Former Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach will release new solo album, Give ‘Em Hell, on April 22nd through Frontiers Records. The follow-up to 2011′s Kicking & Screaming was once again produced by Bob Marlette, who has previously worked with Rob Zombie, Black Sabbath and Shinedown, among others.

Of the new album, Sebastian Bach enthused: “I could not be more proud of the new CD, Give ‘Em Hell. As a rock music fan myself, I listen to it every single day. As a musician, I honestly feel like I have reached a new level of album recording. As an audiophile, I could not be more blown away by the sound! The production and mastering sound so good that it’s perfect to show off your high-end stereo system. Ever since my first record, Skid Row, on through Slave To The Grind up to Kicking & Screaming and Angel Down, I have always been concerned, first and foremost, with making quality records for my fans. And I can honestly say that Give ‘Em Hell meets or even exceeds the standards set by some of the records I have put out in the past. I can’t wait for you all to hear this record! Let’s Give ‘Em Hell in 2014, mothertruckers!”

Fans who pre-order from iTunes will be able to get the first taste of new music as the pre-order includes an instant download of the song Hell Inside My Head, a classic loud and heavy rocker from Bach.

Sebastian managed to involve in the writing and recording some very special friends and guest stars, including none other than Duff McKagan (Velvet Revolver, Guns N’ Roses), and not one but two top-class guitar players: John 5 (Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie) and Steve Stevens (Billy Idol). Rounding out the lineup on the CD are Devin Bronson (Avril Lavigne, Pink) on guitar and Bobby Jarzombek (Halford, Riot, Fates Warning) on drums. Duff and Sebastian previously collaborated on Duff’s solo album Believe In Me.

Give ‘Em Hell” track listing:

1. Hell Inside My Head
2. Harmony
3. All My Friends Are Dead
4. Temptation
5. Push Away
6. Dominator
7. Had Enough
8. Gun To A Knife Fight
9. Rock N Roll Is A Vicious Game
10. Taking Back Tomorrow
11. Disengaged
12. Forget You

Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell has recalled the bitter experience of seeing the first song he’d written for the band bombing when it was released as a single, even though the track had been well-received.

He’s hoping to put the bad memories behind him now that Slang, the first Def Leppard album he played on, has been re-released.

Campbell joined the band in 1992 following the death of Steve Clark, and his first writing credits came with Slang four years later, including the single Work It Out.

He tells Death And Taxes, “The first single in the States was my first writing contribution – here I was, stoked that the label had decided to go with it, and I remember someone from the management calling me up to tell me the bad news. Modern rock stations had tested the song and got a great reaction to it. But they realized they couldn’t play it because DJs couldn’t announce: ‘That was new from Def Leppard.’ They figured they’d lose so many listeners. They were playing Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soungarden – they couldn’t slot in Def Leppard even though they liked the track.”

With Slang the band had made a conscious effort to move away from their 80s credentials in an attempt to remain credible in the grunge era. Campbell recalls: “The underlying brief was: ‘It can’t sound like a Def Leppard album.’”

He admits: “My personal opinion is we went a little too left-field. There’s no backing vocals, which was a big trademark. There’s no real sense of that melody, the hooks. Being the new guy I didn’t rock the boat too much, but I think we went a few degrees too far left.”

But the guitarist – who recently successfully fought off cancer – is optimistic about the re-release, saying: “It’s nice that it will get a second run and be judged by a different generation. We’re glad that, with the passing of the last twenty-odd years, we can put it back out there. Hopefully it will be judged impartially this time round. It is fresh sounding. It’s sonically very vibrant.”

Def Leppard have just begun work on a new studio album.

additional source: classicrockmagazine.com

Kory Grow of Rolling Stone spoke with Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian about his spoken word tour (Dana’s note: a la Henry Rollins, perhaps?). Excerpts from the interview appear below.

RS: When you were prepping for your spoken-word concerts, did you ever get any pointers from any of your comedian friends?

Scott Ian: No [laughs]. I hang out with Brian Posehn a bunch, and I’m friends with Patton Oswalt and [Metalocalypse creator] Brendon Small. If anyone helped at all, it’s Brendon. He said, “Go up there and do it as much as you can, and that’s the best way to learn.” I know that might sound completely cliché, but after my first week of shows in the U.K., I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was just up there telling stories. Then it kind of evolved; you start to learn how to do it. You learn your timing, how to milk the most out of every word for effect, for pathos, whatever it may be. You really learn how to tell a story in front of a crowd.

