LOUDER THAN LIFE 2019: Dissecting The Daily Schedules

We’re a scant week-and-a-half from the return of LOUDER THAN LIFE, one of the nation’s premiere hard rock/heavy metal events. After flooding cruelly scuttled last year’s festivities, Danny Wimmer Presents worked with the city of Louisville to find a new home for the festival, settling on the Kentucky Expo Center’s Highland Festival Grounds (with “highland” being, hopefully, the operative word). 2019’s potent lineup packs some major firepower, with headliners GUNS N’ ROSES, SLIPKNOT, and DISTURBED alongside an array of current acts like HALESTORM, A DAY TO REMEMBER, and IN THIS MOMENT, rising stars such as DIRTY HONEY and CROWN LANDS, and metal mainstays like ROB ZOMBIE, GODSMACK, and MARILYN MANSON. A lineup of this magnitude will invariably force punters to make some hard choices between this band on that stage and that band on this stage; after poring over this year’s daily schedules, here are some of the weekend’s biggest scheduling snafus and how your intrepid reporter plans to unravel them.

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Review: SUM 41 – ‘Order In Decline’ [Official Video]

 

Sum 41 found its way into my musical playground back in 2001. The album was ‘All Killer No Filler’ and the single that got cemented into my head was “Fat Lip.” Although I was deeply entrenched within the metal genre, that song was so catchy that it tattooed itself into my brain and I couldn’t stop listening to it. The band was labeled pop punk and by all accounts, based on that album, it seemed to fit but if you listened closely, and peeked through the cracks, there was more than met the eye. They found their sound on the brilliant ‘Does This Look Infected?’ record in 2002 and its follow up, ‘Chuck’, in 2004. That’s where my passion for this band reached its peak. They found a way to put punk, pop, hard rock, alternative, and metal together to create a sound that was unique. The next decade and a half saw the band losing members and dealing with health issues. They put out three records in that period and although there were some solid songs, none of them could capture that magical formula that made them such a force until now. The band is set to release their seventh studio album called ‘Order In Decline’ via Hopeless Records on July 19thand it burns a path back to those iconic albums. The songs are heavy, angry, emotional, and most of all, catchy, and those ingredients are the blueprint Sum 41 built itself on. Continue reading

Carolina Rebellion 2017 Day 2 Review [Photo Gallery]

Ready for day 2 of Carolina Rebellion. After an amazing first day everyone was pumped and ready to enter the show for day 2. The day was full of diverse bands from different generations and wide ranging genres. You can go from Tesla to Machine Gun Kelly, or Sum 41 to DED. Today’s lineup really had a little something for everyone.  The Saturday lineup was filled with a tremendous amount of new names in metal like DED, Cover Your Tracks, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes and many more. Of course those are then followed up by bands who have been around the block a few times now like In This Moment, Nothing More, All That Remains and Alter Bridge. Then you have bands that have been around for decades like Sum 41, In Flames, Tesla, Korn and Def Leppard. Saturday we spent a lot of time interviewing bands and didn’t get a chance to make it out to see every band, but the ones we did see blew our minds. The must see bands on our list for this day cane in the form of a veteran act Sum 41 and a brand new band DED. Being around for the glory years of Sum 41’s career made me want to experience them live for the first time. DED is an amazing up and coming band that is about to release their debut album and their single “Anti-Everything” has become an anthem to the troublesome times we live in today. Continue reading

Carolina Rebellion! Line-Up Announcement & Must See Bands!

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Soundgarden (Friday), Def Leppard (Saturday) and Avenged Sevenfold (Sunday) will headline the 7th annual Monster Energy Carolina Rebellion May 5, 6 and 7 at Rock City Campgrounds at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, NC. Carolina Rebellion presale tickets and layaway packages, as well as hotel, camping and VIP packages, are on sale now at www.CarolinaRebellion.com. In 2016, Monster Energy Carolina Rebellion had another record breaking year with over 90,000 fans in attendance, so fans are encouraged to buy early and save and to be sure to secure a ticket for 2017. Continue reading