Author Archives : Dana

BLACK SABBATH TO RELEASE “SUPERSONIC YEARS-THE SEVENTIES SINGLES BOX SET” ON JUNE 8TH

Black Sabbath have announced a new vinyl box set showcasing their singles in the 1970s.

Titled Supersonic Years – The Seventies Singles Box Set, the 10-disc set will be released on June 8th through BMG – two days before Ozzy Osbourne headlines Download festival.

The box set includes 7-inches of Iron Man, Evil Woman, Paranoid and more, remastered by Andy Pearce. Each single also includes ultra-rare or exclusive color sleeves.

“We didn’t intend to make a single in the first place,” said Tony Iommi to the Disc And Music Echo in 1971. “But after we’d completed the album, the Paranoid track was sufficiently short to be a ‘trailer’ for the LP. We really didn’t expect it to do anything at all. We don’t go into the studio to make singles. We make LPs only. But if there is anything suitable as a result of the recordings, it would be considered, of course.”

There are also five rare edits of Iron Man, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Am I Going Insane (Radio), Hard Road and Symptom Of The Universe, alongside new liner notes detailing all the rarities inside.

Supersonic Years – The Seventies Singles Box Set

Disc 1: Evil Woman (Don’t Play Your Games With Me) / Wicked World
Disc 2: Paranoid / The Wizard
Disc 3: Iron Man (Single Edit) / Electric Funeral
Disc 4: Tomorrow’s Dream / Laguna Sunrise
Disc 5: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (Edited Version) / Changes
Disc 6: Am I Going Insane (Radio) (Single Edit) / Hole In The Sky
Disc 7: Gypsy / She’s Gone
Disc 8: It’s Alright / Rock ‘N’ Roll Doctor
Disc 9: Never Say Die / She’s Gone
Disc 10: Hard Rock (Single Edit) / Symptom Of The Universe (German Single Edit)

Supersonic Years – The Seventies Singles Box Set is available for pre-order now.

additional source: Metal Hammer via loudersound.com

“SCREAM FOR ME SARAJEVO” STARRING BRUCE DICKINSON IN THEATERS MAY 10TH

The film Scream for Me Sarajevo will be released beginning May 10th in select theaters across the US and Canada, it was announced today by CineLife Entertainment, the event cinema division of Spotlight Cinema Networks, and Eagle Rock Entertainment, a producer and distributor of music films.

Scream for Me Sarajevo is the astonishing true story of one of the most unlikely rock concerts ever staged, in a city under siege with mortars and grenades raining down on civilians, killing indiscriminately. The 1994 concert features global rock star Bruce Dickinson and his band Skunkworks who performed in the midst of the siege of Sarajevo. This is a film about extraordinary people defying the horrors of war, and the musicians who risked their lives to play a show for them.

Featuring footage from the historic gig, the film also features concertgoers who made it to the show despite the atrocities going on around them in the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Interviews with the band, crew and security bring home the grim reality of the dangerous and often barbaric conditions surrounding the event.

“We weren’t protected, there was no plan and the bullets were real, but f–k it, we went anyway” said Dickinson in his just published best-selling autobiography What Does This Button Do?. “The gig was immense, intense, and probably the biggest show in the world at that moment for the audience and for us. That the world didn’t really know didn’t matter. It changed the way I viewed life, death and other human beings.”

In addition to the feature film, a specially recorded interview with Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson will be included as exclusive theatrical-only content in participating theaters.

“We are excited to be working with Eagle Rock Entertainment to bring this special film to moviegoers, and Bruce Dickinson and Iron Maiden fans in the U.S.” said Mark Rupp, Managing Director, CineLife Entertainment.

To purchase tickets, visit screamformesarajevo.com.

Watch the trailer below.

DEF LEPPARD PICK THEIR FAVORITE DEF LEPPARD ALBUMS

Classic Rock Magazine asked the members of Def Leppard, “[What] is your favourite Leppard album?”

Joe Elliott:

“Wow! Who is your favourite child? Tough one! I have a massive love for Yeah!, our covers album, because those songs are my childhood on one disc, and I think on Def Leppard we proved – if to no one but ourselves – that we can still write great songs and have a good time creating new music. But logic dictates Hysteria is obviously the most important album we ever made. It captured a moment in time that seems to be lasting forever… long may it last.”

Phil Collen:

“Hysteria. We actually changed the way that music sounded on the radio. Mutt bridged that gap between pop and rock. Pyromania was a bit like that, but with Hysteria it had a further-reaching effect. And Mutt really deserves the credit. He would push us: “This is average. But we’ve got to be great.”

There was something so pioneering about it. Y’know, like the Stones were a blues band, then all of a sudden the band that was doing Little Red Rooster was writing You Can’t Always Get What You Want. They went through a whole different thing. I think that’s what happened with us. And it kinda changed the way a lot of people approached rock music.”

