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MIKE PORTNOY: BLACK SABBATH Without BILL WARD Is ‘Not A Reunion’

Manos Spanos
Drummer Mike Portnoy (THE WINERY DOGS, DREAM THEATER, AVENGED SEVENFOLD, ADRENALINE MOB) was interviewed on the latest edition of former RIP magazine editor and veteran music journalist Lonn Friend's "Energize With Lonn Friend" podcast. Commenting on BLACK SABBATH's decision to record and tour without original drummer Bill Ward, Portnoy said: "Here's my issue with it. I have no issue if Bill Ward is not fit to play in SABBATH, as they're saying. Or I have no issue with it if they're having money litigations and problems and they couldn't agree on something that was fair. My issue is that they're calling it a BLACK SABBATH reunion. It's not a BLACK SABBATH reunion without the four of them. It is now just the latest BLACK SABBATH lineup. " He continued: "Why is this BLACK SABBATH, but HEAVEN & HELL wasn't BLACK SABBATH? I mean, we all know the real reason for it. But it's not a true BLACK SABBATH reunion without Bill Ward. And if they need to do it without Bill, then they do it without Bill. But don't call it a reunion. It's just BLACK SABBATH 2013. " Portnoy, who co-founded DREAM THEATER more than 27 years ago, abruptly quit the band in September 2010 while on tour with AVENGED SEVENFOLD. He has since been replaced by Mike Mangini (ANNIHILATOR, EXTREME, JAMES LABRIE, STEVE VAI).
01 min read

JUDAS PRIEST Completes Writing New Album

Manos Spanos
Singer Rob Halford of British heavy metal legends JUDAS PRIEST spoke to Billboard.com about the progress of the songwriting and recording sessions for the band's long-awaited follow-up to 2008's "Nostradamus". "The writing process is complete," he said. "Now it's the painstaking work of making sure that you get every single note, every single nuance of the vocal, every tiny aspect...right. We're still tracking (instruments). It's just a very laborious but enjoyable part of making the record." Regarding the sound of the new PRIEST material, Halford said, "[It's] hard. It's heavy. It's something we think our PRIEST fans will be thrilled with. We know we have a reputation to maintain, and we know we have to deliver something really strong and solid. The album is going to be full of all the great things you love about JUDAS PRIEST — I don't think I can say anything more than that without being hung, drawn and quartered." In an interview with VH1 Radio Network's Dave Basner, Halford spoke about what fans can expect from JUDAS PRIEST's next release: "We felt it was very important to follow up 'Nostradamus', the last release, and that was a concept experiment and it was a real success for us and the fans loved it, but I think our fans and ourselves as a band, we want to get back to the side of PRIEST that we haven't heard for a few years and reemphasize and remake those big, heavy metal statements again." ]
02 min read

METALLICA’s JAMES HETFIELD: It’s A ‘Blessing’ To Be Doing What We Love After 30 Years

Manos Spanos
The four members of METALLICA took part in a press conference prior to the band's August 24 performance at Changi Exhibition Centre in Singapore. You can watch video footage of the question-and-answer session below. On how they deal with the physical demands of touring: Kirk Hammett (guitar): "I do a lot of yoga. We're all pretty physical. Rob [bassist Robert Trujillo] and I like ot surf. We just got off a week-long stint in Bali, surfing a lot. You know, it's important to keep maintenance on the road — eat well, sleep well, and just make sure the engine inside is running well. It's really important. 'Cause the last thing I wanna do is drop on stage." Robert Trujillo: "You go through transitions in life, and you have to adjust, and you have to listen to your body and you have to listen to your spirit and really focus on what that means. And you will continue to enjoy life and do things that you couldn't imagine. I mean, to be honest, at least for Kirk and I, we're surfing better than we ever have in our life right now, at our age, which is pretty cool. So if you take that to the stage as well, it's the same principle. You get up there, you play hard and you just know your body and don't push the limits too far so you don't hurt yourself." Lars Ulrich (drums): "We have two guys downstairs who take care of stretching us and putting us back into shape — our necks and our arms and everything. They're among the two hardest-working guys in rock and roll. So we take all that stuff really seriously. I mean, if you could see our [tour] rider, it's carrots and strange vegetables and nasty fruit juices. It's not what it was back in the day, thankfully. But yeah, we do take [staying healthy] very seriously. Absolutely." On how long they can keep METALLICA going: James Hetfield (guitar, vocals): "We'll do this until we don't wanna do it anymore; it's as simple as that. There's no use doing something your heart is not in. But for us, we love what we do and we're blessed that way." On what advice they would give to young, up-and-coming bands:
02 min read

