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According to Metal Insider, there’s a rumor going around that the mostly-reunited Van Halen have signed a deal with Interscope Records to release their new album. And since Metal Insider is a great website that specializes in being on, y’know, the inside, I am leaning towards believing them that this rumor exists, and may even be not a rumor at all but the actual truth.
Yesterday we all got in a tizzy because Faith No More recently played a song live that none of us have ever heard before, and suddenly we were all like OMG IS THAT A NEW FNM TRACK?!?! Now vocalist/demigod Mike Patton has revealed that the track isn’t new, really… it’s just never been played before.
In an interview with Movieweb.com, Patton was asked if the band would be playing any b-sides from King for a Day… Fool for a Lifetime when they perform that album in its entirety in Chile later this week, to which the singer/madman responded, “We are doing a tune we’ve never done from that era. I guess that would be a B Side. I don’t know if we released that at all… I don’t know (laughs)!” Then, when asked about the possibility of a new FNM album, Patton went on:
Before getting through this article on Metal Insider I had to Google who Feist is (she’s the one who did that “1234″ song that was in the iPod commercials a few years back). I’ve got a big thing for light, female-fronted pop with a little bit of soul (Sara Bareilles, Alice Smith, Adele, Sia, etc), and Feist isn’t really doing anything for me… BUT nevertheless I’m still pretty tickled about the idea of a Mastodon + Feist collabo. Here’s a comment from Feist via Hitfix after her and Brent Hinds had a run-in when the two performed on the same edition of the UK show Later… With Jools Holland:
“Brent [Hinds] and I were nodding at each other, and he’s like, ‘Nice riff,’ and I’m like ‘Nice tone.’ So backstage I’m thinking about letting these two worlds collide, how they should collide, so I’m like ‘How about Metals [Feist's latest album] meeting metal?’” Feist explained, saying she sort of pitched a split record to Mastodon. “Brent was like, ‘Well, I do like that “Bad in Each Other” song, I could see that.’ Maybe now I will look into learning to cover ‘Oblivion’… or anything off [The Hunter]. That album’s amazing.”
I have no idea what a Feist / Mastodon collaboration would sound like, but seeing as both artists are not just still relevant but both in their primes, I know this: it’ll kick the shit outta LuLu as far as left-field collaborations go. It’s all just talk right now and it’ll probably never happen, but it’s fun to think about listening to a way lighter Mastodon with a female singer.
-VN
Dates for a Guns N’ Roses tour of America have been slowly trickling out for the past couple of weeks, but even as the world’s last remaining Axl Apologist, I haven’t felt compelled to write about them, ’cause, well… the itinerary was clearly not at all complete, and I kept thinking that maybe there’d finally be some kind of proper tour announcement and we could put all the info in one post. Silly me.
Now Metal Insider says that the tour is a go, and I trust Metal Insider… but the tour schedule is still lacking in key information, like, oh, I dunno, venues and dates. And it’s worth noting that neither GN’R's official website nor their official MySpace page has any mention of these gigs. Even fan site Here Today… Gone to Hell! — which is as close to a regularly updated official site as this version of the band may ever get (administrator Jarmo Luukkonen has toured with the band and was even thanked in the liner notes for Chinese Democracy) — only lists a small handful of them. That strikes me as being highly suspicious, because Rose has cancelled entire tours before and claimed he knew nothing about them until he read about the concerts on the internet (hell, he’s cancelled shows even when he did admit to knowing about them), so until there’s a press release with a statement from the man himself, I don’t think anyone should get their hopes up that this is really happening.
Back in July, Dave Mustaine announced that he was bringing Gigantour back in 2012, and now, in an interview with Street Date (above – skip to the 3:00 mark), Mustaine claims that Megadeth will soon be touring with Motörhead, Volbeat, and Lacuna Coil “this year coming up.” That’s a pretty loose time frame ,so it’s not clear if he’s referring to Gigantour or just a regular Megadeth tour. Although, come to think of it, Gigantour hasn’t had a second stage since 2006, meaning it’s usually just been a four or five band package anyway, so, uh, I’m not really sure what would differentiate this from a “proper” Gigantour.