Rick Allen:

“It changes. But what was one of our seemingly least popular albums has became one of my favourites – Slang [1996]. We were reeling from the fallout of the whole Seattle scene, and that album was a great opportunity to get back to basics. It wasn’t as polished, and maybe that was more the sound that would have happened to the band had we not met up with Mutt Lange.”

Rick Savage:

“I loved Pyromania and how it set the band up, but I’d have to choose Hysteria. Just the quality and depth of the songs. Whenever you hear any of those tracks on the radio, even all this time later, it doesn’t sound dated for a 1987 album.”

Vivian Campbell:

“[From my time in the band] I think Songs From The Sparkle Lounge [2008] felt the most comfortable, because it was so easy to make. We didn’t intellectualise it. Frequently there’s a concept that comes before the music – y’know, a discussion about what kind of album we want to make. But with Sparkle Lounge we didn’t sweat it. My theory is that it came on the heels of the Yeah! covers album [2006], where it was like painting by numbers. And I kinda feel like there was a bit of that same ethic and thought process about it.”

source: Classic Rock via loudersound.com

ULTIMATE CLASSIC ROCK RECOUNTS DAVID COVERDALE’S CHALLENGES WHILE RECORDING THE BAND’S EPONYMOUS ’87 ALBUM

Martin Kielty of Ultimate Classic Rock reports:

Many debut albums are self-titled because the music you hear is the artist’s statement of intent. Others self-title releases later in their career because the music represents a definitive achievement.

David Coverdale got it absolutely spot-on when he called Whitesnake’s seventh album Whitesnake because it was indeed a definitive achievement – released in 1987 after almost everything that could go wrong had gone wrong.

Work on the follow-up to 1984’s Slide It In had begun the following year with the band’s eighth lineup since its formation in 1978. Coverdale, who’d endured fractious interactions with most of his previous colleagues, had established a close working relationship with Thin Lizzy guitarist John Sykes. Together with bassist Neil Murray and drummer Aynsley Dunbar, they began laying down tracks in Vancouver … which is where the project began to go off the rails.

“I got a dreadful sinus infection – which was not drug-related – and it cost me all my vocal ability, If there’s supposed to be any there,” Coverdale told Headbangers Ball. “I had to go in for surgery, and I said to the members of the group that there was no guarantee I’d get my voice back. I suggested that they find another band.”

He later recounted how he’d realized there was a problem as he tried to record Is This Love, “I sang the song from beginning to end, out of tune, and I couldn’t tell. At the end of it, I was dripping with sweat, and it’s not an exhausting song to perform.” He was given 50-50 odds of being able to sing again after doctors described his infection as the worst they’d ever seen. A course of antibiotics had appeared to resolve it, until a week after he’d gone back to work, when the problem had returned.

Coverdale was sidelined for eight months, during which time he became “mortified” at Sykes’ alleged attempts to wrest the project from the singer’s control. “I received no support from Sykes at that time,” he told In the Studio With Redbeard. “He did everything he could to take advantage of me being compromised.” In the meantime, the singer “tried to come to terms with the idea I could still write, I could still produce, but someone else would be singing my songs.”

By the time he felt ready to try again, he was “the only snake in residence,” left with the instrumental material that had already been laid down. He admitted his first studio session had him “indescribably nervous.” New producer Keith Olsen asked him to sing Still of the Night, claiming that it wouldn’t be recorded. “I almost vomited,” Coverdale recalled. “I sang the song twice, fingers crossed – and that’s what’s on the record.”

While the album was back on track, Whitesnake were, by that time, $3 million in debt; and Coverdale didn’t even know if there was a place for his band on the world stage, since groups like Bon Jovi and Europe had taken over the charts since his last release. Worse, he didn’t even have a band to place on that world stage.

“I’d written out the names of Adrian Vandenberg, Vivian Campbell, Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge,” he said later. “If I was getting a band together, these were the people I thought would be good – Viv to recreate the American guitar hero, Adrian to play more traditional guitar and Rudy and Tommy, who we’d approached to be the rhythm section on the album.”

Some of those men contributed finishing touches to Whitesnake, but Coverdale remained cautious and would only describe them as “on call” during the LP’s release. He referred to them as “The Vid Kids” when they appeared in the videos for the songs Still of the Night, Here I Go Again and Is This Love – promos, recorded over a fortnight, which also featured ‘80s actress and entertainer Tawny Kitaen. She was dating the singer at the time, and later, briefly, became his wife.

Whitesnake was released on April 7th, 1987, and renamed 1987 in Europe and Australia, and Serpens Albus in Japan. Even though it stalled at the number two spot on the U.S. Billboard 200, it stayed there for months, notching up five million sales while other albums came and went. Current total sales are more than 15 million.