ALICE COOPER Says His Current Tour Is ‘Highest-Energy Show’ Fans Will See All Year

Manos Spanos
Legendary rocker Alice Cooper recently spoke to Highway 81 Revisited about how he plans the setlist and the look for each tour. "It's so funny because it's almost the hardest thing when you're trying to please all the fans is trying to do something that everyone wants," he said. "Of course we're going to do all the hits, but then I get e-mails going, 'How come you didn't do this?' and, 'How come you didn't do that?' Everybody has their own favorite songs for their deeper cuts. So we're going to do 28 songs. That's one of the hardest parts of doing a show: What songs are we gonna put in? Once you get them in there, the easy part for me is staging it. " He continued: "This show that you're going to see this time is totally different from the show that you saw last time. That's kind of the fun part for me, putting
02 min read

EYEHATEGOD Drummer Dies

Manos Spanos
According to numerous reports out of New Orleans, Joey LaCaze, drummer of EYEHATEGOD, OUTLAW ORDER and TEN SUICIDES, has passed away. He was 42 years old and leaves behind a wife and a child. No further details are currently available. EYEHATEGOD just completed a month-long tour of Europe and was gearing up for a string of dates in celebration of its 25th anniversary. It was recently announced that EYEHATEGOD would make an appearance at Philip Anselmo's first annual Housecore Horror Film Festival this fall in Austin, Texas. Since forming in 1988,EYEHATEGOD has defied all odds and continues to exist and persist despite personal and professional setbacks. They've been called doomcore, sludge and stoner rock, survived line-up shuffles, label hassles and a short-lived split. And after more than two decades of creating some of the most corrosive, vile music known to man, EYEHATEGOD still hasn't lost the piss and vinegar that fueled it back the late Eighties.
01 min read

DEVILDRIVER Frontman: ‘We Tend To Not Make The Same Piece Of Art Twice’

Manos Spanos
Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal of Metal Assault recently conducted an interview with vocalist Dez Fafara of California metallers DEVILDRIVER. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below. Metal Assault: Your new album,"Winter Kills", is coming out on August 27th via Napalm Records. I was listening to it, and I think it's pretty dynamic. It's very raw in many ways but it's also melodic. Would you say that's a fair description? Dez: Yeah, absolutely! It's got a lot of presence to it. It's upfront and not over-produced. The vocals for pretty much every single track were recorded in first takes, so it has a very "live" feel. It's full of groove and hooks, and has very tight arrangements. So yeah, that's a fair assessment. Metal Assault: Talking of the past two records,"Pray For Villains"was a pretty melodic, metalcore-type album but then"Beast"was a lot heavier, and now you are coming out with"Winter Kills". What would you say about the musical changes from album to album? Are you going heavier with each one?
04 min read

FLOOR JANSEN On Singing For NIGHTWISH: ‘It Has Been Magical And Really Amazing’

Manos Spanos
Metal Blast recently conducted an interview with former AFTER FOREVER frontwoman and current NIGHTWISH touring singer Floor Jansen about her REVAMP project as well as her time with NIGHTWISH. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below. Metal Blast: Is singing for NIGHTWISH any different than what you used to do with your other bands or it was more like a familiar ground? Floor: It was more of the familiar. Even though I was asked and directed a little bit, I do have the freedom to give my own ideas. When you start doing it, you have to give a part of yourself, so I couldn't done it differently. I can't just imitate the previous singers. It was wonderful to see that the songs really grew on me. I don't feel like I'm singing someone else's music anymore. It really feels natural for me. Metal Blast: By the way, how was the show and filming you did withNIGHTWISH at Germany'sWacken Open Airfestival at the beginning of the month?
03 min read

