Ruben Mosqueda of Metal Titans spoke with Testament’s Chuck Billy. Portions of the interview appear below.
MetalTitans: I can’t recall a time that Testament has done as much touring as you’ve done behind Formation of Damnation and Dark Roots of Earth.
Billy: We’ve been very busy over the past few years that’s for sure. That’s a good thing for us. In the 90s thrash died off a little bit. Major labels lost interest in this kind of music. It was a little tough. MTV stopped playing videos which meant no airplay for us—the 90s were tough.
MetalTitans: You’re about to embark on a pretty big tour in the next few weeks.
Billy: Yeah, next month we head out with Lamb of God. We’ve been talking with the guys from Lamb of God for a number of years about going out with them—it hadn’t panned out. When this opportunity came up we were available and I think they’ve put together a great package.
MetalTitans: You’ll be issuing a live DVD and dual CD set for those that haven’t seen it how does Dark Roots of Thrash compare to the Live in London DVD and CD set that you issued in 2005?
Billy: I think people will be very pleased with the new DVD. Dark Roots of Thrash and the Live in London DVD are like night and day because that’s heavy on the classic stuff because that’s what the guys wanted to play. They wanted to play stuff that they recorded which was understandable. We’ve been back together for about seven years now. We’ve been playing stuff off The Gathering and of course we’ve written Formation and Dark Roots and I think it’s heavier and really captures what Testament is all about now. I really think we all have a grip on the direction that we’re going with the band. I think this DVD is very impressive because we didn’t put much effort into the Live in London DVD. We didn’t put much effort in the mixing of the audio or the visual aspects of the DVD. We all put in our opinion on what we wanted to see and we were hands on during the editing of the DVD. When people see it they’ll be floored because it’s very powerful.
Ruben Mosqueda of Metal Titans spoke with Stryper frontman and guitarist Michael Sweet. Portions of the Q&A appear below.
Sweet is a “tech geek” stating, “I’m very active on Twitter. I’m also active on Stryper’s Facebook page and Stryper’s Twitter account. I think there’s a purpose for that and I think it’s very important to keep in touch with your fans.”
Metaltitans: No More Hell to Pay has a contemporary meets old school Stryper sound to it. Which is what you said you wanted when we last spoke this spring.
MS: My goal as the main songwriter and producer was to give the fans what they have been wanting and requesting. I kept on reading comments like “You guys should get back to the To Hell with the Devil sound.” That was the idea going into this record; the tricky part was doing that but not making yourself sound dated. That sometimes works other times it doesn’t. I say this humbly–I think we hit it out of the park with the new record I don’t know how we did that? I really think we did it.
Metaltitans: What’s the Stryper appeal? You guys have fans that aren’t necessarily of the Christian faith or necessarily fans of Christian rock. There’s some fans that are more into the death metal or black metal scene.
MS: Yeah, I think the appeal for that side of the fence is the sound—the guitars, the high screaming vocals, the production of the records and the structures of the songs. They like the melodic metal. I think the appeal from the other side of the fence—the people who are Christian and that buy Stryper records; they get excited about the ‘message.’ I’m sure they love the sound and the songs. I think it’s awesome that we are crossing the boundaries reaching people within the church and people that don’t go to church. We are reaching people who are Atheist and people who are Satanists. I’ve talked to them. That’s really interesting and really cool.
Metaltitans: Earlier you referenced the fact that you have personally sat down and had conversations with with black metal musicians. I’m curious to hear how that [was]?
Over the course of the past 30 years I have spoken to people of all shapes and forms! (laughs) I’ve sat down spoken with black metal guys, Satanists, Agnostics and hardcore Christians and fundamentalists. I’ve spoke to people that have come to our shows with bullhorns and protested our shows you name it. As I say this I’ll probably see something new tomorrow. (laughs) We’ve seen it all. It’s so trippy to sit down with a Satanist for an interview and have him tell me that he’s a huge Stryper fan then see him in the front row banging his head to Soldiers Under Command. It’s pretty wild.
Metaltitans: What’s the status of your project with George Lynch? Was that supposed to be T&N or was that something entirely different?
MS: Let me clear that up. I think the mistake that was made by all of us is that we put the cart before the horse. We started talking about it a bit too soon–before things were even finalized. I’m referring to the T&N thing. I got a call from Jeff Pilson and I had spoke to George (Lynch) and it was a go. We were trying to get a tour booked and we wanted to get on the Loud Park Festival in Japan and also do 3-4 week U.S. tour. Needless to say none of that worked out–at least not this year. Right now everyone involved in the band is so busy. Jeff is incredibly busy with Foreigner, George is working with Dug Pinnick from King’s X and I’ve obviously been very busy with Stryper. We weren’t able to put together a tour in 2013 but I do believe we will do one in 2014. I spoke with Jeff and he wants to get me on the next T&N record. The thing that I can tell you that has been confirmed is that I will start recording with George in February (2014) on a supergroup type of project/record. There’s no name for the band as of yet it will be George Lynch, Michael Sweet, Brian Tichy, and James Lomenzo. We start recording in February. George is working music right now, he’ll write most of the music and I’ll write the lyrics. I’m producing the record. It will be released on Frontiers Records with a release date sometime in 2014. I’m really pumped about that. It’s going to be awesome.
