Alternative Music

Canadian rockers THREE DAYS GRACE will release their seventh studio album, “Explosions”, on May 6 via RCA Records. The official lyric video for the LP’s first single, “So Called Life”, can be seen below. The song is the first new original music from THREE DAYS GRACE since the Juno Award-nominated “Outsider” album came out in 2018. When “So Called Life” was first released last November, it was accompanied by a Jon Vulpine-directed music video. At the time, THREE DAYS GRACE singer Matt Walst stated about the track: “In these crazy and divided times, everyone needs something to take the edge off.” Vulpine added: “I wanted to make this video really raw and stripped down. Something high energy with extreme angles and fast m...

Polish guitarist Wacław “Vogg” Kiełtyka (DECAPITATED), who joined MACHINE HEAD‘s touring lineup prior to the launch of the band’s “Burn My Eyes” 25th-anniversary tour in late 2019, spoke to Metal 101 about his experience playing with the Robb Flynn-fronted outfit so far. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Since more than two years right now, I’ve become a member of the MACHINE HEAD. It was just great to join the band and it feels amazing to be part of that. I did two tours with them — a European tour and touring the United States — and it was amazing; it was a great experience. “MACHINE HEAD have a new album ready, which makes me also really happy about feeling that I’m a part of the album,” he continued. “...

KEEL frontman Ron Keel has launched a new record label/multi-media company called RFK Media LLC. The first release from this new venture is “Keeled”, a five-track EP by RON KEEL BAND which features new versions of 1980s KEEL classics such as “The Right To Rock” and “Tears Of Fire”. RFK Media has signed an exclusive distribution deal with Amplified Distribution, and “Keeled” is now available worldwide on all major digital outlets, retail, and streaming platforms. The label’s first signing is THE FIFTH, featuring vocalist Roy Cathey (COLD SWEAT). These hard rockers have been terrorizing the southeastern U.S. for years and are now set to break out with their first release on RFK later this year. “Roy has the pipes, personality and pa...

During an appearance on the latest episode of “The MetalSucks Podcast”, vocalist Mark “Barney” Greenway of British grindcore pioneers NAPALM DEATH spoke about what it was like for him and his bandmates to complete their first pandemic-era U.S. tour last fall as the support act for GWAR. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “The tour itself was great, but you had to be kind of a little bit vigilant to try as best you could to not be mixing with too many people who you didn’t know — for obvious reasons at this point in time. Which is completely alien to my way of doing things usually, but, of course, we completely understood why that needed to be the case. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop all of us from getting COVID right at the end of the tou...

The Concorde jet: aeronautical disgrace, financial boondoggle, multinational embarrassment. Hell of a metaphor, though. Isaac Wood returns to it repeatedly throughout Black Country, New Road’s second album, Ants From Up There, most pointedly on the thematic centerpiece that bears its name. “I was made to love you, can’t you tell?” Wood pleads as “Concorde” reaches a dizzying altitude, desperately embodying a romantic sunk cost fallacy, throwing good love after bad. Until about a week ago, Ants From Up There could be heard as a classic breakup album. All seven members of the London band amplify the dynamics of Wood’s every convulsion, from giddy infatuation to paralyzing despair, as he desperately sacrifices his serenity for a tragic and heroic cause. But on January 31, the band announced, ...

In a brand new interview with CNN Indonesia, Slash was asked what piece of advice he would give to young musicians who are just starting out. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “The music industry has changed so much since I got into it. It’s hard to sort of give anybody any kind of real advice because I’m still trying to learn how to navigate the sort of new terrain. But I think the most important thing is to stick to the music that you really love — don’t let anybody try and tell you different — and then go and try and figure out how you can connect with an audience and the best way to make that possible and do what you have to do and be prepared to work really, really hard and to sacrifice everything in order to do what you love to do.” SLAS...

A GoFundMe campaign has been launched for former W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes, who has been diagnosed with a cancer in throat and neck. The campaign was organized by the 63-year-old musician’s wife and manager, Cathy-Sarah Holmes, who first shared the news of his diagnosis in a social media post on Saturday (February 5). In a message on the GoFundMe page, Holmes‘s drummer Steve Jackson wrote: “Hi Everyone, this is a tough message to write. You probably won’t know me but for the past 4 years I have been playing drums for Chris Holmes or you may know him as the ‘Mean Man‘. In the time I’ve spent getting to know Chris, I can assure you this is so far from the truth, as many of you who have met Chris will agree. He has a lot of time for his fans and...

METALLICA was nominated for the very first “Hard Rock/Metal Performance” Grammy in 1989, but famously lost to JETHRO TULL, a band distinguished mainly by its heavy use of flute. Fans — and even some audience members — were rightly outraged, though TULL‘s record label tried to make light of the faux pas by placing a Billboard ad that read, “The flute is a heavy, metal instrument.” Asked in a new interview with the St. Louis, Missouri radio station KSHE 95 if he ever got a chance to “to rub in the face of METALLICA” the fact that his band won a “Hard Rock/Metal Performance” Grammy over the San Francisco Bay Area heavy metal giants, JETHRO TULL leader Ian Anderson said: “Well, I think METALLICA were actually very gentlemanly. At the ...