Vevo It’s been a great year for Pop Evil , who have traveled the world promoting their ‘War of Angels’ album, and with the video for their new single ‘Purple,’ they now have a document to show some of the great times they’ve had. The clip serves as a salute to life on the road for Pop Evil, with the camera taking you behind the scenes when the guys are having fun and getting the viewer right up onstage to see the enjoyment that not only the band, but their fans are getting out of the shows. The song lends itself well to soundtrack the clip, with the lyric “ It only hurts when it’s over ” serving a different meaning here as it can be interpreted that the band realize their time on the road with fans will eventually have to stop for a new record. But their faithful followers don’t have anything to worry about just yet, as they expect more shows in store for 2013. Pop Evil spent the summer on the Trespass America tour, and have recently been sharing stages with Black Label Society in Canada. Fans can catch the band Nov. 27 joining the stellar lineup for ShipRocked 2012 , featuring Godsmack , Korn , Five Finger Death Punch , Sevendust , P.O.D. and more. Singer Leigh Kakaty says of the rock cruise, “We are very excited to be a part of this heavyweight lineup of bands this year on ShipRocked. It’s going to be the mother of all cruises. Pop Evil is ready to set sail.” Watch Pop Evil’s ‘Purple’ Video [button href=”http://loudwire.com/pop-evil-joined-by-mick-mars-and-playboy-playmate-for-bosss-daughter-music-video/” title=”Next: Watch Pop Evil’s ‘Boss’ Daughter’ Video” align=”center”]
Cartoon Network Dethklok , the stars of the animated series ‘Metalocalypse’, find their latest release ‘Dethalbum III’ debuting at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 chart with roughly 20,000 units sold. It also hit the No. 1 slot on the Hard Music Albums chart. This was Dethklok’s highest chart debut to-date, and the band’s real life voice and creator Brendon Small is grateful. “Thanks to the fans for actually buying music in a world where they don’t have to.” Loudwire’s review of ‘Dethalbum III’ says it “is able to take a super serious (and often gore-slathered) genre like death metal and make it ‘deth metal.’ That is, it fuses skilled playing with a sense of humor, which is often not the case in the genre’s offerings.” Dethklok will be kicking off a North American headline tour with Machine Head , All That Remains and the Black Dahlia Murder on Tuesday, Oct. 30. When discussing the upcoming tour, Small said, “Dethklok are excited to be a part of the best tour of 2012. We spared no expense on production for the tour. We are unleashing tons of new animation, new comedy, and new sketches and are very excited to play many new songs and can’t wait for new people to see our show. I’ll be honest, I don’t know when we will be able to pull off anything this massive again, so don’t miss it.” To celebrate the album and the impending Dethklok tour kickoff, Loudwire, the band and Gibson Guitars are teaming up to give away an Epiphone “1958” Korina Explorer. Enter the contest below. Season 4 of ‘Metalocalypse’ will also be released on DVD and Blu-ray Oct. 30 as the tour launches. All 12 episodes from the show’s fourth season are included along with more than two hours of bonus material, highlighted by the 90 minute feature film ‘Nathan Reads Shakespeare 4: Comedy of Errors.’ [button href=”http://loudwire.com/dethklok-epiphone-guitar-giveaway/” title=”Enter the Dethklok Epiphone Guitar Giveaway” align=”center”]
Frazer Harrison, Getty Images Fear Factory released their latest album ‘The Industrialist’ in June, and the band has now premiered the video for the title track via Metal Injection (watch below). The beginning of the seven minute clip is similar to a lyric video, with words from the spoken section appearing on the screen. But once the song kicks in, it becomes a traditional video that mixes performance footage with imagery taken from the album artwork. Vocalist Burton C. Bell talked about ‘The Industrialist’ with Full Metal Jackie. “There’s something so tight about this record, it’s very natural even though it was a focused and a very deliberate album that we were writing and it all came very naturally to us,” Bell said. “We were very focused and I think that word right there, is the one thing that is on this record that doesn’t really appear on any other record, the focus of the music, the sounds, the aggression and the concept and just everything. Everything had it’s purpose and we knew exactly what we were doing, we knew exactly what we had to do.” Fear Factory will embark on a European tour with Devin Townsend beginning on Saturday, Oct. 27. They also have one U.S. date scheduled for Jan. 26, 2013, in West Hollywood. Watch Fear Factory’s ‘The Industrialist’ Video