BUTLER: If WARD Played Like He Used To, We’d Have Welcomed Him With Open Arms

Manos Spanos
Brian McCollum of the Detroit Free Press recently conducted an interview with legendary BLACK SABBATH bassist Geezer Butler. A few excerpts from the chat follow below. On the band's new album,"13", topping sales charts across the globe: Butler: "It's just amazed us. We thought there'd be some interest in it. But never in our wildest dreams would we have expected it to go to No. 1. Around the world, all over the place, it's doing well." On the original BLACK SABBATHlineup being considered the band's most definitive incarnation: Butler: "When you mention it to the average person, they'll knowBLACK SABBATH withOzzy[Osbourne, vocals] in the band. That was our breakthrough (period) in the '70s. People so often associate Ozzy with SABBATH, and SABBATH with Ozzy. It's the same thing with a band like VAN HALEN— people like David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar, but the classic lineup would beDave." On producerRick Rubin's contribution to the new album's success: Butler: "When we tried to do albums in the past, we all had different ideas of what it should be like, and it never ended up being successful. This is what we needed — we needed a producer.Rick Rubinhad always made it known he wanted to be the first-choice producer if we all got back together. "He wanted to go back to the old, basic sort of SABBATH sound — not a lot of overdubs, just a couple of guitar solos. You capture the feeling. With a lot of bands these days — and we have in the past — you'll go put the drums down, the next day you put on the bass, then guitar. It doesn't have the same feeling as being in the room together withOzzysinging. That's how we did the first three albums." On BLACK SABBATH 's current touring drummer Tommy Clufetos, who has previously played withOsbourne,Ted Nugent,Alice CooperandRob Zombie: Butler: "Tommy's a real nice bloke to get on with as well. He's a phenomenal drummer — he picks things up so quickly. It's incredible the way he works. He's really dedicated to the stuff he does." On originalSABBATHdrummerBill Ward's absence from the"13"recording sessions and current tour:
03 min read

Has MAYNARD JAMES KEENAN Secretly Been At Work On TOOL Album?

Manos Spanos
Has TOOLsinger Maynard James Keenan secretly been working on lyrics for the band's long-awaited fifth album since the spring? According toThe Pulse Of Radio, Keenanappeared on comedianMarc Maron's "WTF"podcast and, when asked about new TOOL music, replied, "I'm gonna stop by the rehearsal space today. In theory, having beaten them up going, 'Please give me music, please give me music, please give me music, please give me music,' they have a CD for me today. They're like, 'Look, listen to some jams so we can get this thing going.'" What's interesting, however, is that while the podcast was broadcast last Sunday (August 18), the interview itself was recorded in March — withKeenaneven making a reference to his 49th birthday happening in April. So hasKeenanbeen working on the newTOOLrecord since last March? Keenansaid he needed to hear music before he could begin to formulate lyrics, explaining, "I can't write words 'til I hear the sounds, and I haven't heard the sounds . . . I've gotta listen to the sounds and go from the sounds." The vocalist toldThe Pulse Of Radioa while back that he gets restless atTOOL's slower pace of doing things. "I can't sit still, so when those guys hesitate, it takes us so long to do stuff, and it's like a snake eating its own tail situation, 'cause then I get distracted and I go off and do a thing, and then I get blamed for not being around to do the (TOOL) thing," he said. "But nothing was getting done when I was standing there, so I got bored and left. It's just an endless cycle."
02 min read

WATAIN Frontman: Being In A Black Metal Band ‘Has To Go Beyond Just Playing Songs’

Manos Spanos
David E. Gehlke of DeadRhetoric.com recently conducted an interview with WATAIN mainman Erik Danielsson. A few excerpts from the chat follow below. DeadRhetoric.com: It seems like everything you've done of late has been on a bigger scale. I think a lot of us can remember you coming up with "Casus Luciferi" and "Sworn To The Dark", but leading up to "The Wild Hunt", things are of greater scale. Erik Danielsson: It's the way it goes, I guess. We've been doing this for 15 years and people have come to understand that we're a force to be reckoned with and you have to let the fans do that, and business people, too. To be honest, things have changed very literally in the world in WATAIN. To us, it's very much the same thing, the same purpose in our lives. From where we stand, nothing has really changed, but at the same time, we have more and more people working, we have tour agencies and management and whatever that are taken care of this and this. So I suppose it's a reflection of how people relate to the band. It's rather something that matters more for other people than us. DeadRhetoric.com: What's your take on people who think bands have to stay within certain parameters to be black metal? Danielsson: I very much agree with them. To the extent of that to me, it's not a matter of staying true to a musical spine; that spine is one rather of atmosphere and ideology rather than a musical one. And that's what defines WATAIN. Black metal music is music that, in essence, is diabolical and has diabolical energies and that is where the definition lies to me. Incorporating elements like keyboards… it only takes away from the diabolical aspect of it, because we're talking about the wild, the untamed, ferocious, predatory aspect of it, the tribe within this music. You cannot really get into that permutation with those things if you have a sound that opposes those things. DeadRhetoric.com: In North America, we have a lot of what is called "Cascadian" or post-black metal bands who don't look the part whatsoever. Have you caught wind of them?
03 min read