Interviews


An Interview With DIAMOND HEAD’S Brian Tatler

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Formed in 1976 Diamond Head have been one of the most iconic yet underrated New Wave Of British Heavy Metal bands in the history of music. The band has influenced a long list of musicians and bands around the world but some of those topping the list would be Metallica, and Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine. You may have heard Metallica’s cover of “Am I Evil”, which they have also performed with the Big 4 during their tour. The song was originally written and recorded by Diamond Head in 1980 on the bands album ‘Lightning to the Nations’. The band has released 7 studio albums, 5 live albums, and several EPs, singles and splits. The bands most recent album released in 2016 and is self titled. The album was the debut of the bands new vocalist Rasmus “Ras” Bom Andersen. Ras is the third vocalist the band has had since their formation over 40 years ago. The bands original vocalist was Sean Harris who last left the band in 2004 and from then until 2014 the bands vocalist was Nick Tart. Though both the former singers released great material with the band I do feel that the vocal style Ras delivers in the bands new album is exactly what the band needed, and I believe it’s some of the best material the band has released to date. Diamond Head has been working on a follow up to the self titled album with plans to have it released during the winter of this year.

 

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An Interview With Senior Vice President of Festival Talent At Danny Wimmer Presents, Gary Spivack!

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Gary Spivack has one of the toughest jobs in American when it comes to the music industry. He is the Senior Vice President of Festival Talent At Danny Wimmer Presents. He is responsible for finding and booking all of the bands that play the DWP Festivals all across the country that we so passionately look forward to year after year. Those festivals include: Fort Rock, Welcome To Rockville, Carolina Rebellion, Rock On The Range, Northern Invasion, Chicago Open Air, Aftershock, Louder Than Life, Bourbon & Beyond and Rock Allegiance. It is nearly impossible to please every fan that attends these festivals. There are always going to be bands there that they don’t like, or possibly even hate, and in return there are also going to be bands there that they absolutely love. Regardless how amazing the lineup is there will always be complaints along with the praise. However, year after year Gary Spivack is able to book not only some of the most iconic or nostalgic acts in the country but also book those up and coming bands that we instantly become new fans of. New bands are given the opportunity of a lifetime when they get booked on these festivals. They take the stage and have the chance to instantly gain thousands of new fans if their performance impresses the crowd. Gary is not only the person in charge of festival talent he is also a fan, and immensely passionate about music. Gary Spivack and the entire Danny Wimmer Presents team continue to impress us year after year with the wide variety of acts they bring to the stage to entertain us.

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The Bucketlist With Winston McCall of PARKWAY DRIVE! [Video]

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Parkway Drive

*In this series we pose the age old questions to a wide array of music lovers. As fans of music most of us keep a mental list of active bands we want to see live that we haven’t yet seen. The Bucketlist brings to you those lists of your favorite artists and why those bands mean so much to them*

 

Parkway Drive have truly been one of the leaders within the metalcore genre and probably one of the most popular and brutal bands to come out of Australia. Winston McCall leads the charge with his brutal yet catchy and poignant vocals; he is supported by the insane riff creator Jeff Ling, rythm master Luke Kilpatrick and bassist Jia O’Conner and the earth crushing drums of Ben Gordon. The Australians formed in 2003 and have released 6 studio albums and one EP. Their 2015 release ‘Ire’ propelled the band even further into metalcore glory and it’s only the beginning of things to come. The band on May 4th released what I believe is their best work yet in ‘Reverence’ via Epitaph Records (see our review here). They have been a must see band for fans all over the globe and Parkway Drive has been feeding the addiction those fans have of seeing the band perform live. The band just wrapped up a set of U.S. tour dates along with festival appearances at Welcome To Rockville, Carolina Rebellion,  and Northern Invasion and they are about to come upon U.S. shores once again in August and September then back to Australia during the month of October to tour with Killswitch Engage and Sydney, Australia’s Thy Art Is Murder. They are by no means slowing down and there are tons of opportunities to see the band live, don’t miss yours. Continue reading →

An Interview With The Viral Sensation DUBÉ [Video]

