According to blabbermouth.net, KISS guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley says that it “seems unlikely” that the four original members of the band will perform together at next April’s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction.
Answering a question from a fan on Twitter about whether there are any plans yet on wearing makeup with former KISS members Ace Frehley (guitar) and Peter Criss (drums) at the Rock Hall induction, Stanley said: “No way.”
Stanley was also asked if he, bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons, Frehley and Criss were going to perform together at the Rock Hall. “Seems unlikely,” he replied.
The Rock Hall producers are leaning on the original members to perform in full costume. During a recent radio interview, Frehley joked about needing to lose weight and shave his goatee for the performance — but remained adamant that current guitarist Tommy Thayer, who performs using Frehley’s “Spaceman,” persona cannot be in costume that night.
Read Eddie’s thoughts on this topic in the latest Trunk Report.
KXM, the new supergroup featuring Ray Luzier of Korn, Doug Pinnick of King’s X and George Lynch (ex-Dokken, Lynch Mob), are heading into the studio this weekend to put a final touches on their upcoming debut release.
Rat Pak Records, who will release the debut album, has provided a description of what to expect: “The songs are truly amazing. Ray’s drumming sounds like three dimensional thunder, George’s guitar playing will leave you to wonder if he’s really playing through an amp or if he’s directly plugged into some kind universal energy that only the guitar gods have access to..…then add in Doug Pinnick who brings his rock solid bass grooves, intelligible lyrics and seasoned songwriting talents to the table…..no hype and no joke, KXM is the real deal and you are going to love this album! We will announce official release date sometime later this month.”
Stryper frontman Michael Sweet has released the following statement:
“To all of our devoted fans. Sadly we will not be able to perform the scheduled Stryper shows on 1/3 (Mohegan) and 1/4 (NYC/Stage48) due to circumstances out of our control. We were well aware of the storm that was forecast to hit the east coast and we had everyone board planes to make an attempt to get here as originally planned. Our crew and Tim made it to Rhode Island, but unfortunately Oz and Robert got stuck in Chicago with no way out. They have been at the airport all night and were not even able to get a hotel room for the night. We have tried multiple times to get them on another plane in order to move forward regarding the two shows but we keep getting bad news after bad news. We’ve explored everything within our power to make this happen, but at this point it’s truly an ‘act of God’ and it’s beyond our control. We regret to inform you all that we are left with no other choice but to reschedule the two shows for another date/time to be announced in the near future. Please know that we never want to cancel any show and it saddens us to be forced to do so. We love you guys and we look forward to getting to play for you all soon. God bless you and stay safe.” ~ Michael”
Stryper’s latest album, No More Hell To Pay, was released on November 5th.
Bon Jovi made the most money on the road in 2013. The New Jersey band’s Because We Can tour is leading Pollstar’s” 2013 Year-End Top 20 Worldwide Tours list. Over the past 12 months, the group performed 102 shows in 97 cities, and earned $259.5 million.
Beyonce has the number two spot on the list, with earnings of $188.6 million. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band just played 46 concerts in 2013, but made $145.4 million to land in fifth place behind Pink and Justin Bieber. Cirque du Soleil’s Michael Jackson: The Immortal and Depeche Mode also make the top ten.
Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones are just falling short of the top ten. The former Beatle only played 29 concerts, which earned $113.5 million to put him at number eleven. The Stones follow in 12th place. Their 20 concerts this year raked in $110.3 million.
Fleetwood Mac, Roger Waters, and Elton John are in the top 20 as well. Pollstar.com adds that it was a record year for the concert industry, with the top 20 tours generating $2.43 billion from ticket sales. That’s a 24% increase over the 2012 total.
When it comes to playing fast, few can beat Gene “The Human Drum Machine” Hoglan.
“There are young dudes coming up behind me who want to take my throne, but I’m not going to give it up that easy,” says Mr. Hoglan, 46 years old, who warms up with drum sticks twice as heavy as usual, a trick he learned from baseball that makes his normal sticks seem lighter. To tone his legs, crucial for foot-drumming, he wears 3-pound ankle weights. When he pops these off, he can really fly.
Though he weighs nearly 300 pounds and is, in his own words, “really lethargic,” Mr. Hoglan has been called one of the quickest and most precise drummers in heavy metal.
