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JEFF HANNEMAN Was Working On New Music Before He Died, Says TOM ARAYA

Manos Spanos
On May 2, the sudden news took the metal community by storm: SLAYERguitarist Jeff Hanneman had died. In the August 2013 issue of Guitar World magazine, the band's bassist/vocalist Tom Araya recalls his final communications with his longtime friend and bandmate: "I had been texting with him, and he even sent me a song that he had been working on. So it seemed like he was doing okay. But when I got the call that he was back in intensive care, I became concerned. Eventually he stopped responding to my texts. It was like a one-sided conversation. "I was home with my family when I found out he had died. The phone rang and my wife answered it, and she had this look of dread on her face. She handed me the phone and didn't say anything, and it was our manager,Rick [Sales], and he told me. I hung up the phone and went to my room and I cried. "It hit my family hard, because they really liked Jeff. My mother was really upset, my sisters loved Jeff, and my brother too — he was Jeff's tech for a long time."
03 min read

NIGHTRAGE Singer Quits

Manos Spanos
Singer Antony Hämäläinen (pictured below) has officially left mutinational melodic death metallers NIGHTRAGE. He says: "There is no drama or bad blood. Quite the opposite actually as we all remain great friends. I personally would just like to explore other musical ventures. It's as simple as that." He adds: "I want to thank [NIGHTRAGE founder] Marios Iliopoulos for giving me a chance to play in his band, and write two amazing albums with him. He is one of the most underrated guitar players in the world, and I am sure he will create more amazing music in the years to come. "In other news, [drummer] Johan Nunez and I, have finished recording a new album of total melodic death metal with several of our best friends on board. This is a project we have been working on for a few years now and we can't wait to share it with you. There will be more news on that in the weeks to come so stay tuned!"
02 min read

THE HAUNTED Prepares To Announce New Lineup; Teaser Images Posted Online

Manos Spanos
Swedish metallers THE HAUNTED are teasing their fans on Facebook with photos of the bandmembers' silhouettes (see below) as they prepare to announce their new lineup. Although there has been no official confirmation, THE HAUNTED's latest incarnation appears to include the return of drummer Adrian Erlandsson(also of AT THE GATES and PARADISE LOST) and singer Marco Aro (also of THE RESISTANCE). They are joined by original THE HAUNTED membersPatrik Jensen (guitar) and Jonas Björler (bass) alongside the band's newest addition, guitarist Ola Englund (SIX FEET UNDER, FEARED). Vocalist Peter Dolving, guitarist Anders Björler and drummer Per Møller Jensen left THE HAUNTED last year and are pursuing separate new projects.
01 min read

MACHINE HEAD Announces New Bassist

Manos Spanos
San Francisco Bay Area metallers MACHINE HEAD have announced Jared MacEachern as their new bass player. Jared has already begun rehearsals with the rest of the band for the upcoming Rockstar Energy Mayhem Drink Festival tour and will soon relocate from North Carolina to Northern California to begin pre-production for MACHINE HEAD's upcoming eighth studio release. Some fans might remember MacEachern from MACHINE HEAD's 2007"The Black Tyranny" tour, on which he performed with his previous band,SANCTITY. MACHINE HEAD, challenged to find a fill-in bass player for the North American tour after an injury sidelined their then-four-stringerAdam Duce, also found themselves in need of someone to sing harmony with singer/guitarist Robb Flynn. Flynn remembers: "We had locked inBrandon Sigmund of local boys HOSTILITY to play bass on that tour, but we soon realized we'd need someone to hit the high harmonies. Our A&R guy [at Roadrunner Records], Monte Conner, recommended Jaredsince he was already on the tour, and that ended up being a great call.Jared flew out a few days before the tour and rehearsed with us and did great. What was most impressive about the whole thing was that he was doing double duty — opening for MACHINE HEAD with his band at the time, SANCTITY, and then later singing with us. He would stay sober until after our set, and often get in the van and drive all night. His seriousness and dedication was awesome to see and it stuck with us." Earlier this year, MACHINE HEAD conducted an extensive search for candidates through various channels, the most fruitful of which proved to be video submissions. Sifting through more than 400 videos, the band personally reviewed and evaluated everyone's performances, includingMacEachern, who made the short list without a second thought. Lead guitarist Phil Demmel recalls: "There were dozens of amazing players, and it was interesting to watch each one take on our tunes. One of our biggest criteria for this gig was to be able to sing the high harmonies. That was our litmus test. And Jared passed with flying colors."
05 min read

ZAKK WYLDE On RANDY BLYTHE, ‘Unblackened’ And Next BLACK LABEL SOCIETY Album

Manos Spanos
Anthony Morgan of Metal Forces recently conducted an interview withBLACK LABEL SOCIETY frontman and ex-OZZY OSBOURNE guitaristZakk Wylde. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below. On the paperback release of his book, "Bringing Metal To The Children": Zakk: "The book all started from me and Eric [Hendrikx, co-author] just sitting around, talking, like any of the guys. It'd be like me and you sitting at the bar, talking about 'You're not gonna believe what happened the other day,' and this and that. It's the music business, where there are no rules [laughs]. There's no qualifications; you don't have to have a Master's degree. You just show up and you're there, but that's where you get the cast of characters, and that's where you get all of the comedy man. Like I always say, it's unimportant people making important decisions. They have no business doing what they're doing, but that's how it gets run. Anywhere else, if you wanna apply for a job welding or being a brain surgeon or any of that, you have to have a degree and you have to have a license, and everything like that [laughs]. Not in the music business, though. But yeah, it just came out of funny stories and us just laughing our balls off, talking about how ridiculously goofy the music business is. That's how the book came about, me saying 'You've gotta write a book about all this crap someday.'"
04 min read

