|
In terms of pure album sales, rock music was also the clear winner, claiming 33.2% of the market compared to 13.9% for R&B/hip-hop. However, when it came to streamed music, R&B/hip-hop was out in front with 28.5% compared to rock's 24.7% of the total market.
The annual report also shows that while vinyl purchases are on the up, sales of CDs and digital downloads declined from 2013, with more people now choosing to stream their favorite artists. Read more
here.
There's no word at this stage whether Slash and Gilby will jam together during the shows (Slash is touring with Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators), but maybe we can give them a bit of a nudge, because that would be great, right?
Gilby and Slash shared the stage when G'n'R were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Slash, Gilby, Duff McKagan, Steven Adler and Matt Sorum performed three classic Appetite For Destruction tracks with Myles Kennedy on vocals. See the dates
here.
Trujillo tells the No Treble Podcast: "The members of Metallica enjoy being creative. As they get a bit older and deeper in their careers, they get a little bit lax in terms of wanting to write songs.
"You'd be surprises how many known bands start writing with outside writers and stuff like that, and aren't actually writing their songs any more. With us it's the opposite - we've got so many song ideas, riffs, bass lines, whatever, that the hardest thing is trying to eliminate."
He describes the material as in the process of being "nurtured," adding: "It's pride; you're working on an art piece. It's got to be right, and what does that mean? Exploring.
"James Hetfield always has a handful of words for one possible word. Maybe this word doesn't work out; let's try these. It's a lot of work and it's time-consuming. But at the same time it's important. It needs to be done that way." Read more and stream the full interview
here.
The vocalist - recently confirmed as a member of the unnamed band featuring ex-Megadeth men Chris Broderick and Shawn Drover - escaped relatively unscathed, although he was forced to cancel a planned show with his other band Thrown Into Exile.
Guitarist Mario Rubio reports via Facebook: "A suspected drunk driver hit Henry, causing his car to roll over three times. The driver left the scene. Thankfully he is okay and in one piece." Read more
here.
Published in the Independent On Sunday, the letter is also signed by Bullet For My Valentine, Arctic Monkeys and various sports organisation including the Lawn Tennis Association and the Rugby Football Union.
Last November, Dave Grohl's Foos asked fans in the US to queue up for gig tickets rather than buy online in an attempt to defeat touts. The open letter says "unscrupulous" practices in the secondary ticketing industry are ripping off fans and damaging artists. It calls on the Government to protect fans rather than aid ticket sites such as Viagogo, StubHub, Get Me In and Seatwave.
The letter reads: "As representatives from the live event industry, responsible for putting on shows ranging from international sporting fixtures and world class theatre to intimate gigs, we are committed to ensuring that event-goers have the best experience possible at a fair price.
"The way that the secondary ticketing market is allowed to operate at present can seriously undermine that effort. It's high time the government stopped sticking up for secondary platforms, and decided to put fans first." Read more
here.
"It's been a great week for writing new songs here at HOMeFRY," tweeted DeLeo on January 9 along with an image of the band in their practice room. "New STP starting Monday... Stay tuned."
Bennington was brought into the band after original frontman Scott Weiland was fired by Stone Temple Pilots in February of 2013, leading to a series of public statements and lawsuits by both parties.
In 2013, the revitalized group released an EP, "High Rise", which debuted at No. 24 on the US Billboard 200 chart following first week sales of 12,000 copies. Read more and see the photo
here.
"I'm very proud of the fact that, this being our 20th anniversary, we are still doing things our way," Taylor tells the Irish Times. "It is one of the reasons we do the things we do. We've never jumped on trends, we've never chased notoriety. We've never chased a certain type of success. We've always looked at it as the long run and the long haul. That's how you make your mark. That's how you do things that are great and not just fashionable.
"I'm just as surprised as anyone else. This band could have gone one way or the other, but we were embraced in such a way that it gave us the confidence to try new things and really keep shaping this music to our satisfaction rather than the latest trend.
"That's why we are still there and still at the top of our game. We may be the last remnant of that type of band." Read more
here.
"Athletes have a job to do. Talk from the outside is a distraction, but it can also serve as motivation. Watch the Beats film, Hear What You Want 2015, and see how today's football stars use the Beats Studio Wireless to tune out the talk and focus on their performance to get the job done. Featuring Richard Sherman and Von Miller."