YouTube: OdessaWest The pagans who came up with Halloween deserve to be praised as saints. The world is covered in cobwebs and decorated by maniacal pumpkins, horror films possess every television channel and the forces of evil are finally let loose for once autumn night as children are encouraged to take candy from strangers. Halloween is awesome, and it meshes beautifully with heavy metal; as demonstrated by this suburban light show set to Ozzy Osbourne ‘s ‘Bark at the Moon.’ As one of Ozzy’s trademark hits, ‘Bark at the Moon’ is the opening track to Osbourne’s 1983 album of the same name. With hearts still mending after the death of iconic guitarist Randy Rhoads, ‘Bark at the Moon’ was the first track unveiled to the public with Jake E. Lee manning the six-string. Lee had massive shoes to fill, but he crafted a masterpiece of a track with some insane shredding added for good measure. There lies a house in Odessa, Texas, where ‘Bark at the Moon’ has come to life through a spectacular light show. Before the track kicks in, the epic philharmonic piece ‘O Fortuna’ hit its conclusion as Ozzy’s classic track takes over. The inhabitants of this spooky manor created the display to sync up with ‘Bark at the Moon,’ as Ozzy’s lyrics are sung by a disembodied pumpkin face on the left side of the home, as fog, tombstones, a giant illuminated spider web and even a giant inflatable Godzilla invade the rest of the Texas home. Check out this awesome light show and raise your horns to this Ozzy-fied Halloween house. Watch the Ozzy Osbourne ‘Bark at the Moon’ Halloween Light Show
Photo Credit: James Sharrock When your band becomes a cult phenomenon, it’s impossible to avoid those few fans peppered within your audience that take their dedication to insane levels. Fans will cover their rooms with your posters, ink your lyrics into their skin, or in the case of Cradle of Filth singer Dani Filth , the reincarnation of serial killer Elizabeth Bathory will claim to have been your lover in a past life. We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dani Filth, who told us about some incredibly strange encounters with fans, but absolutely nothing we’ve ever heard comes close to this story. Be sure to read the entire tale, as an incredible twist occurs which would make M. Night Shyamalan blush. “There was one particular time for a while, and I won’t name the poor lass,” Dani begins, “but this girl was convinced that she was the reincarnation of Elizabeth Bathory and I was her husband in a previous life, which was pretty uncanny because we’ve written an album about Elizabeth Bathory called ‘Cruelty and the Beast.’ It was just like, “Oh, that’s handy isn’t it?” She was genuinely serious about it and she used to write these amazing letters, but it just got to the point where it felt a bit stalker-ish, then it all died down. Either her brain collapsed or she got better … either way.” He continues, “Later on, I was in a car with a runner [a person who gets items for a touring band] before a show; I think it was in Milwaukee actually, and halfway to Wal-Mart, I was like, ‘Hang about … Wal-Mart was that way … I’m not that silly.’ Then the guy starts telling me how estranged he was from his long lost, long loved girlfriend because she had become infatuated with me, and it suddenly dawned on me that this was the same girl. I was suddenly thinking, ‘I’m in a car with him, going the wrong way,’ thinking he was going to pull out a gun. Nothing of that sort happened, but for a minute there, it was like, ‘Christ!’ You had that sort of burning realization looking over you that this wasn’t going to go too well. The singer concludes, “It was one of those things where I was sort of half interested and half wanting to get where I was, and then suddenly, what he was saying sort of bored more and more into me and the penny dropped. It was like, ‘Oh, no, this may not end well here.’ [Laughs] It was weird, but he was a nice guy and he just wanted to get it off his chest, hence why he was driving around a bit. Stay tuned for our full interview with Dani Filth, where he talks about the band’s new album ‘The Manticore & Other Horrors,’ when the band will embark on a North American tour, more incredible fan interactions and much more. [button href=”http://loudwire.com/tags/cradle-of-filth” title=”Click Here for More Cradle of Filth News” align=”center”]
YouTube Duff McKagan is taking a little different approach to promoting ‘The Taking’ album, as he’s got a full-length film that goes along with the music. McKagan and his band Loaded intend to show off the new movie in a series of 10 vignettes that will roll out on the band’s YouTube page . The first episode has just gone online and can be seen below. More episodes will follow every Tuesday at the site through Jan. 1, 2013. In the first episode, we get to see McKagan and his band play the new track ‘Executioner’s Song,’ followed by a portion of a day in the life of the group. The singer-bassist is up at the crack of dawn, hanging out by the sea, plotting a band meeting and we get to see him waking all of his bandmates up for what could be one of their most important shows to date. Over the course of the ten episodes, we get to see not only his bandmates — Mike Squires, Jeff Rouse, and Isaac Carpenter — but also some of McKagan’s musical pals like Alice in Chains ‘ Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney, Guns N’ Roses ‘ Gilby Clarke, the Sex Pistols ‘ Steve Jones, ZZ Top ‘s Billy F. Gibbons , and Motorhead ‘s Lemmy Kilmister . The movie portion of ‘The Taking’ comes from Black Dahlia Films in association with Eagle Rock Entertainment. So be sure to tune in each Tuesday to the YouTube Channel for Duff McKagan’s Loaded ‘The Taking’ to catch a new scene from the movie. ‘The Taking’ album is out now. Watch Episode 1 of ‘The Taking’ Featuring Duff McKagan’s Loaded ? [button href=”http://loudwire.com/susan-holmes-mckagan-hottest-rockstar-wives/” title=”Next: Susan Holmes-McKagan — Hottest Rockstar Wives” align=”center”]