I guess Ben Weinman likes to keep busy. He The Dillinger Escape Plan’s guitairst, primary songwriter, and manager, and he’s got this new supergroup with Mastodon’s Brent Hinds, The Mars Volta’s Thomas Pridgen, and former Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery brewing, and now, according to the above video interview, he’s also working on something with Mike Patton.
That particular nugget of info comes at the 2:14 mark, but in case you’re technologically challenged and can’t figure out how to get to said 2:14 mark, here’s a transcript of what Weinman says when asked if he’ll ever work with Patton again:
UPDATE, 1pm EDT: Now Dream Theater’s attorney says that there is ”no pending litigation” between the band and Portnoy… although he did file a “Notice With Summons.” Stay tuned for more details…
Original post:
I didn’t see this coming, but I can’t say I’m that surprised: Mike Portnoy is suing Dream Theater.
The summons was sent all the way back on April 19th so I’m shocked it’s taken this long to find its way online, but here it is in all its glory. The suit, which is leveled at John Petrucci, John Myung, Jordan Rudess and James LaBrie personally — as well as the operating Dream Theater-related companies Ytse Jams, Inc., and Infinity Touring, Inc. — charges that the above defendants:
(BTBAM photo credit: Andrew Lipovsky)
Here’s a fun little tidbit to get the metalsphere salivating this afternoon: The Number of the Blog is reporting that MetalSucks-fave multi-instrumentalist Keith Merrow is teaming up with Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler and Between the Buried and Me axeman Paul Waggoner on a new side project. I contacted Keith this morning for comment, and here’s what he had to say about it:
As of right now, it’s a very casual collaboration. We have 3 or 4 song ideas we’ve tossed around over the past few months, and they are all really cool. Very different from any music you’d hear from each of us, individually. All of us are pretty busy these days, but this is a collaboration that we are all really excited about!
Shit hit the fan for The Ocean last week when the unannounced headliner of their U.S. tour flaked and decided to push the whole thing back a couple of months. For any American band this wouldn’t be too big of a deal, but when you’re coming from overseas and flights have already been purchased, gear already rented and visas already procured it presents a major problem. This band’s tours are eternally cursed; endless van breakdowns, highway robberies, and pretty much any thing else that could go wrong has, especially in the U.S. So when they threw this hail mary pass up into the metalsphere we had every reason to think, “Haha! Yeah, right.”
If anyone has a tour to offer us between October 9th and November 20th, we’re all ears :-) Hope we can still make it over somehow.
Except it actually worked, thanks to clutch wide receiver Devin Townsend.
Seems like Ocean mastermind Robin Staps took this piece about how to tour in China to heart; dude done gone and booked a 10-date Chinese tour for The Ocean! Having met and talked with Staps, I can say the man definitely loves traveling. I’ll bet he set up this tour more as a way to travel across China than as a promotional vehicle for The Ocean… although he’s certainly gotta make ends meet and this tour can’t be cheap. Who knows, perhaps The Ocean have a huge fanbase there?
Of more immediate import to the majority of MetalSucks readers is this: The Ocean are reportedly returning to the U.S. from mid-October through the end of November in a direct support slot for a band that hasn’t yet been named. From The Ocean’s Facebook [via Heavy Blog]:
Right after these dates, mid-October until end of November, we will be returning to the US for the 2nd time this year. We will be direct support this time, playing a 40 minutes set, for a band that we can’t name just yet. We know how much you like speculating about these kinda things, so bring on those rumors…
So. Any ideas? Who will The Ocean be opening for on their U.S. tour? My guess would be it’s a tour that’s already been announced in some capacity.
-VN
(Ghost photo by Maija Lahtinen.)
I’m aware that this story has been out for some time and isn’t exactly “new,” but for whatever reason it’s barely been covered in the metal media until today. And so:
What a crazy day today is turning out to be for metal vocalists.
The members of Ghost go to great lengths to keep their true identities a secret — they perform in masks and disquise their voices in intevriews, and the members of the band other than the lead singer are simply called “Nameless Ghouls” — but it appears that the identity of frontman Papa Emeritus has been uncovered. From Metal Insider:
Something must be in the water; metal bands are losing vocalist left and right.