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Founded in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in 2006 the three brothers known by their surname Dubé have found themselves the center of a wide spread and viral meme throughout Canada. There was an article about them within the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test which was given to 10th grade students in Ontario. The article was essentially a reading comprehension test and they had to answer questions about the article and band afterwards. Memes of the band then went viral causing the band to become drastically more popular within their home country, with many students saying it was their favorite part of the test. Dubé once also opened for The Beach Boys as they previously has a very clean image. Dubé’s sudden change from opening for The Beach Boys to smoking up in their video for “Alien” caught the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) off guard. The EQAO oversees the OSSLT and said the reading selection went through a three-year vetting process, but after the article was last vetted in September 2017, the band radically changed its image. In their video for “Alien” it depicts the band smoking a joint rolled up with a page from the bible. Not only their image but their music has also changed drastically, and for the better I might add. The brothers now have a much more heavy and faster paced alternative punk rock sound that is also sure to become a viral sensation for fans. Don’t think for a minute that these guys are selfish and that their rock and roll ambitions are for themselves alone. Their mother passed away after a battle with cancer and the brothers took to the streets busking as well as recording covers to raise money for charity. They subsequently raised mega-bucks for charity on the streets of Ottawa – they staged a drive that sent a whopping $150,000 to Haitian orphans after the 2010 earthquake. The band deserves a tremendous amount of respect for the work they have put in as well as for the risk they took in changing their image. The band has been on tour with English punk rockers Counterfeit here in the U.S. doing a cost to cost stage takeover. Continue reading →

TOOTHGRINDER On Legendary Bands Retiring “Maybe They Are Just Making Room For Us”

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Asbury Park, NJ natives, Toothgrinder, have been making waves in the metal scene for a while now, sharing the stage with huge names including Meshuggah, Killswitch Engage, Between The Buried and Me, Polyphia, and The Contortionist.  The band consists of Justin Matthews (vocals), Jason Gross (guitar), Matt Arsendorf (bass/backing vocals), Willis Weller (drums) and Johnuel Hasney (guitar/backing vocals).  With an extensive live show resume, and two successful albums, ‘Nocturnal Masquerade’ (2016) and ‘Phantom Amour’ (2017) via Spinefarm Records, one thing is predominantly clear – these guys know what they’re doing. The bands incredibly in depth lyrical content has helped them connect with even more fans as their music has progressed since their earlier releases. They have adapted somewhat to the taste of modern fans and began to increase the amount of vocals in their tracks going from essentially an instrumental band to the group we see today with amazing harmony and hooks in their chorus that garner our attention and have us singing along for days upon days. Toothgrinder has already hit the road this year with Bullet For My Valentine and Trivium, the tour kicked off on May 1st in Knoxville, Tennessee and will wrap up on May 18th in Stroudsburg, PA. The band has also made some festival appearances this year as well, and Welcome To Rockville in Jacksonville, Florida was officially the bands first festival appearance followed by Fort Rock in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, then Carolina Rebellion on May 5th and next weekend the band will perform at Rock On The Range in Columbus, Ohio. Toothgrinder is truly coming into their own and receiving the praise that they very much deserve the gentlemen that make up this band are still very much down to earth and care immensely about their fans. They stand behind the lyrical content they put out and they truly want to spread a message that is empowering to the listeners. Their music is already a dominating force to be reckoned with, but when you hear them talk about how they want to be there for their fans and how meaningful fan support is to them it makes you respect the people behind those instruments even more.  Continue reading →

An Interview With NEKROGOBLIKON Vocalist Nicky Calonne!

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The hype man is alive and well in the metal community, and his name is John f**king Goblikon. If you aren’t listening to Los Angeles, California’s melodic death metal jesters NEKROGOBLIKON yet you are seriously missing out on one of the best acts to grace the stages of the United States.  Nicky “Scorpion” Calonne (Lead Vocals, Keyboard) Alex “Goldberg” Alereza (Guitar, Backing Vocals), Aaron “Raptor” Minich (Keyboard, Backing Vocals), Aaron “Zoot” VanZutphen. NEKROGOBLIKON has released 3 full albums ‘Goblin Island’, ‘Stench’, and ‘Heavy Meta’ as well as one solid E.P. ‘Power’ since they crawled out of some smelly hole in California back in 2006, and now they’ve dropped another one on our heads titled ‘Welcome To Bonkers’ which released on Friday, April 13th 2018 courtesy of Seek And Strike Records.  Continue reading →

Underøath On Dropping Christian Band Label “For Aaron & Spencer Its Freed Them Up To Be A Lot More Honest.”

