Fan-filmed video footage of from guitar virtuoso Gus G. — well known in rock and metal circles for his work as Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist and as leader of his own band FIREWIND — performing this past Saturday, March 8 at Block 33 in Thessaloniki, Greece can be seen below. Gus was joined at the gig by acclaimed Swedish hard rock vocalist Mats Levén (CANDLEMASS, ex-YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, THERION).
Gus G.'s debut solo album, "I Am The Fire", will be released on March 18 in North America via Century Media Records.
"I Am The Fire" track listing:
01. My Will Be Done (featuring Mats Levén)
02. Blame It On Me (featuring Mats Levén)
03. I Am The Fire (featuring Devour The Day)
04. Vengeance (featuring David Ellefson)
05. Long Way Down (featuring Alexia Rodriguez)
06. Just Can't Let Go (featuring Jacob Bunton)
07. Terrified (featuring Billy Sheehan)
08. Eyes Wide Open (featuring Mats Levén)
09. Redemption (featuring Michael Starr)
10. Summer Days (featuring Jeff Scott Soto)
11. Dreamkeeper (featuring Tom S. Englund)
12. End Of The Line (featuring Mats Levén)
The cover artwork, pictured below, was designed by Gustavo Sazes (ARCH ENEMY, KAMELOT, DREAM EVIL).
The video for the album's opening track, "My Will Be Done" (featuring Mats Levén), was produced by Patric Ullaeus of Revolver Film Company, who has previously worked with DIMMU BORGIR, LACUNA COIL, IN FLAMES, SONIC SYNDICATE and KAMELOT, among others.
Gus handles all guitar, bass and keyboards on "I Am The Fire", and is joined by a roster of friends and guests that help bring his vision to fruition: drummers Jeff Friedl (A PERFECT CIRCLE, PUSCIFER, DEVO) and Daniel Erlandsson (ARCH ENEMY), bassists David Ellefson (MEGADETH), Billy Sheehan (MR. BIG, DAVID LEE ROTH) and Marty O'Brien (TOMMY LEE, WE ARE THE FALLEN, LITA FORD), and vocalists Mats Levén (CANDLEMASS, ex-YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, THERION), Blake Allison (DEVOUR THE DAY), Michael Starr (STEEL PANTHER), Alexia Rodriguez (EYES SET TO KILL), Tom S. Englund (EVERGREY), Jacob Bunton (ADLER) and Jeff Scott Soto (TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA, TALISMAN, ex-JOURNEY, YNGWIE MALMSTEEN).
"I Am The Fire" was mixed by Jay Ruston (ANTHRAX, STONE SOUR, STEEL PANTHER) and was recorded between Los Angeles and Gus' home country of Greece through the latter half of 2013. A few of the album's tracks include "Eyes Wide Open", "Redemption", "End Of The Line" and "Blame It On Me". The album showcases a well-balanced mix of active rock, classic hard rock, traditional metal and guitar-driven instrumentals, taking listeners on a diverse journey and opening doors to Gus G.'s soulful playing.
Gus G. has had an amazing rise within the worldwide rock and metal scenes and has amassed an impressive body of work, both in studio and touring. He emerged as an up-and-coming talent with the groups DREAM EVIL (Sweden), MYSTIC PROPHECY (Germany) and NIGHTRAGE (Greece), but it is his work with his own band FIREWIND (who have released seven studio albums and two live releases) and as a member of Ozzy Osbourne's band that have helped him emerge as one of the world's top metal and rock guitarists. His work on Ozzy's "Scream" album led to a Grammy nomination in 2010, and his list of accolades includes Guitar Player magazine's "Best Metal Guitarist," the "Dimebag Darrell Shredder" award at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards, and Metal Hammer Greece "Best Guitarist" on four separate occasions.
Mark Dean of Myglobalmind webzine recently conducted an interview with former SLAYER and current PHILM drummer Dave Lombardo. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Myglobalmind: Looking back over your extensive musical career, what have been the particular high and low points?
Dave: Well, it fluctuates; up and down, you know. A low point was probably January of last year whenever [the most recent split] went down, you know, with SLAYER. It was leading up to that, you know, unfortunately. Well, not really leading up to it, because my bags were ready and packed to go [with the band to Australia for the Soundwave festival].
Myglobalmind: It still must be difficult for you on a personal level? As they were your friends, and people that you had grown up with.
Dave: Yeah, it's strange. It's unfortunate as well, because I realize now that they weren't really my friends. They were just business partners. I lived and hung out with them, as if they were friends. "Wow, these guys are watching out for me," and it didn't quite turn out that way.
Myglobalmind: How do you feel one year on? Has your attitude to the situation mellowed, or…?
Dave: Yeah, I have, I am more, like, "Oh, well, shit happens." Move on, you know.
Myglobalmind: Are you generally a modest person about your personal musical talent and ability? How do you deal, for example, with compliments. I read, for example, that Bill Ward [BLACK SABBATH] called you “one of the best drummers in metal"?
Dave: Yeah, I am honored. First of all, I am honored to have Bill Ward as my friend. This is a guy that I looked at these albums and listened to this music, and played along to these albums as a child and a little kid. For me to know Bill, it is surreal, and it feels very odd, but it is awesome.
Myglobalmind: How do you find being a working and touring musician in the Internet age? Is it more difficult to make a living?
Dave: Well, it is.
Myglobalmind: You can't do this full time? I have talked to other guys who have established careers and still have to take other jobs because life is difficult, and can't sustain a living solely from music.