A few months ago we heard rumors that The Human Abstract and vocalist Travis Richter had parted ways. Being the occasional good journalists that we are, before running said rumors as truth we contacted the dudes in the band who quickly got back to us and essentially said, “Nope, it’s BS. Things are fine with Travis.” The band made good on that promise by going out and kicking ass on tour with him in May and June.
So when this piece surfaced last week claiming that an “anonymous source” says Richter and the band have parted ways, we were instantly suspicious and once again contacted various authorities for comment (including not only members of THA but their manager). Only this time no one responded to us.
Tony Iommi just posted the below message on his official website. It’s not exactly a denial that there’s no Sabbath reunion going on, but it is a denial that Iommi has confirmed the reunion, so, uh… yeah, I guess let’s see how this one plays out.
Here’s the statement:
“I’m saddened that a Birmingham journalist whom I trusted has chosen this point in time to take a conversation we had back in June and make it sound like we spoke yesterday about a Black Sabbath reunion.
“At the time I was supporting the Home of Metal exhibition and was merely speculating, shooting the breeze, on something all of us get asked constantly, ‘Are you getting back together?’
“Thanks to the internet it’s gone round the world as some sort of ‘official’ statement on my part, absolute nonsense. I hope he’s enjoyed his moment of glory, he won’t have another at my expense.
“to my old pals, Ozzy, Geezer and Bill, sorry about this, I should have known better.
“All the best, Tony “
-AR
Thanks to Cody Daniels for the heads up.
UPDATE: Uh, maybe this isn’t happening — check out Tony Iommi’s official statement.
They are, according to MetalTalk.net, who broke the news yesterday, and now the Birmingham Mail, who have gotten a confirmation from Tony Iommi.
It’s not exactly shocking news; after Dio passed away, putting an end to Heaven and Hell (which was really just a reunion of a different era of Sabbath), it seemed like an inevitability. And it’s not exactly bad news, either; last time I saw this reunited line-up, at Ozzfest 2005, they put on a fun enough show, even if Ozzy is Ozzy and none of these guys are exactly vibrant and youthful. But it’s the kind of thing where I’d say if you’re either a huge Sabbath fan or you’ve never gotten to see them before, it’s worth checking out a show.
Last week, a shitty translation of a news story from a French website told us that Gojira told them that Rick Rubin was producing the band’s new album. We’ve been trying to get confirmation to no avail, but now another shitty translation of another news story from another French website tells us that Gojira told them that Rubin isn’t the producer — Greg Fidelman is.
That’s what a horrible translation of a story from the French site Spirit of Metal tells us, but we have no official confirmation.
Still, let us take a moment to ponder this possibility. For this is MetalSucks, and we are nothing if not ponderers.
So.
No. No he is not.
Mustaine’s latest declaration sure to elicit responses only of “Okay, sssssuuurrre, Dave, whatever you say,” from all rational people was delivered to a Dallas Radio station earlier this week:
“I’ve talked to Lars and James about me and David [Ellefson] doing a supergroup record with Lars and James. Well, James said ‘no,’ but it’s still kind of out there in the air. I’m gonna keep hammering on him. It’s on my bucket list.”
Here’s an interesting story that The PRP picked up on: during a recent interview with Lithiummagazine.com, Killswitch Engage/Times of Grace guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz claimed to be working on a death metal side project with the drummer from Black Dahlia Murder and the singer from Cannibal Corpse.” (That would be Shannon Lucas and George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, respectively, in case you somehow don’t know that.)
And while it isn’t presently clear whether or not Dutkiewicz was being serious or just dicking around, I’d still like to say right now: I would check that band out.
Here’s my reasoning:
Earlier this week, we told you that we’re working on our biggest and best project ever, and gave you some clues as to the nature of that project.
Well, here are some more hints for you to chew on while you await an official announcement:
And on Monday, we’ll give you a huge piece of the puzzle.
- AR & VN
Hard as it is to believe, we’ve been doing this here blogging thing for nearly five years (wtf???). We’ve scored interviews with our heroes, we’ve had the privilege of premiering new music to the world before anyone else, we’ve gotten you guys all riled up with countdown lists, we’ve sponsored megatours and we’ve even released bands’ records through our site. Where is there to go from here? What else is there to do??
But we’re working on something new. It’s gonna be big. VERY big. Some hints:
That’s all you’re getting for today. Guess away!
- AR & VN