Metaltitans: How are you and George going to split the guitar work on that? Will you just sing in this band?
MS: I’m going to exclusively sing on this one I think. I’ll record some rhythm guitar and might play a little lead—this is George Lynch I’m playing with. He’s one of the greats of our time.
Jon Bon Jovi’s Soul Kitchen is celebrating its second anniversary on October 19th.
Over the last two years, they have served over 10,000 meals thanks to their wonderful volunteers and your donations. Every $10 received covers the cost of someone’s meal. If you would like to make a contribution, please click here.
BJ Soul Kitchen is a community restaurant with no prices on the menu; customers donate to pay for their meal. If you are unable to donate you may do volunteer work in exchange for your family’s meal.
Watch a video about the restaurant below.
According to Pollstar, Bon Jovi was number one act on the Top 50 Worldwide Tours of 2013.
Tommy Lee has revealed the deteriorating health of guitarist Mick Mars is one of the reasons Motley Crue are hanging up their boot straps.
The veteran band have announced their intention to retire from touring soon and drummer Tommy Lee says, “The farewell tour is next. This will be it. Our guitar player, Mick, he has a spinal disease that’s slowly fusing his vertebrae together. It’s one of those things that’s treatable, but not curable.”
The guitarist has famously suffered from ankylosing spondylitis since he was 17 and had hip-replacement surgery in 2004.
“So it’s just progressively getting really worse and it’s painful for him, so he doesn’t wanna tour much longer. I can’t say I blame him… The last thing we ever wanna do is go out running on two cylinders with some hired guy playing guitar; that’s just wack. So we wanna go out with one big hurrah with the original guys and be done with it.”
Speaking on a videotaped ‘Coffee Run’ ride with Canadian progressive-house music producer and performer Deadmau5 Lee adds, “That’s such a bad look when bands are still playing the fucking fairgrounds — those county-fair shows — and it’s just like two of the original guys, or one original guy, and the rest, no one knows who they are. We don’t wanna do that.
We want to go out on top. We don’t want to be one of those bands that people are like, ‘Oh, they’re playing a little club now.’ We still sell out arenas and do stadium shows and stuff like that, and that’s how we want to be remembered.”
Motley Crue recently returned to Las Vegas for an exclusive twelve-show engagement September 18th through October 6th at The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
In a recent interview with BBC Radio 6, Robert Plant revealed that he has unearthed some previously unreleased Led Zeppelin recordings. When the DJs asked him about “hidden gems” on the forthcoming remasters of the band’s catalog, he said he had found a few.
“I found some quarter-inch spools recently,” he said. “I had a meeting with Jimmy [Page] and we baked ’em up and listened to ’em. And there’s some very, very interesting bits and pieces that probably will turn up on these things.”
Among them are some recordings featuring the group’s bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones on lead vocals. “So far, he’s going to give me two cars and a greenhouse not to get ’em on the album,” Plant said with a hearty laugh. “Oh, John, wherever you are with your opera, John, you can’t wait to hear yourself singing all over the world.” (Jones is writing an opera with Robyn Hitchcock and the Norwegian group Supersilent.)
Last year, Page told Rolling Stone that he’s been working on an extensive remastering of Led Zeppelin’s archives. “The catalog was last remastered 20 years ago,” the guitarist said, referring to the 1990 release of the four-CD box set Led Zeppelin. “That’s a long time. Everything is being transferred from analog to a higher-resolution digital format. That’s one of the problems with the Zeppelin stuff. It sounds ridiculous on MP3. You can’t hear what’s there properly.” He also revealed that while the group didn’t record many additional songs when making records, they did record “different versions of things, different approaches to the mixes.” He said the band would include “the substantial stuff” in the reissues.
Currently, there is no release date for the remastered catalog.
According to blabbermouth.net, singer Tony Harnell has confirmed that he will reunite with Norwegian hard rockers TNT.
He says, “After much discussion and lots of soul searching, I’m happy to officially announce that I’ll be back behind the microphone with TNT.
I’m very proud of all we accomplished over the years and proud to have written and recorded all those great songs with my brother from another mother, Ronni Le Tekrø.
Sometimes it’s just time to give the fans what they’re asking for.
2014 is the 25th anniversary of the successful Intuition album and we thought it would be a good time to get out and relaunch this little machine for you guys!
Can’t wait to see you all on tour!”
In August, TNT parted ways with its frontman of the past seven years, British vocalist Tony Mills.
