King Diamond to film feature length video on the Abigail In Concert 2015 tour for blu-ray/DVD release.
King Diamond will be recording a feature length live concert video for blu-ray/DVD/digital release while on tour this fall. Director Denise Korycki (Cannibal Corpse, Killswitch Engage) has been enlisted to direct the project, which will include footage from multiple shows throughout the entire Abigail in concert 2015 tour.
King Diamond With special guest Exodus:
10/29 Denver, CO The Fillmore Auditorium – Tickets
10/31 Salt Lake City, UT The Complex – Tickets
11/2 San Francisco, CA The Warfield – Tickets
11/5 Los Angeles, CA The Wiltern (SOLD OUT)
11/6 Los Angeles, CA The Wiltern – Tickets
11/8 Tucson, AZ Rialto Theatre – Tickets
11/9 Las Vegas, NV House of Blues – Tickets
11/13 San Antonio, TX Housecore Horror Festival at the Aztec Theatre – Tickets
11/15 New Orleans, LA The Civic Theatre – Tickets
11/16 Atlanta, GA The Tabernacle – Tickets
11/20 New York, NY Best Buy Theater (SOLD OUT)
11/21 New York, NY Best Buy Theater (SOLD OUT)
11/24 Boston, MA Orpheum Theater – Tickets
11/25 Philadelphia, PA The Fillmore – Tickets
11/27 Chicago, IL Aragon Ballroom – Tickets
11/28 Detroit, MI The Fillmore – Tickets
11/30 St Paul, MN Myth Live – Tickets
12/2 Tulsa, OK Brady Theater – Club Brady – Tickets
12/4 Houston, TX House of Blues – Tickets
12/5 Dallas, TX House of Blues
Scorpions have made a previously unreleased demo track called Running For The Plane available to stream below.
The rough cut was recorded ahead of sessions for the band’s 1982 album Blackout, but the song never made the final cut. The demo is included in the bonus material on Scorpions’ upcoming 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Blackout.
Released on November 6th, the package comes on CD/DVD and vinyl. The DVD features the band’s show at Dortmund’s Westfalenhalle in December 1983. Bonus material includes five previously unreleased demos, including Running For The Plane.
On the same date, expanded versions of World Wide Live, Love At First Sting, Savage Amusement, Lovedrive, Animal Magnetism, Tokyo Tapes and Taken By Force will also be unveiled. A limited-edition, numbered vinyl box set is also planned.
Scorpions say, “It’s hard to summarize 50 years in words, but listening back to all those songs – many of them previously unreleased – recorded in one of our most creative periods, really took us back in time. This was a very heartfelt project for all of us.
“It brought back great memories whilst we rediscovered our musical DNA by listening to the archives, selecting dozens of unreleased songs and early versions of well-known Scorpions anthems. We really worked on the material to improve the sound quality, but always taking great care to preserve its original feel.”
For full details on the reissues, visit the Scorpions’ website.
Current Armored Saint, and former Anthrax singer, John Bush was recently interviewed by rock journalist Mitch Lafon for his podcast. Excerpts from the interview appear below, as transcribed by Blabbermouth.net.
On his departure from Anthrax in 2005 after being with the band for 13 years:
“It was definitely not one of the best-handled situations in the world. I mean, we were doing a tour of South America, but it already had been leaked that the reunion [with singer Joey Belladonna] was gonna happen, and, of course, I knew, but we never had, like, an official conversation about it. So, we were doing interviews in South America on this tour, and people were asking about the reunion, and then bandmembers were, like, ‘What are you talking about? What are you talking about?’, and kind of making the journalists feel stupid about something they already know about. And I’m just sitting there, going, ‘Well, this is awkward.’ So instead of just going, ‘Yeah, we’re flirting with that idea…’ There was a way to handle it, and it just wasn’t handled right. In no uncertain terms, it was not handled correctly. So… You know… Whatever… Looking back, it’s certainly not a fond time in my life. There was a manager that was handling the band [at the time], and he was talking to me about how it was gonna go and he was explaining it to me as if I was some new guy who just came in on board. And I had been in the band for twelve, thirteen years at that point, and I’m, like, ‘Dude, do not talk to me like this. Show me some respect. C’mon, man.’ But, you know, it really wasn’t his fault, because he was kind of put in the position of doing what should have been a conversation between Scott [Ian, guitar] and Frankie [Bello, bass] and Charlie [Benante, drums] and I. If they would have said, ‘We think we’re gonna do this. We think we’re ready to do this,’ I probably would have said, ‘Well, do it. I don’t wanna stand in the way of that. Do it.’ It could have been really that simplified, in all honesty.”
Discussing his current relationship with the members of Anthrax:
“Well, I do talk to Scott, and I see Scott on occasion. And Joey Vera [Armored Saint bassist] and [his wife] Tracy are very close to Scott and [his wife] Pearl. And so they come to family functions and things of that nature. And I played Pearl’s 40th-birthday party, and we did [Anthrax’s] Safe Home, and it was real fun. So I have a relationship with Scott, because I see him more often, but I have not talked to Charlie or Frankie — I haven’t spoken to them since, literally, that time. And, you know, it’s weird and kind of probably sucks, but they haven’t made an effort to call me, and I haven’t made an effort to call them either, I guess. There was some weird stuff that happened when Charlie’s mom passed away. I actually did reach out to him, but maybe I had the wrong number or something. I don’t know… And so he was, I guess, bent out of shape about that. But… I did actually do it — I really did; I wouldn’t lie about that. Obviously, when it [comes] to personal, all the other stuff is meaningless. But, you know, whatever… It is what it is. And there’s no reason for me to be okay with Scott and not okay with those [other] guys, ’cause I had a relationship that was the same with all of them. It wasn’t like me and Scott were closer and those guys weren’t. We were all close at one point.”