Adrenaline PR It’s been a pretty significant year for Danko Jones and the icing on the cake came with the recent release of their latest studio album, ‘ Rock and Roll Is Black and Blue .’ Singer Danko Jones and his longtime musical cohort, bassist John Calabrese, spoke with Loudwire about the significance of the album title, the occasionally misunderstood showmanship that they bring to their shows, and how much stock they place in the immediate response of social networking. ‘Rock and Roll Is Black and Blue’ is a great album title. How did that come to be? Danko Jones: It was a term we had that we were going to call the very first thing we ever put out, ‘Rock and Roll is Black and Blue,’ but our scene in Toronto, there was another band called the Deadly Snakes that put out a 7-inch called ‘Real Rock and Roll Tonight,’ and we just thought the titles were too similar so we didn’t use it. We just kept it and it’s always been around, and then J.C., we were trying to think of titles and J.C. came up with the title again and Atom [Willard] liked it and we still liked it obviously, so we went with it. The title definitely lends itself to what you do live. If you can talk about the energy you unleash onstage and the commitment you have to rock ‘n’ roll. DJ: For me personally, I think ‘Rock and Roll Is Black and Blue’ signifies that it’s not the most popular genre of music anymore. Not even like the fifth or sixth most popular genre of music. Pop music, rap, country music, metal and electronica music are more popular than rock and roll, even though it used to be the most popular form of music. It almost made popular music, but now it’s just seen more as jazz – an old form of music, but it still has an energy to it. There’s a representative for each genre, like Lady Gaga and Jay-Z and Metallica and Green Day and arguably so, but there isn’t anyone of that stature for rock ‘n’ roll. There’s Wolfmother and Airbourne, but they’re nowhere in comparison to like a Lady Gaga or Kanye West in terms of popularity, so it really shows how much it’s not very popular. It’s underground almost. So that’s kind of what the title is saying and you can take from the title what you want, but for me personally that’s what it means. Can you talk about the single ‘Just a Beautiful Day’ lyrically? DJ: Lyrically, it’s actually how I don’t like beautiful days and how I don’t like the sun. [laughs] It was the first day of the year this year where everybody, at least in Canada, like L.A. you guys are lucky that it’s like this everyday, but in Canada, it’s winter for six months of the year, so the first day that it’s good and everybody busts out their shorts and their t-shirts and they just walk [everywhere], it was one of these days, a weird odd, freaky day where it was plus-20 or whatever that is in Fahrenheit, but I saw people walking around, and I couldn’t relate. One of the first noticeable things about that track is the drums and what Atom Willard brings to the song … DJ: Well that’s Atom. Atom’s been in the band for just over a year and it’s been great having him and he joined the band because he’s a fan of our band and we were fans of his band, so it was like a mutual meeting. In terms of drumming he wanted to take it back to how it was on our previous records. Obviously he’s going to do what he does, and especially on that record he really threw in a lot of the fills and stuff so it was good. Did you know it was going to be the single? John Calabrese: Hindsight’s always different when you put out the record because you don’t know what songs, cause you’re so attached to them that you don’t know what people are going to think is the single. I kind of have no idea, cause I know I like this one or that one, but I’m glad that that’s been taken as the song to represent this record in a way cause it has a lot of elements to it that are rocking and have a lot of melody. It can translate. You shot the video for the track with the Diamond Brothers, who already shot your documentary and several of your videos. What made them right for this? DJ: We had a good time making those videos for ‘Below the Belt’ and I think they knocked the documentary out of the park. It was really well done and put together considering the amount of footage they had to wade through that we gave them. And it was only natural to not fix what isn’t broken. If we went with them for a very simple black-and-white performance video, why change it up? JC: And they’ve been looking at our faces constantly for the last three years. They’ve been going through this footage and whatnot. Have to say, excellent work on the documentary and it really shows off what great showmen you are. Looking at some of the early footage through the present, you’ve really got command of that audience. DJ: It gets misinterpreted a lot by people who come to music, I think, young and they don’t understand where it’s coming from. But I have no time to explain it to them. I really don’t. I care that they don’t like our band, but I just have no time and