Ever since spinning out of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1970s, metal has gotten faster and faster. Like many drummers of his generation, Mr. Hoglan left the drum-pounding abilities of his heroes in the dust, fueling an arms race that has sparked an unlikely crisis. Speed metal, as this subgenre is called, has become so fast that drummers can’t keep up. Instead, more bands have quietly switched to using computerized drum machines.
How did heavy-metal drumming get so fast?
Ian Christe, author of Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal, says the genre speeded up in the 1980s, when drummers for bands Metallica, Slayer and Testament one-upped older groups by making metal more about fast rhythms than melody.
When new technologies arrived, metal drumming standards entered the realm of the physically impossible. Today, many bands write songs using computers without even rehearsing them.
Some bands say they like the cold, inhuman quality of machine sounds. But the trend raises hackles among purists, because metal aficionados put a premium on authenticity and virtuosity, and sometimes don’t know that they are being duped. Paradoxically, to make drum tracks sound more human, metal producers deliberately introduce mistakes into their own programming. “They cover it up,” Mr. Mynett says. “The idea is to make people think the virtuoso is real.”
Mike Mangini, the 50-year-old drummer for progressive-metal band Dream Theater, used to be the world’s fastest drummer, with a record for hand-drumming of 1,203 b.p.m.—as fast as some hummingbirds beat their wings. He was beaten in Tennessee in July by 23-year-old Tom Grosset at the World’s Fastest Drummer competition, a contest in Nashville founded by Boo McAfee, an inventor of a gizmo called a “Drumometer” that clocks drummers’ speeds.
Some of metal’s elder statesmen are encouraging drummers to slow down.
Dave Lombardo, former drummer of Slayer, has removed the parts of his drum set that once helped him play superfast and thinks today’s metal drummers sound sterile. “They’re missing the whole point,” he says. “You’re going to lose the feeling if you try to achieve [speed] in an artificial way.”
Graham Hartmann of Loudwire spoke with Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian about new music and whether or not new Anthrax guitarist Jonathan Donais (Shadows Fall) has had a hand in the current writing process. Portions of the interview appear below.
Loudwire: [Anthrax drummer] Charlie [Benante] recently told us how important it was for him that Anthrax doesn’t recycle what has been done in the past. How would you describe this album so far and would you ever compare it to a past release?
Ian: No. I really try not to compare our records because what does that mean? If we were writing a record that sounded exactly like Among The Living, you wouldn’t need me to tell you that. People would hear it and go, “Oh, sounds exactly like Among The Living. I think if anyone knows anything about our band, you can’t really listen to any two albums that sound alike. Every record is very much of the time that it was written in. It’s not like when we made Worship Music, we had decided we wanted to recreate our past. We’re always moving forward. That’s just the way we’ve always looked at it.
We’re our own toughest critics when it comes to writing riffs. The last thing we want to do is repeat ourselves because it would be boring for us. We feel if it’s boring for us, it’s going to be boring for the audience. I can’t compare it to anything else, it is what it is. It’s the Anthrax we’ve been writing in 2013 and to me it doesn’t sound like anything else we’ve ever done. It’s certainly still a metal record, it definitely has a lot of thrash elements in it, because it’s fun for us to play that way. So, it’s not like we’ve taken a complete departure and we’re making a prog record. It’s definitely a metal record.
Loudwire: Has Jon been a part of the writing process?
Ian: No, not as of yet anyway. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen. He’s certainly writing his own leads, I’ve already sent him new music. So he’s working on the lead licks at this point. As far as the actual writing of the songs, no, that’s been me, Charlie and Franky so far.
Loudwire: Are there any themes or sonic nuances you haven’t tackled on other albums that you’re exploring for this one?
Ian: The songs are harder to play. [Laughs] There’s a lot of songs that are just much harder to play than stuff from the past, let’s just put it that way. A lot of difficult riffs that sometimes I wonder why we do this to ourselves. [Laughs] We write stuff that we really need to bear down and say, “God damn, that’ll be a bitch to play live.” But that’s always part of the challenge — challenging yourself as a writer and coming up with riffs that sound interesting and fresh. I don’t ever want to slow down as a guitar player or feel like I can only do so much. I guess if I’m not challenging myself, I’m doing something wrong.
According to blabbermouth.net, KISS guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley says that it “seems unlikely” that the four original members of the band will perform together at next April’s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction.
, are heading into the studio this weekend to put a final touches on their ... )
 has had a hand in the current writing ... )