RS: So what sorts of stories are you going to tell on this leg of your tour?

SI: It’s everything from being a pathetic 13 year old dabbling in drugs for the first time to touring the world for 30-odd years with Anthrax. I have stories about the people I’ve met and the people I’ve had insane experiences with – people like Lemmy and [deceased Pantera guitarist] “Dimebag” Darrell.

The Lemmy story is from when I first met him in London in 1985 and basically how that ended up with me in Germany fighting off Nazi doctors. I did not not make up.

Then people always ask me what my favorite memory of Dimebag is. I can’t say I have a favorite memory, because that’d be too hard to pin down, but I have a favorite Dimebag “experience,” that began with a phone call in 1997 in the middle of the night and how that turned into a three-year revenge story. That whole story takes about 40 minutes. There’s a kind of video intermission halfway through.

RS:You released a teaser video for your tour. In it, you talk about people mistaking you for other rockers. Who have you gotten over the years?

SI: Shit, since I’ve shaved my head, it’s been either been [Pantera frontman] Phil Anselmo, the singer of Live, Flea and Shavo from System of a Down. Certainly when Live was really big, I’d get that a lot.

RS: Have you heard that people have been mistaking your supposed doppelgängers for you?

SI: I met that dude Ed from Live at a show years ago and told him that and that sometimes I go with it and act like a dick ’cause I won’t get blamed for it [laughs]. He thought it was funny and said, “I get it all the time, as well. ‘Aren’t you that guy from Anthrax?’”

RS: Do people really come up to you and ask to touch your beard?

SI: Oh, all the time. I don’t get it – even if you’re a lady coming up to do it. A dude coming up to me saying, “Let me run my fingers through your beard,” that makes no sense at all. But even for a girl. I got this crazy idea about personal space that’s important to me. I don’t walk up to ladies and say, “Can I run my fingers through your hair?” You get in trouble for shit like that.

I’ve had women at meet-and-greets ask that. You’re in some tent at a festival signing autographs and everyone’s filthy, you know, I don’t want anyone’s hands in my beard except for my wife’s. People get mad at me when I say that. Like, really? I’m the one who should be mad.

I make a point to tell stories about all the beardy guys I’ve hung around with for the last 20 years and not once have I ever thought I would want to snuggle up with Zakk Wylde. It’s not something I’ve ever wanted to do.

RS: Do people really think you that you, uh, slept with Kelly Bundy when Anthrax was on Married. . . With Children.

SI: Yeah, everyone has seen that episode around the world in every language. That’s one of the things still to this day we get asked about. I just love the context of someone asking you, “Did any of you sleep with Kelly Bundy,” because it just adds this whole level of weirdness to it because she’s a character. I could understand more if they said, “Did you have sex with Christina Applegate?” That makes sense. I didn’t, but I joked with someone once, “I did, and Christina stayed in character, which added this whole awesome weirdness to the whole thing.”

And there’s this great story about that that I don’t want to give away because it’s in the show. In the script for that episode, all the way up until Thursday of the week that we shot, there’s a scene where Kelly takes me by the hand up to her bedroom to have sex. And that scene didn’t make the actual taping, but I won’t give away why it didn’t make it here.

RS: While we’re on the subject of Anthrax, are you guys recording?

SI: Yeah. Frank [Bello, bass] and Charlie [Benante, drums] came out here to my house and we jumped right in in November. Not to jinx anything, but things have been going pretty fast creatively, which normally isn’t the case. We’ve got a ton of material; I’m talking 12 songs now, musically arranged. I’m on my fifth and sixth lyrically, and Charlie sent over ideas for two more songs. He even wrote in an email, “Now the really good stuff is coming.” And I was like, “Really? The shit we have right now is pretty fucking killer.”

This could probably be the first time in this band’s history that we’ll go into the studio with more original material than we need. Normally we have nine or 10 songs then do a bunch of covers, but I can safely say this time, we’ll be recording about 15 of our own songs, if not more, which we’ve never had before.

The vibe has been great. I think we’re all just happy to be doing it because we came off this great run with Worship Music, two years, 207 shows, and people all over the planet really love that record. It just afforded us the opportunity to do what we love to do, so we can’t wait to get back in and start.

