"Typically we'll have a once a week meeting to go listen to the songs that they're coming up with and talk about them," Rubin told Billboard.com. "For so early in the project, they are much further along than they have been on the last two albums we did.

Anthony addressed the album in response to birthday wishes (he just turned 57) on his Facebook page: "Thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes! The only thing that makes my day better is that mixing on the new Chickenfoot CD is done! It's a lot heavier than the first record and I can't wait to get it out there!"

The Montreal Gazette reports Plant will be presented with the festival's Spirit Award during his June 24 concert at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

"Yeah, it's not a possibility at all. We're so far away from that," he said. "Reunions are a weird situation. It's like trying to take back time. It's stupid. It's like you're shaking the last cent in your pocket. It's not music. I'm much more interested in growing up and living for today. Sepultura 2011. I want to build from now not then."

The band have not given a reason why Snell was dismissed, with guitarist Zoltan Bathory explaining: "Yes, he was fired. We have a contract with Matt and it says I can't tell you anything that would hurt his career if he goes any further."

(Lambgoat) Testament has announced that they've entered the studio with producer/engineer Andy Sneap (Napalm Death, Megadeth) to begin recording their next album. Notably, the group revealed that renowned drummer Gene Hoglan (Death, Dethklok, Strapping Young Lad) has been recruited to perform on the effort more

(FMQB) Radiohead has debuted a live video for a new song, "Staircase," as a sneak peek at their upcoming BBC special. more

(BW&BK) On Thursday, June 23rd, Guns N' Roses guitarist Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal will be releasing a new song, 'Cat Fight', featuring one of his "all-time favorite vocalists," Mark Tornillo of Accept. more

(FMQB) Strokes Hope For U.S. Tour This Fall The band will spend their summer playing festivals in Europe and Japan. more

Ex-Oasis member Noel Gallagher married his longtime girlfriend Sara MacDonald over the weekend in New Forest, England. more

(SRX) Tesla will be releasing 'Twisted Wires & The Acoustic Sessions' on July 12th. The album will feature 6 tracks that were recorded back in 2005 at bassist Brian Wheat's J Street Recorders studio (which are the last recordings with original member Tommy Skeoch), 6 newly recorded tracks which include acoustic remakes of songs from their entire catalog, and two brand new songs called "Second Street" and "Better Off Without You." 'Twisted Wires & The Acoustic Sessions' is the follow up to 2008's 'Forever More'. more

(Lambgoat) The Devil Wears Prada have announced Roadrunner Records as their new worldwide label, excluding North America. more

(CR) Steve Hackett has announced four UK shows for November. He'll be joined by Amanda Lehmann (guitar/vocals), Roger King (keyboards), Nick Beggs (bass/vocals), Rob Townsend (saxophone/flute/vocals) and Gary O'Toole (drums/vocals). He had a lot more to say with the back and forth here.

(MU) Volbeat's 16 Dollars is being released on a 7 inch illustrated vinyl in a very limited edition. In addition to the studio version, the single features a bonus track with live recordings from Forum, Copenhagen. The single is released on July 11 more

(Lambgoat) Blood For Blood have announced all dates for this summer, in both North America and Europe, which includes appearances at With Full Force Festival and Reload Festival, both in Germany, as well as East Coast Tsunami Fest in PA. more

The Canadian leg is set to kick off on October 12th in Halifax, Nova Scotia and finishing on October 27th in Vancouver.

The 14-date stretch kicks off in Austin, Texas and concludes at the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle.

The drummer was well-known for taking charge of every artistic element of former outfit Dream Theater, from song arrangements to artwork, right down to which bands they took on tour with them. But after a year which saw him dramatically quit the band he formed, ask to rejoin only to be refused, and finally surface with Adrenaline Mob following a number of side-projects, Portnoy says he's a new man.

From one Jersey band to another, rockers Bon Jovi paid tribute to Clemons Sunday night in Denmark, with a performance of the Springsteen classic, "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out."

His band's song is, of course, tongue-in-cheek; Chris kids that "It's a rallying cry against a piece of software." But he adds, "The impact that computers have had on music is really depressing."

'Pressure and Time' is featured as this week's free "Single of the Week" on iTunes in the USA.

Rolling Stone reports that the movie, titled Greetings From Tim Buckley, will follow Jeff from his performance at a tribute concert for his deceased dad through the release of his first album and his death from drowning in 1997.

Al and his long-time bandmates were aided and abetted in the recording studio by guest appearances from Taylor Hanson and The Doors' Ray Manzarek.