they’ll have to come back to us when they grow up a little bit. That’s plagued us for a lot of time that we’ve been a band. Nobody understands that this is a tribute to the performance of a rock band more so than it is me shouting at people. The people who get it, get it, and it creates a strong bond between us and the audience when they do get it. I’ve seen audiences turn where they do understand mid-show what we’re doing and what this is about and there’s never ever been a show where I’ve come onstage and not been self-deprecating in a sly way. I’ve always made sure that I’ve telegraphed that to the audience. Now it’s up to them to be smart and understand it, and if they don’t understand it and don’t get it, well I’m telegraphing it to them. There’s nothing more I can do other than take out a billboard and tell them that I don’t really think of myself like this. It reminds me of one of the last times we played in America, could have been the last time we played where we did this huge festival called Rock on the Range in Columbus, and we got pretty much 99% bad comments after from these people who didn’t know. It wasn’t spoonfed to them, so they didn’t know. All they saw was some guy going, ‘I’m the best! I’m the best!’ … I’ve come to the point where I just can’t explain it. If you’re too stupid to get it, it’s not rocket science, it’s really not. I’m obviously not as stupid as you, but I’m not that smart either. So if you don’t get it, you’re just stupider. [laughs] Now I’m starting to realize that you can’t care. There will be a majority of people who will not understand what you’re doing and you’ve just got to be fine with that. Now that I’ve started writing for the Huffington Post, and you read the comments section, or you’re on Twitter or Facebook and you read these people’s comments, on social media, it’s so immediate and so accessible that people either don’t read or don’t think before they write or open their mouths and you really get an inside view as to how people really think, and wow, there’s a lot of really stupid people out there. [laugh] So you’ve got to march on. Before Twitter and Facebook, a comment meant so much more, and that was only three or four years ago, where it carried so much weight. You’re like, ‘Oh my God, if this person thinks that, then all these people thought that.’ Like, ‘We’ve really got to change the set times because this guy is really indicative of what everybody is thinking.’ Well, no, not really. Honestly, it’s really changed how I … it’s made me more confident to go, ‘No, I was right in the beginning.’ I second guessed myself for a long time, whether it’s the performance or comments that I say in interviews or anything like that, because that one comment carried so much weight. But even last week with the Huffington Post article, people were commenting and I’m like, ‘Did you not read the article? No? You did but you didn’t understand it.’ Okay, short of me asking for your email address and explaining it to you personally, there’s nothing much I can do. JC: To follow up on that, the performance thing, sometimes people come up to me and are like, ‘What’s wrong with him?,’ and pointing at him like why does he have so much attitude? It’s just like, they don’t understand it. It’s the showmanship and he’s really excited to be there and he’s never talked down to an audience. And just like he said with the self-deprecating comments, that just makes you equal to everyone else in the same room. The only difference is that he’s got a microphone and he’s a bit louder. Well, he’s the loudest guy in the room. [laughs] That’s the only difference and that’s it … It’s all for the purpose of being entertained. DJ: If Iggy Pop came out and was like coming out like he comes out onstage which is all guns blazing, but he came out going ‘Aw shucks guys,’ he wouldn’t be Iggy Pop . So there’s a certain amount of Iggy Pop and David Lee Roth and Paul Stanley and Freddie Mercury in the way that I approach the stage and attack the stage and talk to an audience. ‘You Wear Me Down’ is another great track on here, and it’s got that obvious Led Zeppelin feel and born out of a jam session… JC: Yeah, you just played the riff and jammed on it. Yeah, and I would record all the sessions we were doing and that jam is basically the template to what the song is and basically a little bit of polishing here and there, but that was it. So we’re like that’s gonna be [on the record]. DJ: There was one jam where we tried to match that in the studio, at least for me in terms of soloing, I was trying to match the demo of it. But I really get a kick out of that song, and maybe some people would consider that to be super classic rock on our part for a band that professes to have more of a punk background, but that in itself is why I wanted it on the record. You look at the discography and we did start out as a garage rock band, which was very basic and very primitive songs – sometimes not even choruses or bridges. And here we are, like six studios album in, and we’re taking a stab at Led Zeppelin . Zeppelin is and always has been the musician’s musician band. They were studio guys in there. So it does stand for something … and to take this primitive garage band and you can actually track it through our discography that we’re taking a stab at Zeppelin, I got a little kick out of that because you can see the growth of the band through the discography. JC: We played it for the Diamonds when they were in Toronto. We had them in the studio and they listened to the song and they just turned to us and said, ‘You guys went there.’ That was the first thing they said. So fans who know the band like those guys do will get it. DJ: It’s not a ground that a lot of bands tread because it’s holy ground and a lot of bands who have tried it have failed and been made fun of, but I think we did it in a more jovial way because of our background. There’s just nobody who’s going to think that we’re trying to rip off Zeppelin – especially with past albums where things sound like AC/DC or Kiss . This is just another stab at a rock sound and that’s why I also felt comfortable including it on the record and not throwing up a red flag like, ‘Aw, this is gonna paint us as this.’ We’re not going to be Kingdom Come or something. After listening to ‘I Believed in God,’ I have to ask how cool was it to have a gospel choir on a song? DJ: It was pretty cool, but it wasn’t originally intended when we brought the song into the session. It was a wish, but we hadn’t really nailed down gospel singers or anything and the organ was at the studio. We didn’t pick the studio for the organ, it just happened to be there, so things happened quite naturally. However, if we were so hellbent on having them before we started the session … I don’t think it would have come off as it did. It might have been better, it might have been worse, but it was cool that we found these girls and they did it. There was this one girl that’s on it, she was on it the most, and she really f—ing knocked it [out of the park]. When she started singing, I could really start seeing how the song would end up. It ended exactly as I thought when she started belting out the song thankfully. On the song ‘Legs,’ many props on the bass playing. DJ: Yeah, I agree man. The bass playing ‘Legs’ is one of the biggest reasons why I fought for that tune to be the first single. I thought it was really standout. JC: Thanks man. ‘Legs’ was a tune that we had for ‘Below the Belt’ and we went and added a twist to the chorus. [Danko] loved the riff that we had for ‘Below the Belt,’ but we never took it anywhere further. And then we felt that if we changed it to the ‘Legs, long legs’ part that became the chorus that it is now and the ‘Ooh la la’ part… DJ: We added the ‘Ooh la la’ and it sounded so much better. JC: It was just little things that we made up, and then to kind of color it there were a few little things I did on my end that kind of worked with the song that way. It does make it sound really raw. It is the band, so it’s not like I’m trying to go for something different, but it is a really fun song for sure. Off the new record, what are you most looking forward to playing live? DJ: Looking forward for me, I’d say ‘Terrified.’ It’s one of my favorite songs on the record and I can’t wait to play that song. It’s just heavy and all the half-steps I love, so it just makes things heavier and I like that. JC: We’re just about to start the journey that is the supporting of this record, so I’ll go with him on ‘Terrified.’ It’s gonna be fun. I really want to play ‘I Don’t Care’ cause that’s gonna be a real crowd pleaser and ‘Get Up,’ I can see those two ones there really working well in the set and bringing a lot of high energy. Obviously you’re moving forward with this record, but with this year of reflection with your ‘Bring on the Mountain’ documentary and ‘Too Much Trouble’ book, can you think back to what you hoped for as a new band back in the early days and how you view that now? DJ: It’s in the book and I did the interviews for the book before Atom was in the band, and what I say in the book was, for me, the only thing I wanted to do was tour with Rocket From the Crypt and record with Doug Easley, because Doug Easley recorded all those Blues Explosion jukebox 7-inches that I thought were like better than his records, so those were my goals. I remember saying that out loud, “I want to tour with Rocket, record with Doug Easley, and tour Japan.” I don’t know why those were the goals, and also get signed to a cool indie label in America like a Touch & Go or Matador or something. Only one of those things happened, which was we were able to play Japan. But the guy in Rocket when we started is now in our band. So, you know, it’s a yin-yang thing. Things have a way of evening out in the end. But had no idea that we would be taken around the world by Axl Rose or get to sing with Lemmy or get to sing ‘Night Train’ with Guns N’ Roses … Never knew any of that would happen. JC: And it’s still happening. We were in Toronto a few weeks ago and Jello [Biafra] was in town it was like, “We get to have lunch with Jello Biafra.” That’s just great. And we went to the show and [Danko’s] singing with him. Man, who would have thought? All these years later, look what we’re doing. DJ: I really think that that’s the way to do it. I think if we had a plan, it would have crumbled. [button href=”http://loudwire.com/danko-jones-just-a-beautiful-day-exclusive-video-premiere/” title=”Next: Watch Danko Jones’ ‘Just a Beautiful Day’ Video” align=”center”]