Watch Scott Ian’s teaser video below

Read more at Rolling Stone.

source: rollingstone.com

According to their Facebook page, Motorhead has posted that they will set sail on their new cruise, entitled the MotörBoat, later this year. The band also added that the sailing dates and presale information will be made available soon.

The maiden voyage of the MotörBoat will take place in fall 2014, with Miami, Key West and Cozumel pegged as the main destinations. A lineup of artists supporting Motörhead will also be announced in the coming weeks.

Last year, Motörhead had to postpone a European tour after frontman Lemmy Kilmister began suffering from an irregular heartbeat. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to start promoting veganism and alcohol-free beverages,” the singer wrote to fans last October, “but it is fair to say that I personally have been reconfiguring areas of my life to make sure I can come back fitter and stronger than ever.”

The group’s latest album, Aftershock, was released last fall, and Motörhead has been confirmed to perform at Coachella this April.

additional source: billboard.com

That Metal Show returns this week for its sixth episode of Season 13 on Saturday, February 22nd at 11:00PM ET/PT.

The acclaimed hard rock/heavy metal talk show, hosted by Eddie Trunk, Don Jamieson, and Jim Florentine, features a long-awaited appearance by Randy Blythe and Chris Adler of Lamb Of God, considered forefathers of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal movement. Randy and Chris appear in support of their upcoming documentary, As The Palaces Burn, which offers an inside look into the world of Lamb Of God during the tumultuous year of Randy’s alleged manslaughter in the Czech Republic. The allegations stemmed from the tragic death of a random fan attending one of their shows, and Randy was eventually and rightfully acquitted on all charges. On the show, Randy shares what it was like to be in a foreign jail and not to be in contact with his family or band mates. On the lighter side, Chris and Randy discuss their musical influences and some funny stories from their 15 years in music touring the globe.

The episode also features Anthrax thrash-drum maestro, Charlie Benante, pounding the skins as the guest musician. Charlie surprises everyone when he decides to take us to commercial break not behind his drum kit, but by showing off his blazing guitar chops. Charlie also gives an update on the status of the new Anthrax album and discusses band’s desire to make sure the music matches the caliber of their last release, Worship Music.

Episode 6 of the latest season features a Metal Modem segment connecting the hosts with up-and-coming Texas outfit Scorpion Child, a TMS Top 5 of the guests Eddie, Don, and Jim are hopeful to one day have on the show, and the always fan favorite Stump The Trunk, where Eddie continues his dominant streak by sweeping the stumpers. The Throwdown is one for the ages and pits Metallica’s Master of Puppets, Slayer’s Reign In Blood, Megadeth’s Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? and Anthrax’s Among The Living against each other.

Known for having the best musicians in music perform each week on That Metal Show, Season 13 continues the trend with the likes of these TMS alums: female guitar legend Lita Ford, Charred Walls of the Damned drummer Richard Christy, Cinderella front man Tom Keifer, and the guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen. Each of these artists will make the new season the most musically diverse and rockin’ of shows in the history of the show.

This season marks some monumental changes for the show as it returns to New York City for Season 13. Previously, the show was taped over several days of one week out at Sony Studios in Los Angeles. The new season is shot at Metropolis Studios on Tuesday nights for broadcast that Saturday. Season 13 also consists of 12 new episodes making it the longest season in the show’s history. Fans can also catch the complete season 12 and brand new exclusive bonus clips at ThatMetalShow.VH1.com and in the new VH1 app. New episodes of season 13 launch on the web and in the app every Sunday morning following the show’s on-air premiere.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and legendary drummer of Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver and The Cult, Matt Sorum is releasing his new album, Stratosphere under the moniker, Matt Sorum’s Fierce Joy on March 11th, 2014 on Rok Dok Recordings via Kobalt Label Services.

Stratosphere is major departure from the hard-hitting rock Sorum is best known for. His intense passion for animal and human rights, and need to give back heavily influenced the narrative and acoustic orchestration of the album. “Over the years I’ve been influenced by my surroundings and sometimes that hasn’t always been for the better,” says Sorum. “But after years of soul searching I organically fell into a different state of mind. With many lessons learned along the way, it seemed like the perfect time to do a record in my own voice, if you will. It’s as real and exposed as anything I’ve ever offered my in my career, and I hope you enjoy it.”