"One of the things we talked about early on with this album is we really wanted to concentrate on the headphone aspect, because people listen to music really differently these days. They don't sit in their room with their stereo system and completely absorb the record like we did when we were growing up. They listen to it passively, and most people listen on their iPods now," he said. "So we thought, 'Let's just make it that way.' We spend a lot of time with headphones on. That's primarily how we compose, so why not take what we listen to and follow suit with that? We wrote the record on headphones, recorded it on headphones, mixed it on headphones � it's pretty much a headphones thing! We listened to all the demos on headphones as we were working out at the gym or doing what we do, just to make sure it had a good feel to it."

Sugar front-man Bob Mould supervised every detail of the release, including the remastering and the all new artwork and design.

After the glory days of the '70s, Russell slipped from the limelight. "I was used to playing in front of 20,000 and then with only 300 seats, the audience was right up in my face. That took a bit of getting used to."

Plug In Stereo are touring to celebrate the release of Nothing To Something, which is available at Hot Topic stores and on iTunes.

Springsteen and Clemons met at the Asbury Park bar in 1971, a story both men have told onstage for the past 40 years. Clemons, 69, the "Big Man" in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, died Saturday night.

The intriguing self-titled album evokes the melodic atmospherics of New Wave/post-punk yet is thoroughly modern in its sensibilities. To classic rock chord structures and New Wave flourishes, frontman/songwriter A.L.X. adds his own pop sensibilities. A Love Crushed Velvet tune may recall The Clash, early U2, even the mysterious tone of a David Lynch film�simultaneously.

The June 7th show, and another one in Dublin on the 8th, were warm-up gigs for Leppard's headlining slot at the Download Festival.

Band mate Andy Six teased Jinxx about his apparent lack of knowledge of a number of bands sharing the bill saying: "Jinxx only listens to classical music"

Bury Your Dead is headlining the "Over The Limit II Tour", with support from Evergreen Terrace, For The Fallen Dreams, In The Midst Of Lions, Thick As Blood, Hundredth, Betrayal, and Murder Death Kill. All bands are scheduled to be streamed as part of the webcast.

Recorded during their Cleveland, OH stop at the historic venue in late 2010 the album is now available exclusively on iTunes (itunes/sickpuppies).

According to The Sun, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. told Radio One's Zane Lowe: "It's taken a lot of time and energy to figure out what the set list is going to be. There's a 'Where the Streets Have No Name' camp or there is the more subtle approach where we could build slowly.

Internal Cannon is probably one of the more "out there" songs we've ever recorded. It doesn't really play by the rules of metalcore, and I think that's why I like it so much.

Internal Cannon was the second song I finished when writing for Leveler. I didn't set out to write a mariachi inspired metal song. It just sort of happened. The first minute or so came very naturally to me and sounded like a typical August Burns Red song. It had a thrashy intro, a big breakdown, and a lot of riffing going on. What threw the song for a loop was the key change that occurs right before the first clean section. It changes into a key ABR has never played in before and as a result, it just sounded different. I couldn't just go into a heavy open C breakdown because of the key the song had changed to. We have key changes in a lot of our songs, but they are never on purpose. They are simply a result of where the guitars happen to go. I wish I had a better explanation for this, but as a writer who has very little knowledge of music theory I can't explain why.

Upon changing keys the song goes into what I like to call the "cruise ship" part. It's a light beachy sounding section that sounds nothing like anything ABR has ever played before. Matt (our drummer) recorded all kinds of percussion instruments over the section and I play a little guitar lead that a hula dancer could shake her hips to. It was at this point that I knew this song was going in strange places and I liked it.

After the cruise ship section the song rips back into a thrashy metal riff that doesn't sound out of the ordinary in the least, but things get weird immediately after. The song does a complete 180 as everything drops out except a simple quiet clean guitar line that has a distinctive mariachi vibe. While recording this part our producer, Jason Suecof, described it as something straight out of a Quentin Tarantino film. This mariachi esque section is one of my favorite moments on the entire album because of how off the wall it is. The quiet mariachi section is followed by a long guitar solo that I've been told sounds like Carlos Santana gone metal. It's my favorite solo that I've ever written and I remember sitting in my room for hours working on it. My fingers were getting shredded from bending my strings so much which is something I hadn't done much of in the past. I had an absolute blast writing that guitar solo.

When I finished the song I was pretty nervous as to how the rest of my band would react to it. I had a similar feeling a couple hours before we released the song online for everyone to hear. I really had no intention of trying to reinvent ABR's sound, and as a whole I don't think Leveler as an album strays too far from the path we've been following. Internal Cannon is simply us pushing the envelope of our sound and trying something brand new for us. There were mixed feeling about this song within the band when I first showed it to everyone, but in time we all got on the same page and went with it. I figured if we're going to try something different we might as well go all out and make it as crazy as we want. I hope people have as much fun listening to that song as I did writing it.