"Play Ball" is the lead single from "Rock Or Bust", AC/DC's first album in 6 years. Last week it announced the band will headline the 2015 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival this spring.
Check out the new commercials
here.
The Who will perform on April 25 - marking their first U.S. festival appearance in more than 40 years - topping a bill that includes John Legend, Ryan Adams, Robert Cray and dozens more.
The Who's previous iconic U.S. festival appearances include 1967's Monterey Pop Festival - where a coin toss decided whether they or Jimi Hendrix would close the show - and at Woodstock in 1969, where Pete Townshend kicked Abbie Hoffman off the stage when Hoffman interrupted their set to make a political speech.
Check out video
here.
The follow-up to 2012's The Strange Case Of� will be released via Atlantic Records and to mark the announcement they've issued the track Apocalyptic. Frontwoman Lzzy Hale says: "This album is not a departure, it is an invitation to all things Halestorm.
"We didn't stray from who we are, there's just a lot more of who we are. If you dare, start with the outermost layer of the onion, our first single Apocalyptic which is the medium between where we left off on The Strange Case Of� and where Into The Wild Life begins.
"Lyrically and musically we explored everything that makes us tick. We set a standard for this record, and gave ourselves no choice other than to be unapologetically Halestorm in every way."
Read more and listen to the new song
here.
It'll be the band's first album as a trio; founding Death Cab member Chris Walla recently announced that he would be leaving the band. According to bassist Nick Harmer, the title references a 'Japanese style of art where they take fractured, broken ceramics and put them back together with very obvious, real gold."�
Codes and Keys, the band's last studio album, was a modest success, charting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and scoring an alt-rock No. 1 with "You Are a Tourist."
Check out the full tracklist for Kintsugi
here.
On their new track "Uma Thurman," the band revs up the BPMs and tries their hand at dance. It's a three-and-a-half minute burst of soulful hooks like 'I can move mountains, I can work a miracle" and clapping drums, propelled by a sample from The Munsters.
Naturally, when Uma Thurman's name is mentioned within the same breath as "dance," her iconic portrayal in Pulp Fiction comes to mind--and Fall Out Boy indeed nod to the scene where the actress and Travolta share a dance in a diner.
"Originally, when we came up with the idea, and there was this sample in it, which is a sample from The Munsters TV show, people kept saying 'oh cool, like Quentin Tarantino, cool' when we played it," Pete Wentz wrote on the group's website. "We decided why don't we kind of create this world around that?"
The world they created centers around a woman out for revenge. "To me, Uma Thurman and Winona Ryder, they were these women in pop culture who were quirky," he continued, "but that made me only crush on them harder. and rather than going with the traditional Uma Thurman role, we thought a lot about Kill Bill and who her character was in that, and this kind of resilience and this violence, but there's something that's authentic about it (like a woman taking revenge or being empowered). So that's what the chorus of the song's about, and the verses are what you would do to try and capture this woman's affection." Listen to it
here.
He began his one-man project last year and launched the album in November via a pay-what-you-want scheme on Bandcamp. And he says he wrote the record to vent his anger as news reports left him increasingly frustrated.
He tells this month's Prog magazine: "I was in a place where I was down in the dumps a little bit, so I used the album to get the anger out. If you look at the news today and see things happening in the world and all the corruption that's going on, it can get you down - you think nothing will really improve and things will get worse. I thought I'd take that mentality and put it to music." Read more
here.
And the band have also confirmed that they will be launching a seven-date UK tour that will be kicking off in King's Lynn on February 2. The band say:
"If you like emotional music with genuine sentiment behind it, music that grooves, is super-tight, has some interesting musicianship, epic moments and big atmospheres, we bring that in spades."
Check out the album stream
here.
The album was recorded at the North Sea Jazz Club in Amsterdam in April 2014 and the blues hero says in the clip that his backing band, who are Dutch, loved the hometown show.
He says: "We had a partisan crowd and it was chock-full. It was a great atmosphere, a greta night. I'm glad we chose to do it there. It couldn't have been anywhere else really." Check out the trailer
here.
Red and black versions of the 7-inch are available online, but 200 silver versions are only on sale at the band's shows from next week. Information will follow on when and where the 100 gold vinyls will be available.