Dave: Well, the thing is you have to find other ways and get creative and find other ways to market your music and to recreate yourself. It's, like, once the Internet and the worldwide web came into the picture, everyone scrambled, and the first was the music industry, because everyone was downloading music, so they started scrambling ways to make a living. So you just have to get creative. Yeah, it is difficult. It's a little different. The royalties aren't the same from the physical CDs, but there are other avenues of income that you just need to sign up online and you will start receiving royalties on the songs that you have recorded. I never knew this until recently, about six months ago, and it was, like, "Woah, I got a nice check in the mail." All I did was just go online and register my name all the music that I did in my life that I have recorded.
Myglobalmind: That you weren't aware of, that type of royalties thing?
Dave: I was never aware of. Nobody told me, thank you fucking very much.
Myglobalmind: What about your health over the years? Playing drums at the velocity and energy levels that you exhibit regularly on stage, has that had any adverse health effects?
Dave: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Thank God. I've been healthy. The only things that have been wrong was I broke my leg and I had to stop for only about three weeks 'cause I got straight on the drums again. They said, "No, you gotta stay off the leg. No, no." I worked it up.
Myglobalmind: It's in the blood, is it?
Dave: Yeah, I just kept going and it was great. I wrote a song and it's on the new album, the new PHILM album, with a broken leg, so… But other than that, no. I drink a lot of water. I try to stay off the booze, although I like it, but there's limits. I try to eat right and I try to walk a lot. You could really become… You could grow stagnant. You could get very lazy if you don't stay active.
Myglobalmind: Playing that type of music obviously is going to have that chance of health issues…
Dave: I started PHILM, you know, when I noticed that [SLAYER], in a way, health-wise, was crumbling, not only with Jeff [Hanneman, guitar], but with Tom [Araya, bass/vocals] and Kerry [King, guitar] doesn't take care of himself. He should be careful. Well, I'm not going to tell him that…
Myglobalmind: Nobody would tell him that.
Dave: Nobody. And I'm not either.
Myglobalmind: He's quite an imposing character, shall we say.
Dave: Yeah, of course. He has a lot of insecurities.
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San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD entered GREEN DAY's Oakland, California's JingleTown Recording compound on February 9 to begin recording their new album for a late 2014 release via Nuclear Blast Entertainment.
Comments MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn in the latest installment of his online blog, "The General Journals: Diary Of A Frontman... And Other Ramblings": "As I step off the insane recording treadmill I've been on for a few weeks, one thing is for certain, it's all about slow and steady progress. I mean, I really wish I had more of an exciting update to give you, but I've been slammed recording guitars, laying down vocals, and working on some killer packaging ideas with the Nuclear Blast crew.
"Less than a week before we got into JingleTown, we finished a pair of songs, one of which was literally not even an idea the week previous. Phil [Demmel, guitar] brought in some great, GREAT stuff at the 11th hour and we were able to turn it into a really cool song with the working title of 'Sharkbite Days Revisited'. The other song, formerly known as 'Blazing Saddles', just wasn't working. Even though it had some cool parts, it was just too goddamned hard to play and make it sound natural, so we back-burnered it for a while. It was the type of song where we finally realized our mortality, LOL! One of those 'dammit, I can't play this fast at my age anymore' kind of moments! But it was a song that came at a time when we needed a good kick in the ass, and it completely helped break my writer's block. It was the crack in the dam, and after that, all hell flowed. So if anything, it served its purpose well!
"So on the second to last day of rehearsals, [Dave] McClain [drums] and I deconstructed 'Blazing Saddles', and then reconstructed it into a far simpler structure, and it's fuckin' rockin'! Less of a SLAYER/SLIPKNOT vibe, and more of a 'Screaming For Vengeance'-era JUDAS PRIEST feel to it. Appropriately, it has now been given the working title 'Simmering Saddles'.
"I laid down some scratch vocal ideas on the 3 'newest' tunes, and made some huge progress on the song (working title: 'Riffnado'). I can already tell it's gonna be really cool.
"So that's about it for now. I know it doesn't look like much, but as my engineer Juan says, 'There some blood on the board there' (pic below)."
"Killers & Kings". The B-side will be a cover version of the track "Our Darkest Days" from one of MACHINE HEAD's favorite bands, IGNITE.
The third of four tarot cards making up the cover artwork for the "Killers & Kings" single can be seen below. Also available is video footage of MACHINE HEAD members Phil Demmel (guitar), Dave McClain (drums) and Jared MacEachern (bass) laying down backing vocals on the "Our Darkest Days" cover version.
Says MACHINE HEAD guitarist/vocalist Robb Flynn: "I remember growing up in the thrash scene and always wanting to hear the demo version of songs. You searched them out. Thankfully, my buddy Jim was a big 'tape trader,' and through trading, we had both METALLICA demos, EXODUS demos, bootlegs of songs sometimes 'years' before they came out.
"I knew how to play every note of 'Pleasure Of The Flesh' by EXODUS easily two years before the record was out. I had SLAYER's 'Reign In Blood' three months before it came out. I remember it still had the hi-hat counts starting the songs!!
"My friends and I would debate the merits of each (the demo was always better, LOL!).
"It's so much cooler to hear it BEFORE the album is out!
"So we're gonna do that for you.
"I can't wait for you guys to hear this stuff. Then you can debate it, haha!"
Tentative songtitles set to appear on the new MACHINE HEAD album include "Killers & Kings", "Beneath The Silt", "Eyes Of The Dead" (formerly "Ojos De La Muerte"), "Sail Into The Black", How We Die" and "Night Of The Long Knives".
