I get kinda bummed when we hafta write about tours with no dates yet, because it seems like kind of a cocktease — what’s the point of getting excited when you don’t even know if the trek is coming to your town yet? — but these two tours both seem pretty noteworthy. And so:

• Avenged Sevenfold will headline this year’s Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Festival. Sevendust are also on the tour. And I’m going to pretend that that’s the entire line-up. Yep, just A7X and Sevendust. Two of the best modern pop metal bands touring together, with no one else. What a great bill!
• Firewind are FINALLY gonna do a proper North American headlining tour, with Arsis, White Wizzard, and Nightrage in tow. Not only am I stoked that Firewind are actually touring, but I think it’s really cool of them to have a diverse range of acts as their support. I bet these shows will be a lotta fun.

And we’ll post dates for at least one of these tours as soon as we get ‘em.

-AR

I had a math tutor in high school who was, to put it mildly, way creepy. He spent as much time trying to get me to talk about the hot girls in my class (many of whom he was also tutoring) as he did teaching me anything, and he was always excited to attend events he was way too old for — like this one time he somehow wrangled a ticket to the MTV Video Music Awards, and it was like, “Dude, you are old, gray, and bald. You should not be at the fucking MTV Awards. I’m sixteen and I don’t wanna go to the MTV Awards.”

I mention it because the last time I saw Avenged Sevenfold, when they were touring behind their self-titled album, I felt like that dude. I freely admit to being an A7X fan, and the band put on a good show and I was happy to see them, but I looked around and Vince and I were the oldest people there by, like, a lot. It was fucking embarrassing. I could practically hear the scene kids whispering, “Hey, who invited the fucking olds?”

Click to read more…

Five heavy hitting heavy hitters — Alice in Chains, Hatebreed, Austrian Death Machine, Steel Panther and Dethklok — all released new records last week. Solid 2nd and 3rd week performances from Three Days Grace, Muse, Megadeth, Five Finger Death Punch and others made it an all-around big week for metal. Let’s see how everyone fared after the jump.

Click to read more…

Don’t you, too?

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/hdsrK9brWyU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/gCvNS149gsw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]