And an additional London date has been added to their tour. The show takes place at London Underworld on February 7. SOIA released new album Last Act Of Defiance last September. Check out the tour dates
here.
He says on his website: "When you're writing something like Hope For The Future, which is custom made, it is like doing a portrait for someone. You have to use your imagination and work out what they need, what they're going to want and then what you want to give them.
"Then you've got to combine those three things into something that you still think maintains integrity. So in the game you're basically trying to save Earth from the invaders, the aliens, so that suggested to me the hope for the future idea and I went from there."
He continues: "Then I thought it is not just a game song, this will get played outside the game so it has to stand alone too, you can't have references to aliens or people will think, 'What's he talking about?' So it had to have its own stand alone meaning and integrity."
Check out the song
here.
He tells the American Armed Forces Network: "By the end of this month it'll be completely mixed, mastered, recorded - all of that. So aside from artwork, it's getting pretty much to the point of completion. I know we want it to come out this year - hopefully within the first part of this year."
Whitlock says they still don't have a title for the album and they're currently sifting through the 20-track collection to decide what will make the final cut. He continues: "We've been kicking some ideas around but, unfortunately, there's nothing set in stone as far as album titles go. But we hope to have the release date, album title, all of that stuff together relatively quickly.
"We recorded 20 songs so we're still trying to figure out what we're going to do with all of them - but I think it stacks up well against All I Was." Read more
here.
To mark the announcement, the band have made the track Come On Ghost available to stream. Their eighth album was produced by the group's guitarist Rod Jones and was mixed by John Agnello who they worked with previously on 2002's The Remote Part. It also marks recording debuts by new keyboardist Luciano Rossi and bassist/guitarist Andrew Mitchell.
Jones recently said the band decided to take a break in 2009 as making music had become a chore. He told TeamRock: "I never thought that the band had run its course, but I could tell that we weren't in the right place to make a good record if we didn't take a break. It didn't feel like the end, we just didn't know how long we'd be away.
"I guess it what's we do for a living, and it had started to feel like a job in some ways, so once we removed that 'job' aspect of it, suddenly it felt like fun again."
Check out the tracklisting and listen to the new song
here.
Storm Sixx is the group's singer while Gunner Sixx plays keyboards. The proud dad says via Twitter: "Tonight I got to watch my sons' band Figs Vision play the same venue I played 33 years ago this same month.
"They have a different sound and their own unique vibe which is what new music is all about. Thank you to the fan that tweeted me the picture and reminded me of this moment years ago. So much more could be said but I am sure you can imagine how cool this was." Read more
here.
Asked whether he feels Accept were a big influence, he tells Mariskal Rock TV: "According to a lot of people, a lot of journalists, it has been, because we wrote the first speed metal song ever, and a lot of other musicians have told me that.
"Definitely, we have a big influence on a lot of people's career. There's a lot of people that we never even expected to hear this from, but who said to me over the years, 'You know, when I heard Restless And Wild back in the 80s, it changed my life and it made me become who I am as a musician.' So a lot of musicians took that as a starting point to form their own careers."
Stream the full interview
here.
This song is basically about a past relationship that I can't help but cherish long after it's been over, and how they feel the same. Everytime I try to move on and start something new..... The wonder starts creeping in. The might have beens take hold.
I would hope that for someone else this song could relate to any number of things. Drugs, alcohol, anything. But if you guys wanna know the honest truth from me, it's about a god damn girl. Haha.
Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album and grab their North American tour dates with Periphery and Nothing More
right here!
Travel News, Trips and Tips: Road Trip Essentials
Hot In The City: Carin Leon Will Open For The Rolling Stones in Arizona
Caught In The Act: Ministry Rocks Chicago
Sammy (Hagar) Super Sunday Coming To TV
Anthrax Reuniting With Dan Lilker For Upcoming Live Dates
NEEDTOBREATHE To Livestream Red Rocks Concert
Bruce Dickinson Making Appearance At WonderCon For
Joe Bonamassa Plays Jimi Hendrix's A Vintage 'Band of Gypsys' Rig At Nerdville
Vampire Weekend Stream 'Mary Boone' Visualizer
Paul Di'Anno's Warhorse Deliver 'Stop The War' EP
The Exies Return With 'For What It's Worth'