and documentary filmmaker David Farrier (Netflix‘s “Dark Tourist”). “Proud to report that a New Zealand mother has named her children Metallica, Pantera and Slayer,” Farrier wrote on his Twitter. “She told me, ‘It’s not easy raising three of the heaviest bands.'” Farrier went on to say that he has seen the birth certificates of all three kids and admitted that he was was initially suspicious, especially after noticing that Metallica had a middle name of “And Justice For All”, in honor of the band’s fourth album. ...

In a new interview with Sofa King Cool, POWERMAN 5000 frontman Spider One was asked how it feels to have been part of the wave of rock bands that were responsible for creating the “nu metal” genre back in the late 1990s. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I don’t think anybody who was part of that thought of it that way. I definitely didn’t. Where that term came from, who knows? I don’t know who made that up. And we didn’t really even feel like we were a part of it. We felt like we were just doing our thing, and we didn’t particularly feel like a part of a scene. But now when I look back on it, it was a pretty cool time. The variety of bands from that era, it’s pretty impressive. “People like to say everythingR...

RATING: 8/10 For those still perplexed by Burton C. Bell‘s decision to quit FEAR FACTORY just as new album “Aggression Continuum” burst into view, part of the explanation is available here. Criminally overlooked upon its original release in 2020, ASCENSION OF THE WATCHERS‘ second album “Apocrypha” thoroughly deserves a second crack at the whip, not least because it eliminated any sense that Bell‘s long-time but infrequent concern was only a side project. Forged in collaboration with Jayce Lewis and John Bechdel, the band’s follow-up to 2008’s “Numinosum” remains a rich, immersive and forward-thinking gothic rock record, and one that provided a much-overdue showcase for Bell‘s oft-maligned clean voice. Unfolding amid de...