Those figures were powered in no small way by the three hit singles, including the number one revamped version of Here I Go Again, which had originally appeared on 1982 LP Saints & SInners. Revisiting a five-year-old song – alongside Crying in the Rain, also from Saints & Sinners – might suggest a level of introspective reflection on the leader’s part. He seemed to agree when he told Redbeard that those songs had been “documenting professional dissatisfaction and private sadness.”

A reasonable way to be feeling if you suspect your performing career may be over in the lead-up to the release of what might be your final record. But it wasn’t. Whitesnake defined post-blues Coverdale and every lineup of the band that followed.
It wasn’t all good news, though. Admitting he’d “got tired of seeing myself on MTV,” Coverdale said “the only downside was it was the only time I’d embraced a fashion presentation, as opposed to being stylized in what I do. I think that disappointed a lot of my hardcore people – the Americanization of Whitesnake.”

It almost certainly did; but it managed to please many more other people.

source: ultimateclassicrock.com

MEGADETH ANNOUNCE “KILLING IS MY BUSINESS…AND BUSINESS IS GOOD: THE FINAL KILL” DELUXE RE-ISSUE OF ICONIC DEBUT ALBUM

Hailed as “The Best Thrash Metal Debut Album All Time” (VH1), legendary thrash metal trailblazers Megadeth will continue to celebrate the band’s 35th Anniversary with a deluxe re-issue of their revolutionary debut album, Killing Is My Business…and Business Is Good!. The band have partnered with Century Media and Legacy Recordings for a June 8th, release in North America & Europe, and in Japan on June 6th through Sony Japan.

Killing Is My Business…and Business Is Good – The Final Kill has been completely restored to Dave Mustaine’s intended vision. Remixed by veteran metal mixer, Mark Lewis (Trivium, Death Angel, Devildriver, Whitechapel) and re-mastered by Ted Jensen for an optimal listening experience, the 2018 version reveals previously unheard parts and performances throughout the record, including a missing drum performance found during the mixing sessions. This rare gem includes the full original album, along with seven live audio tracks from VHS tapes found in MUSTAINE’s own attic!

In addition to the bonus live tracks, the re-issue also features Megadeth’s 1984 3-track demo and the previously removed cover of These Boots, that has been added back to the record with recut vocals true to Lee Hazelwood’s version.

A complete track listing is as follows:

Killing Is My Business…and Business Is Good – The Final Kill

1. Last Rites / Loved to Deth (Remastered)
2. Killing Is My Business…And Business Is Good! (Remastered)
3. The Skull Beneath the Skin (Remastered)
4. Rattlehead (Remastered)
5. Chosen Ones (Remastered)
6. Looking Down the Cross (Remastered)
7. Mechanix (Remastered)
8. These Boots (Remastered)
9. Last Rites / Loved to Deth (live) (1987 London, UK)
10. Killing Is My Business…And Business Is Good! (live) (1986 Denver, CO)
11. The Skull Beneath the Skin (live) (1990 London, UK)
12. Rattlehead (live) (1987 Bochum, Germany)
13. Chosen Ones (live) (1986 Denver, CO)
14. Looking Down the Cross (live) (1986 Denver, CO)
15. Mechanix (live) (1986 Denver, CO)
16. Last Rites / Loved to Deth (demo) (Remastered)
17. The Skull Beneath the Skin (demo) (Remastered)
18. Mechanix (demo) (Remastered)

The re-issue is further enhanced by new album cover artwork, as seen showcased above, featuring a fully executed sculpture of the iconic skull that has been lost over the many years since the album’s initial release. The packaging also includes classic flyers and band photos pulled from their archive of timeless metal moments from Megadeth’s storied 35-year history.

The Final Kill is the complete vision of main man, Mustaine, who commented stating, “I am just as much amazed at the music we made as I am at the pure fact that we survived it all!.”

Mustaine further delves into the struggles during that time period as well as some of the surprising moments during the remixing sessions throughout the re-issue’s liner notes.

Killing Is My Business…and Business Is Good – The Final Kill is now available for pre-order in the below format options:

North America:

CD Digipak (In stores & Online)
Gatefold Red 2LP – Limited to 1500 copies (In stores & Online)
Gatefold Black 2LP (In stores & Online)
Gatefold White 2LP – Limited to 500 copies (FYE Exclusive)
Gatefold Silver 2LP – Limited to 500 copies (Band Exclusive available at megadeth.com)

Europe:

CD Digipak
Gatefold Clear 2LP – Limited to 400 copies
Gatefold Black 2LP

Sony Japan:

BluSpec CD

Reserve your copy today.