Armored Saint’s seventh studio album, Win Hands Down, was released on June 2nd through Metal Blad.
Metallica has teamed up with mega-brewery Budweiser for a limited-run of Metallica themed beer cans.
The good news? The branded cans are set to be in stores September 28th. The bad news? It’s only available in Quebec. Make sure to check eBay or contact that old friend in the icy north to snag one of the 91,000 cans.
Richard Bienstock of Rolling Stone spoke with Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott. Excerpts from the interview appear below.
RS: How has the summer tour been going?
JE: Very good, thank you. Ticket sales have been insane. We’ve been doing some really outrageous numbers. Birmingham, Alabama, was 18,000 people. Dallas was 20,000. So it’s been a great tour. But it’s also been a hot one — it was 122 in the shade in Austin. When you’re onstage under the lights and in full regalia, and there’s audience members passing out just from watching you, it makes you wonder how you get through. Fortunately, we love playing.
RS: Let’s Go, the lead track on Def Leppard as well as the first single, is clearly about that love for playing. You sing, “Welcome to the party/Welcome to the edge of your seat.”
JE: It’s a call to arms, you know? Rick Savage wrote 80 percent of the song. I wrote the verses, he wrote all the music and the choruses. He came in with it, and we knew it was a classic Def Leppard song. It’s that three-minute pop-rock stuff with big chunky guitars and a big chorus. And it has that swaggering, mid-tempo rhythm, like Sugar, and Rock of Ages. The idea was, we wanted something familiar. I mean, when AC/DC comes back after years away, you’re not going to get Bohemian Rhapsody from ’em, you know? And you don’t want it, either — you want Back in Black, or something like it. For us, this is what we do. And it’s something we enjoy doing.
RS: That said, there’s also a lot of variety on the album.
JE: It’s got everything from Bowie to Queen to Zeppelin to, well, Def Leppard. And, yeah, Let’s Go could be the long-lost cousin of Sugar. And Dangerous sounds a little like Photograph. We know that. We’re aware of it. But that’s only part of the picture. There’s 14 tracks, and there are things like Invincible, which kind of sounds like a cross between Billy Idol and the Psychedelic Furs. We don’t shy away from an idea because it’s not in our typical bandwidth.
The thing is, we’ve never been a straight-ahead metal band that’s gonna sound like Megadeth or Metallica or something like that. We’ve just got too much melody in our heads. We like too much variety. We like the acoustic guitar. We like the keyboard. We like the Mellotron. We like the Beatles and the Stones. We like Slade and Sweet and T. Rex. We didn’t just grow up on Black Sabbath.
RS: There’s a story about how when Mutt Lange was producing Hysteria, he made a comment early on in the recording process that he wanted to create something that could have the same type of crossover appeal as, and also the broad success of, Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Do you recall that?
JE: I didn’t have the actual conversation, but, yeah, the guys were talking about the fact that Mutt did say, “I see no reason why a white rock band can’t do what Michael Jackson did.” And we probably looked at him like he had three heads!
RS: Do you feel fortunate that Def Leppard came up in a different era?
JE: I’m so glad we were who we were, when we were. The Eighties are mocked by everyone in the media, mostly for mullets and stupid shell suits and that kind of stuff. But there was more to the decade than meets the eye. And maybe in time, people will look at it the way they look at the Sixties and Seventies.
The fact is, it was the golden age. We had MTV. If you had a decent song, everybody knew it within five minutes, all over the country. And whether it was me leaping off the drum riser in slow motion wearing the Union Jack, or ZZ Top’s cars and furry, spinning guitars, or Simon Le Bon sitting on the front of that yacht, you just don’t forget those things. For that generation, it’s burned into the DNA. I don’t see the same thing in the next generation, with bands like Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. And it dissipates even more the further along you go. And, sure, artists are still doing those things, but now everything’s insular. People are watching on their laptop with their headphones on. There’s no commonality.
To listen to Def Leppard’s new song, Let’s Go, and to read the interview in its entirety, please visit Rolling Stone.
To view the track listing and cover art for, Def Leppard, please go here.
KISS, now celebrating its 40th anniversary, has earned more gold album record awards than any American band in the history of the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) gold and platinum awards certifications.
In the last 41 years, KISS has earned 30 gold albums (26 KISS albums and four solo albums that were all released simultaneously — a feat never before achieved by any band). KISS has 14 platinum albums, with three albums being multi-platinum.
“Congratulations to KISS — the new gold standard for albums by American bands,” said Cary Sherman, Chairman and CEO, RIAA. “What an extraordinary achievement for an enduring band. Forty years later and the band is still rocking. Congratulations to KISS on their gold album milestone and continued success.”
KISS remains one of the most influential bands in the history of rock and roll. Decades of record-breaking tours around the globe have included high-profile appearances at Super Bowl XXXIII, the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the Rockin’ The Corps concert dedicated to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, special guest appearance on the 2009 “American Idol” finale that boasted 30 million viewers and a 2010 Dr. Pepper Super Bowl commercial and advertising campaign in support of their Hottest Show On Earth tour.
Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, with longtime members, guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer, are stronger than ever with a legacy that continues to grow, generation after generation. Their last album, Monster, proved that they are still at the top of their game with impressive sales and topping the charts worldwide debuting at number three in the U.S. on The Billboard 200 album chart and Top 10 in twenty other countries. The unparalleled devotion and loyalty of the KISS Army to the “Hottest Band in the World” is a striking testament to the band’s unbreakable bond with its fans.
KISS is currently celebrating two other major milestones, their induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in April of 2014, as well as the band’s 40th anniversary.KISS 40“, an album celebrating 40 years of rock and roll is available now.
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