MOTÖRHEAD Frontman’s Health Issues Force Concert Cancelations

Manos Spanos
According to Soundsblog.it, MOTÖRHEAD canceled this past Saturday's (June 22) appearance in Austria at the See-Rock festival and the June 25 show in Milan, Italy, due to an unspecified "haematoma" suffered by the band's frontman, Lemmy Kilmister. The news was first broken by the See-Rock festival web site, and then the promoters of the Milan show confirmed the health issue. A haematoma is a localized collection of blood outside the blood vessels usually in liquid form within the tissue. It can happen on any part of the body, with different degrees of heath consequences. It was revealed in the latest issue of U.K.'s Classic Rock magazine that \Kilmister recently had a defibrillator fitted — an operation to put a device in his chest to help his heart beat normally — after experiencing "heart problems."
01 min read

SLAYER’s KING: ‘I Don’t Think We Should Throw In The Towel Just Because JEFF’s Not Here’

Manos Spanos
The surviving members of California thrash titans SLAYER have opened up to Guitar World magazine about the passing of the band's founding guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who died on May 2 from alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver, a result of a lifetime of drinking. "Jeff was always a drinker," former SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo tells the publication for its August 2013 issue. "He always had a Coors Light tall can in his hand. Always." "Jeff and I always drank," SLAYER guitarist Kerry King adds. "They called Steven Tyler and Joe Perry the Toxic Twins. We were the Drunk Brothers." He laughs. "The difference being that I don't wake up in the morning and need a beer. Jeff didn't know how not to drink."
07 min read

Interview: Nader Sadek / Rune “Blapshemer” Eriksen

Panagiotis Karagiannidis
Nader Sadek: The all-star Death metal band that made a great debut album "In The Flesh" 2 years ago and released the DVD "Living Flesh" some time ago. Metalpaths had the chance to talk with Nader Sadek himself (lyricist) and Rune Eriksen (a.k.a. Blasphemer, ex-Mayhem guitarist) about this release and the band in general...by John Savvidis Hello Nader! You are well known for being the live show partner of Mayhem over the past years. So tell us more on how you alongside with Rune "Blapshemer" Eriksen, Flo Mournier (Cryptopsy), Steve Tucker (ex-Morbid Angel) and Novy (ex-Vader) met and decided to form a band under your name: Nader Sadek That's the problem and the biggest misconception of this porject, this wasnever a band. Unfortunatley it had to be marketed as such. However, there is no band by the name Nader Sadek. Nader Sadek is just me, the project starter, if you will, among many other things of course, the whole project was my vision. I had picked each musician for a very specific reason. At first all the musicians were skeptical as they were at the time not fans of each others bands.
06 min read

OZZY OSBOURNE Wants BILL WARD Back For Next BLACK SABBATH Album

Manos Spanos
According to The Pulse Of Radio, BLACK SABBATH's new album, "13", is such a success for the reunited band that singer Ozzy Osbourne wants to make another one — and hopes that original drummer Bill Ward can join the group in the studio this time. When asked by NME about the chances of Ward returning, Ozzy answered, "It's a strong possibility. We would have loved to have Bill on this album. Maybe we can work things out by the next one. But it won't take another 35 years. I'm 65 now. There's no fucking recording studios in the afterlife. We're all even closer for all this shit so there's one positive, one fucking silver lining." RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE drummer Brad Wilk played drums on "13"after Ward sat out the sessions. While money was believed to be an issue, Ward was reportedly also upset that the group wanted another drummer around anyway to back him up if he was physically unable to get the job done.
02 min read

METALLICA’s ULRICH: ‘I Understand There Are People Waiting For A New Record, And So Are We’

Manos Spanos
METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich tells RollingStone.com that the band has amassed nearly 600 song ideas during rehearsals in January and March of this year, many of which came from jam sessions the musicians held while on tour. "I understand there are people waiting for a new record, and so are we,"Ulrich says. "But I can't stress about it. It's not like, 'Fuck, hurry up and get this record out.' Hurry up for what? So we can go play gigs? We already play gigs. We'll get there." Although Ulrich and bassist Robert Trujillo have indicated in recent interviews that at least some writing for the upcoming METALLICA album had taken place, frontman James Hetfield has a different take. Hetfield told Abu Dhabi's That's Entertainment, "We haven't even started writing it. We're going through riffs. We have, like, 800-and-something riffs we're going through — lots of ideas. We're really excited about it, but doing concerts here and there, trying to get back in the studio and get some stuff done, it's all really exciting. But it gets done onMETALLICA time, which is not really scheduled. When it's done, it's done and when it's good, then it will be done."
02 min read