Band Exclusive Silver 2LP & More Megadeth Merchandise available at:

megadeth.com
army-exclusive-pre-order

Red or Black 2LP & CD Digipak available at Century Media’s US Store:

centurymedia.merchnow.com

Clear 2LP & CD digipak:

cmdistro.de

Digital Pre-orders & Streaming:

centurymedia.lnk.to/MegadethKIMB

Signed Limited Copies Red or Black 2LP & CD Digipak available at Pledge Music:

megadeth.pmstores.co

Megadeth’s current line-up is…

Dave Mustaine – Vocals, Guitar
Kiko Louriero – Guitar
David Ellefson – Bass
Dirk Verbeuren – Drums

Megadeth online:

Offical Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

FORMER JUDAS PRIEST GUITARIST K.K. DOWNING TO RELEASE HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY ON SEPTEMBER 18TH

Former Judas Priest guitarist K. K. Downing will release his autobiography, Heavy Duty: Days And Nights In Judas Priest, on on September 18th through Da Capo Press. The book was co-written by the Scottish author and journalist Mark Eglinton, whose previous collaborations include Official Truth, 101 Proof with Rex Brown of Pantera and Confessions Of A Heretic with Behemoth’s Adam “Nergal” Darski.

In a recent message posted to his official Facebook page, Downing posted:

“Hi everyone!

I’m proud to finally show you all the cover art for the U.S edition of my forthcoming autobiography.

I’ve put my heart and soul into this book to give you, the fans, an honest account of my life in and out of Judas Priest. The book is available to pre-order here.

Additionally, the guitarist previously wrote:

“My life story is something that I am very proud of — even though I suspect that some of the details will surprise you just as they did me as I lived through them.

Recollecting my life as I have done in this book has often brought me to close to tears, but has also made me laugh with the fondest memories. It is true that I have made many friends along the way but it is also true that I have made some enemies. But one thing is for sure: the music that has been everything to me has not only been my salvation, but has also brought me closer to the people of so many nations — and I can honestly say that I consider all of you to be my very dear friends.

Heavy Duty is now destined to come your way in September, and it is my proudest moment to be able to share it with you.”

Heavy Duty official book synopsis states:

“Judas Priest formed in the industrial city of Birmingham, England, in 1968. With its distinctive twin-guitar sound, studs-and-leather image, and international sales of over 50 million records, Judas Priest became the archetypal heavy metal band in the 1980s. Iconic tracks like Breaking The Law, Living After Midnight and ‘You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ helped the band achieve extraordinary success, but no one from the band has stepped out to tell their or the band’s story until now.

As the band approaches its golden anniversary, fans will at last be able to delve backstage into the decades of shocking, hilarious, and haunting stories that surround the heavy metal institution. In Heavy Duty, guitarist K.K. Downing discusses the complex personality conflicts, the business screw-ups, the acrimonious relationship with fellow heavy metal band Iron Maiden, as well as how Judas Priest found itself at the epicenter of a storm of parental outrage that targeted heavy metal in the ’80s. He also describes his role in cementing the band’s trademark black leather and studs image that would not only become synonymous with the entire genre, but would also give singer Rob Halford a viable outlet by which to express his sexuality. Lastly, he recounts the life-changing moment when he looked at his bandmates on stage during a 2010 concert and thought, ‘This is the last show.’ Whatever the topic, whoever’s involved, K.K. doesn’t hold back.

With the band at the beginning through his retirement in 2010 (and even still as a member of the band’s board of directors), Downing has seen it all and is now finally at a place in his life where he can also let it all go. Even if you’re a lifelong fan, if you think you know the full story of JUDAS PRIEST, well, you’ve got another thing coming.”

In other K. K. Downing news, the guitarist has opened a new concert venue in Wolverhampton, England. Called KK’s Steel Mill, the venue will host a number of hard rock and heavy metal acts over the coming months, including U.S. rockers Skid Row, who are booked to play there in August.

Says Downing, “It’s with great pleasure and excitement I can confirm another new chapter in my lifelong musical journey, however this time on the other side of the crowd barriers.

As many fans may have already seen, I will be hosting live rock and metal shows at an exciting new venue close to home in Wolverhampton, based in the heart of the Midlands… ‘The Home Of Metal.’

Last year, I was asked to visit this venue by a good friend, and together we agreed it would make an amazing place for fans to see top bands and artists close up in unique surroundings.

The city of Wolverhampton itself and the Midlands in general has a great live music scene, with many new bands now making the breakthrough, not to mention the Old Guard of Legends still at the forefront driving the way.

KK’s Steel Mill is very happy to have found its home at Starworks Warehouse. The historic building was the birthplace of The Star Motor Car Company around the early 1900s, and the building in its current format has kept that raw industrial feel.

We aim to put on regular headlining shows throughout the year, and I am thrilled to announce for starters I will host American rockers Skid Row on Friday the 24th of August when Snake, Rachel, Scotti, Rob and ZP bring their hard-hitting show to the Steel Mill.

I’m looking forward to seeing many fans at the upcoming shows enjoy the music! I’ll probably see you at the bar.”