Heavy Metal
Inter Arma Cover Neil Young, Prince, Nine Inch Nails, and More on New Album Garbers Days Revisited
Metal band Inter Arma have announced a new covers album, Garbers Days Revisited, featuring renditions of songs by Neil Young, Prince, Tom Petty, Nine Inch Nails, and more. The band has offered a preview of the record with their heavy take on Young’s “Southern Man”. Recorded between tours for their 2019 album, Sulphur English, the covers LP sees Inter Arma lending their crushing amalgamation of doom, death metal, and psych to eight songs that have influenced them. They turn “Southern Man” — already one of Young’s crunchiest and heaviest numbers — into a sonic colossus. “Inter Arma as a whole are massive Neil Young fans,” the band commented in a press release. “‘Southern Man’ has been a staple of our live set for over a decade and we finally got around to putting it to tape. We hope you enjo...
Clutch’s Neil Fallon Crushes AC/DC’s “Riff Raff” with Members of Cave In, Converge, and more: Watch
The folks over at Two Minutes to Late Night have delivered yet another stellar quarantine performance, with Clutch singer Neil Fallon leading a rousing cover of AC/DC’s “Riff Raff”. Like the previous videos in the “Bedroom Covers” series, the AC/DC performance features each musician performing from his own home. Interestingly enough, this series was conceived before the pandemic, and a few of the artists recorded and filmed their contributions as early as January. Two Minutes to Late Night host Gwarsenio Hall (aka Jordan Olds), a constant in all of these videos, sings and performs bass on the AC/DC cover. He’s joined by drummer Ben Koller (Converge, Mutoid Man), and guitarists Stephen Brodsky (Cave In, Mutoid Man), Adam McGrath (Cave In, Wear Your Wounds), and Tom Draper (Carcass). Fa...
Slipknot Cancel North American Knotfest Roadshow Tour Due to COVID-19 Pandemic
One of metal’s most anticipated tours, Slipknot’s North American “Knotfest Roadshow”, has been called off due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While it seemed inevitable, Slipknot officially canceled the trek on Wednesday (May 13th), just a few weeks before the tour was slated to begin. Moreover, the band also postponed its Knotfest at Sea cruise and canceled its Knotfest UK festival, both set for August. The month-long “Knotfest Roadshow” had been scheduled to kick off May 30th in Syracuse, New York, and run through a June 25th show in The Woodlands, Texas. In addition to headliners Slipknot, the outing was to feature A Day to Remember, Underoath, and Code Orange. The Slipknot-headlined Knotfest at Sea cruise, slated to set sail from Barcelona on August 10th, featured a bill that included Behemo...
Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix Comes Out Publicly as Transgender
Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, the leader of the acclaimed experimental black metal group Liturgy, has come out publicly as transgender, writing, “I am a woman.” In an Instagram post, Hunt-Hendrix discussed her previous hesitance in making a statement, remarking, “I could have done this before Liturgy started, but I didn’t, out of fear. I knew I was female and not male, emotionally and in my experience of my body. But I was afraid – of social rejection, romantic rejection, career rejection, rejection by my family, failure.” Hunt-Hendrix’s statement reads in full: “I am a woman. I’ve always been one. The love I have to give is a woman’s love, if only because it is mine. To varying degrees many already understand this, but I’d like to make a clear statement about my actual gender. I could have done th...
Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt to Score Jonas Åkerlund’s New Netflix Miniseries Clark
Fellow Swedish artists Jonas Åkerlund and Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt are set to collaborate on a new Netflix miniseries called Clark. Åkerlund will direct while Åkerfeldt will provide the soundtrack for the six-part gangster story. Between Åkerlund and Åkerfeldt, there’s some serious metal pedigree. Åkerlund, a former drummer for Bathory, recently helmed the black metal biopic Lords of Chaos, and has directed numerous music videos for bands like Metallica, U2, and others. As for Åkerfeldt, his prolific songwriting output in the bands Opeth and Bloodbath is more than a worthy resume, with Clark being his first music score project. The miniseries is a six episode drama about Swedish criminal Clark Olofsson, who’s considered the country’s first celebrity “pop-gangster” and “has given ris...
Rammstein and Guns N’ Roses Both Call Off European Tours Due to COVID-19 Pandemic
Rammstein’s Till Lindemann (photo by Jens Koch), Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose (photo by Amy Harris) Two of rock’s biggest live acts will not be touring Europe this spring and summer, as planned, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rammstein and Guns N’ Roses have each announced that they’ve called off their respective outings. Rammstein were scheduled to embark on a new leg of their “Stadium Tour” on May 25th in Klagenfurt, Austria, and remain on the European run until August 4th in Aarhus, Denmark. As of now, there has been no official announcement regarding the band’s late summer North American run, which is slated to kick off August 20th in Montreal. Rammstein, who’ve been touring in support of their 2019 untitled album, explained the European tour cancellation: “Due to local eve...