Besides stepping behind the mic for lead vocals, Sorum wrote the entire album, and plays acoustic guitar and piano. “I’ve always played acoustic, so I wanted to use that as the feel of the record,” Matt says. “I chose the musicians I wanted by records they had played on, and diverse instruments such as mellotron, slide guitar and ethnic percussion. I always wanted orchestration, so this album was the canvas for that as well.”

Pre-order Stratosphere now on iTunes and get an instant download of The Sea.

Check out the first webisode (in a series of 5) about of the making of Stratosphere below.

Louisiana Music Hall of Fame members, Lillian Axe, will be releasing their thirteenth album, the acoustic live, One Night in the Temple, produced by Steve Blaze, on April 15th, 2014 through CME Records / Sony Music (RED) in the USA and Canadaand via Melodic Rock Records / Cargo Distribution for the world.

Performed acoustically in an intimate setting housed in a Masonic Temple in the Bayou, with their most diehard fans, One Night in the Temple, features all their hits including: True Believer, Show A Little Love, Crucified, Misery Loves Company, Ghost of Winter, The Great Divide, Bow Your Head, Waters Rising and the crowd favorite Nobody Knows.

Lillian Axe founder Steve Blaze reflects; “ when I first had the idea of putting this show together, it was originally going to be a private 20 person show with acoustic guitars, vocals and no production, however, it took on a life of its own.”

One Night in the Temple; will be released as 3 disc set (2CDs/1DVD and 2CDs/1Blu-Ray), housed in an elaborate digipack. Filmed in high definition, the Blu-Ray and DVD will contain the acoustic performance, fan question and answer session, videos for the songs Caged In and Death Comes Tomorrow, live concert footage from their July 4th, 2013 performance at the Paragon Casino and behind the scenes footage.

One Night in the Temple track listing:

Disc 1:

Waters Rising
Death Comes Tomorrow
Ghost of Winter
See You Someday
The Great Divide
Nocturnal Symphony
Sad Day On Planet Earth
Bow Your Head
Show A Little Love
Misery Loves Company

Disc 2:

Crucified
The World Stopped Turning
Dyin’ to Live (Shades of Blue)
Until The End Of The World
The Day I Met You
The Promised Land
Nobody Knows
My Apologies
True Believer
Nobody Knows (Crowd Version)

Lillian Axe will be touring to support this release this summer.

Lillian Axe is:

Brian Jones (lead vocals)
Steve Blaze (guitar and vocals)
Sam Poitevent (guitar and vocals)
Eric Morris (bass guitar)
Ken Koudelka (drums)

For more information, please visit lillianaxe.com or facebook.com/lillianaxe.

The Grammy-winning, iconic guitarist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artist Slash is heading to music week in Austin during SXSW 2014 to launch Slashathon, the first-ever artist-focused hackathon. Powered by Geeklist, Slashaton is a hackathon where developers create applications and technology within a 12-hour period. The music-oriented Slashathon will offer developers a unique challenge to create solutions for artists to engage their communities for an album release. Slashathon will take place Wednesday, March 12th at Capitol Factory (701 Brazos St., STE 1601, Austin, TX).

The Slasathon grand prize includes a Gibson guitar autographed by Slash, $1,000 dollars and the opportunity to have Slash use the winning hack with the release of his new album, coming out in late 2014. The judges for Slashathon will be Slash himself, Bram Cohen, Chief Scientist & Founder of BitTorrent, and Ben Parr, Co-founder & Managing Partner, DominateFund.

Register for this event at Slashathon.com *SXSW badges are not required to participate. APIs available to developers to build with include Aviary, Dolby, Leap Motion, Gimbal, Raspberry Pi, Codio.io, Elasticsearch, Mad Mimi, Yellow API and Lob. Furthr.la, and Geeklist will provide mentorship for all participants.

Slashathon schedule:

8:30 AM: Registration
9:00 AM: API presentations
10:00 AM: Hacking begins
1:30 PM: Lunch
7:00 PM: Presentations
8:30: Awards schedule:

A pioneer in blending tech and music, SLASH launched his first two music apps Slash360 and Slash AmpliTube to promote the Apocalyptic Love album (2012) featuring his band Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators. The critically acclaimed album Apocalyptic Love earned Slash his two first-ever number one rock radio hits– You’re A Lie and Standing In The Sun–and stormed onto the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart at number four, marking the top rock debut for that week. Last year, Slash also partnered with the Swedish company Rovio–creator of the popular mobile game Angry Birds–to create a theme song for the Angry Birds Space. Slash and his band Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators are currently in the studio working on a new album to be released in the fall of 2014.