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Photo credit: Dan Newman

 

With eight years having passed since we last heard new music from Underøath, that near decade-length absence weighed heavily upon music lovers’ hearts. When you consider all of the bands that formed using their idiosyncratic power and texture as blueprints (and then hearing those pretenders fail anyway), you can clearly see the hole Underøath left behind. Whatever real-life worries, psychic baggage or other concerns plagued Spencer Chamberlain, Aaron Gillespie, Tim McTague, Chris Dudley, Grant Brandell and James Smith at the time of their 2013 farewell tour, Underøath’s collective consciousness has been fortified by a renewed commitment to their art. And more importantly, themselves. Never was an imposition more on point: On their Fearless Records debut Erase Me, Underøath have added another crucial chapter to their formidable legacy. When the band went in the studio in the summer of 2017 to record their sixth album with producer Matt Squire (Panic! At The Disco, 3OH!3), they knew exactly what they wanted to do as well as what they needed to do. Having already established themselves both as melodic songwriters (2004’s RIAA-Certified Gold record ‘They’re Only Chasing Safety’) and as ambitious power merchants (2006’s stentorian, gold-selling Define The Great Line and its majestic follow-up, 2008’s ‘Lost In The Sound Of Separation’), the evolution detailed on ‘Erase Me’ finds them using the sonic dialects they’ve crafted to reveal where they are now. Continue reading →

Nick Reese (JOYOUS WOLF) “I’m Planning On Making That Set At Rock On The Range Extra Special” [Video]

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Appearing on both the Rock on the Range and Carolina Rebellion festival’s roster this May are Southern California’s hottest up and coming rockers, Joyous Wolf. Since forming the band in 2014, they have been wowing audiences with their refreshing brand of bluesy, modern-style, classic hard rock sound and electrifying live performances. A huge part of that onstage electricity is powered by lead vocalist, Nick Reese who impressively channels his inner James Brown and Jim Morrison as he shakes and shimmies like a bonafide old soul frontman – ladies beware. Throw in some jumps, a flip, and a few splits that would make David Lee Roth stand up and take notice; a tremendous voice that are equal parts Eddie Vedder, Bob Seger, and Robert Plant; and you have one dynamically entertaining individual in Reese. The band recently signed with Roadrunner and has been on fire ever since, shocking fans and building their fan base by the droves from city to city. 

 

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The Bucketlist With: A GATHERING OF NONE

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We’re back once again with one of my personal favorite segments, The Bucketlist, where we ask the age-old question: “What band(s) would you like to see before you die?”  Everyone has their own bucket list and your favorite bands and musicians are no exception.  In this segment, we aim to give a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the personal preferences of your favorite artists as well as artists you may not know – yet. Continue reading →

The Bucketlist With RED DEVIL VORTEX

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*In this series we pose the age-old question to a wide array of music lovers. As fans of music, most of us keep a mental list of active bands we want to see live that we haven’t yet seen. The Bucketlist brings to you those lists of your favorite artists and why those bands mean so much to them*

RED DEVIL VORTEX is a hard rock band from Los Angeles, CA, brought to life in 2016 by Gabriel Connor (Lead vocals / bass), Pablo Kravicz (Guitars / vocals) and Iago Marcondes (Drums / vocals).
With the intention of creating a bombastic atmosphere through the music, visuals and live performances, RED DEVIL VORTEX has its kick start with the release of the first single, “The Fallen”, in October of 2016, followed by several live performances in Los Angeles and SoCal area, sharing the stage with artists like ULI JON ROTH, DAYSHELL, SALIVA and I AM MORBID.
Known for it’s high adrenaline filled live performances, RED DEVIL VORTEX are really on the rise. But today, we get a bit personal with the band, as we’re highly grateful to the band for letting us have the opportunity to make them the next victim in our regular segment called Bucketlist. Today we throw them our own self proclaimed million dollar question. I am sure a lot of you would also reciprocate this bucketlist. There are some big names in there!

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