#MetallicaMondays: Watch Metallica Perform “The Black Album” in Full at 2012 Austria Show
Metallica have been digging through their vast archive of live performance footage for their weekly #MetallicaMondays concert series. The latest installment should particularly appeal to fans of “The Black Album”, as the band unearths a back-to-front performance of the LP recorded in 2012 in Austria. The footage captures Metallica’s headlining set for the Nova Rock Festival on June 10th, 2012 in Nickelsdorf, Austria. After playing a handful of hits including “Master of Puppets”, the band launched in a full performance of 1991’s Metallica (aka “The Black Album”) in reverse order, starting with “The Struggle Within”. After playing the full album, they finished the lengthy show with a few more hits. The set and the band’s respective European tour celebrated the 20th anniversary of the legenda...
Suicide Silence Announce Plans for Virtual World Tour
With the concert industry shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, bands are coming up with new and creative ways to present live music to their fans. Suicide Silence have just announced plans for a “Virtual World Tour”, in which they will play streaming concerts for select geographic areas. Each performance will feature the band playing a full set professionally filmed by multiple cameras, followed by a Q&A session. The shows will be geo-gated, meaning only people within a certain radius of the city on the virtual tour stop will be able to purchase tickets to view that concert. The band has not unveiled an itinerary yet, but expects to launch the tour with virtual shows in New York and Los Angeles in June. Fans in each market will be able to purchase merchandise unique to that particul...
Within Temptation Unleash New Song “Entertain You”: Stream
Within Temptation have released the new song “Entertain You”, a stand-alone single that was intended to coincide with the Dutch symphonic metal band’s now-postponed European tour with Evanescence. The song crashes in with heavy, towering riffs, before pulling back for Sharon den Adel’s emotive vocals. According to a press release “Entertain You” is about “the urge for self-gratification at the expense of others.” A statement from the band further explained, “Offenses, victimization, and exploitation. That happens every day and is mainly justified under the name of economic necessity, politics, religion, culture, sex, and race.” Sharon den Adel also issued her own statement, remarking, “We often cannot and do not want to see the consequences of our urge to satisfy our personal needs. T...
Fearless Records and Century Media Each Announce Streaming Festivals
Two record labels specializing in heavy music are giving their bands a platform to perform for fans during the pandemic. Fearless Records is staging an “At Home” live-streaming event on May 9th, while Century Media is holding the “Isolation Festival” on May 14th. The Fearless event will feature acoustic performances from The Pretty Reckless, who just inked a new deal with the label, plus As It Is, Grayscale, Ice Nine Kills, Locket, Plain White T’s, Set It Off, The Almost, The Plot In You, and Wage War. In addition, there’ll be appearances from members of All That Remains, August Burns Red, Capstan, Eat Your Heart Out, iDKHOW, I Prevail, Kill the Lights, Movements, My Kid Brother, Oceans Ate Alaska, Starset, The Word Alive, Underoath, Varials, and Volumes. “Fearless At Home” begins at 3:00 ...
Iron Maiden Postpone All 2020 Shows Due to COVID-19 Pandemic, Reschedule Many Dates for 2021
Iron Maiden have postponed all 2020 touring plans as the COVID-19 pandemic persists. The legendary UK metal band has rescheduled many of the European dates of its ongoing “Legacy of the Beast Tour” for 2021, but canceled festival appearances have not been rescheduled. The band was supposed to begin the first leg of the 2020 tour on May 1st in Perth, Australia, with shows in New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan, Dubai, and Israel to follow. Those dates have not been rescheduled yet, though the band hopes to return to those countries “in some guise, in the first half of 2022.” European shows in Moscow, Weert, and Zurich have also not been rearranged thus far. Iron Maiden’s manager Rod Smallwood issued a statement on the band’s website in regards to the postponements and cancellations: “I hope...
Dave Mustaine Records Vocals for New Megadeth Album, Says Cannabis Aided His Cancer Battle
Megadeth were hoping to hit the studio this spring to properly record their new album, but the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed those plans. That said, frontman Dave Mustaine didn’t let the lockdown stop him from recording vocals this week. A new tweet from the band shows a pic of Mustaine in his home studio, with the caption, “Laying down some vocals today! #Megadeth16.” The hashtag refers to Megadeth’s upcoming 16th album, the follow up to 2016’s Dystopia, which yielded the metal legends a Grammy for its title track. Last month, bassist David Ellefson said that the new album was “written and ready to be recorded” and that the band members had planned to convene in Nashville to record the LP. However, the pandemic put those plans on hold, with Ellefson adding, “Once the lockdown lifts and it’s...