Joe Daly of The Weeklings spoke with our very own Eddie Trunk. Portions of the interview appear below.

The Weeklings: This season is number lucky thirteen for That Metal Show- what have you got in store?

Eddie We’ve had three episodes already and this weekend we’ve got Ted Nugent on for the full hour. The biggest difference is that for the first time ever, we’re doing the episodes on a weekly basis. We used to fly out to L.A. and do two shows a day, which VH1 would then roll them out over the course of a couple of months. Now we’re taping every Tuesday night and people are seeing them that Saturday, so they’re very fresh to air. The other big difference is that we’re doing it in New York City, where we started.

The Weeklings: The last time that we spoke, you had begun pushing the show’s boundaries past pure metal, into other areas like rock and alternative. What’s the plan for this season?

Eddie: The big thing is that we’re now really all over the map. At its core, the show is still a classic rock, hard rock and metal show but there’s a lot of variation going on now. We have this segment that we call Metal Modem where we have the artists in via Skype and we talk to them for a few minutes. In those segments we’ve had Amon Amarth, Halestorm and Ben from Dillinger Escape Plan–artists who we wouldn’t necessarily have sitting on the set with us the whole time because they might be a little bit newer or outside of the world that the channel focuses on, but we’re able to give these artists a platform and that’s been a good thing.

The Weeklings: What sort of non-metal guests might we expect this season?

Eddie: We’ve got this one thing that just came together where we do a full-on classic rock episode where we’re going to have Leslie West (Mountain) and we’re going to have Mick Jones from Foreigner. In this week’s show, we have Alter Bridge, and we also have a guy by the name of Matt Nathanson, who is not a metal artist at all—he’s a singer/songwriter whose connection is that he’s a huge metal fan and we found out about him because he performed on Jay Leno wearing a That Metal Show t-shirt. So he got on our radar and VH1 Classic approached us and asked if we’d have this guy on because even though he doesn’t play metal, he’s such a fan of it and of the show that it would be fun to do, so we’re spreading out for sure and taking some chances. We’re even having some non-musicians on, like Morgan Spurlock and some comedians who are fans of the music.

The Weeklings: I know that this is always a popular question for you, but with each season you seem to scratch a few names off, so who’s left on your hit list of guests you’d love to have on That Metal Show but who haven’t appeared yet? Who’s your top five?

Eddie: Wow. So many. Well, Eddie Van Halen would be one. I only interviewed him once, around the time of Van Halen III, and it was on the radio, and I’d love to really get into an in-depth discussion with him. Of course, we ask every season and they pass every season because he doesn’t want to do press. Another guy that’s heavily-requested is James Hetfield. He’s come up to me personally and said that he loves the show and he watches it and he feels that it’s important, but he’s not personally that comfortable about doing a TV interview. We’ve had Lars (Ulrich) on twice and we’ve had Kirk Hammett on, and he kind of leaves it to those guys to do that sort of stuff for the band. We’d love to have Ozzy, but Sharon (Osbourne, his wife and manager), won’t let him do it. We’d love to have Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley from KISS, but they won’t do it because they don’t like me or us or things that we say, so instead of coming on and debating and discussing it with us, they just choose not to come on. Those are the top guys.

The Weeklings: Of all the up-and-coming acts, what’s the best album you’ve heard in recent memory?

Eddie: Well, the band that comes right off the top of my head is a band from Texas called Scorpion Child. I recommended them a couple weeks ago on the show. Very big riff-based hard rock and great vocals, and those are the things I really like.

Read more at The Weeklings.

Guns N’ Roses will return for a second Las Vegas residency, No Trickery! An Evening Of Destruction, at The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino from May 21st through June 7th.

Tickets go on sale this Friday, February 21st at 10 a.m. at axs.com.

Guns N’ Roses’ first Vegas residency, Appetite For Democracy, took place in the fall of 2012.

Watch a video teaser below.

source: blabbermouth.net