Mastodon has announced a new album called Hushed and Grim.
The eighth full-length effort from the Atlanta metallers — and their first since 2017’s Emperor of Sand — will arrive October 29. You can listen to the first single, titled “Pushing the Tides,” now via digital outlets.
Hushed and Grim is also a tribute to Mastodon’s late manager Nick John, who passed away in 2018.
Here’s the Hushed and Grim track list:
“Pain with an Anchor”
“The Crux”
“Sickle and Peace”
“More than I Could Chew”
“The Beast”
“Skeleton of Splendor”
“Teardrinker”
“Pushing the Tides”
“Peace and Tranquility”
“Dagger”
“Had It All”
“Savage Lands”
“Gobblers of Dregs”
“Eyes of Serpents”
“Gigantium”
Rolling Stones fans in the U.S. will have an additional chance to see the band on their upcoming 2021 No Filter Tour. The British rock legends have just announced that a second concert at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles has been confirmed for October 14, three days before the previously scheduled show at the venue will take place.
Tickets for the October 14 performance go on sale to the general public on Friday, September 17 at 10 p.m. PT via RollingStones.com.
Pre-sale tickets will be available for people who’ve signed up for the Stones mailing list starting Wednesday, September 15 at 10 a.m. PT. You can sign up for the mailing list at uk-umg.com.
The Rolling Stones’ U.S. tour leg, which now features 13 dates, kicks off September 26 in St. Louis and is mapped out through a November 20 concert in Austin, Texas. The trek will feature lauded session drummer Steve Jordan stepping for the band’s beloved longtime beat keeper Charlie Watts, who died August 24 at age 80. Jordan’s participation was arranged prior to Watts’ unexpected passing.
Meanwhile, in honor of Watts, the band is asking fans to share photos and memories of Charlie and of their favorite pieces of vintage Rolling Stones-related memorabilia, artwork and more, on Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #mystonesmerch. The Stones also have been displaying many of the images on a fan wall that you can check out at digital.umusic.com/rollingstones.
Twenty years ago Saturday, the 9/11 attacks took place. Two decades later, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t remember where they were when they first heard the news.
Scotty McCreery was a second grader.
“I think they even let us out of school early…” he recalls. “I’m still so young at that point. So, I had the basketball in my right hand. And I was like, ‘Can I go see if Michael wants to play or something?’ And Mom’s like, ‘No. We have to sit down and watch the news. Something terrible’s happened.'”
Luke Bryan had just moved to Nashville ten days earlier.
“I was in the bed and my sister woke me up kind of frantically on the phone,” he remembers, “and she goes, ‘Hey, turn on the news.’ A plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.”
Meanwhile, Keith Urban was in Florida on vacation, having stayed over after playing a show.
“I remember that morning,” he reflects. “I didn’t turn the news on, and I’m really grateful that I didn’t because I had a few extra hours before I was aware of this reality that was going on that would change everything… I couldn’t take it in. It was too surreal.”
Since air travel came to a halt, Keith was stuck in the Sunshine State until his bus could come and get him.
“My mom was staying with me at the time,” he remembers, “and she was panicked and worried about me being away, and was anxious for me to get home.”
For Luke as well, it was “a really trying time” when he just wanted to drive home to be with his family in Georgia.
“It was certainly something that shook the whole world,” he says, looking back on that day.
This Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice has shared with ABC Audio his recollections of that awful day.
The Brooklyn, New York, native says he was living in California at that time, and he recalls that he was sick that day and was watching on television as the Twin Towers collapsed after terrorists flew passenger planes into the buildings.
“I have this condition with really bad nosebleeds, and I had one that day, and I was just watching the news,” he remembers. “I was laying around and I saw the towers go down.”
Appice continues, “[M]y anxiety level was through the roof, ’cause I was living in Brooklyn when those things were going up, and every time I’d come into the city, I’d see them get higher and higher…And now they were gone. Freaked me out.”
Carmine admits that after the first plane crash, “I thought…’What kind of idiot flies a plane into the tower’…I thought it was like an accident. And then when the second one hit, I said, ‘Whoa!…This is no idiot, this is planned.'”
Appice reveals that he actually visited the Twin Towers two weeks before the attacks, while he was in New York for a concert with his band Cactus.
“For some reason, [guitarist] Jim McCarty wanted to go down to the towers,” he recalls. “[The band] went down to the towers after the gig. It was late, like one o’clock in the morning…and we just looked up at the towers and there was nobody around…And then we went home to California. Two weeks later, bam, they’re gone.”
Earlier this week, Vanilla Fudge released a new single, a cover of the Supremes classic “Stop in the Name of Love.”
When Metallica released their self-titled record, aka The Black Album, in 1991, it had a gigantic impact on metal and its standing in the mainstream. Beyond that, though, it also had a huge influence on music as a whole.
That’s on full display with The Metallica Blacklist, a massive tribute compilation featuring covers of every Black Album track recorded by 53 different artists in honor of the record’s 30th anniversary.
Many artists on The Metallica Blacklist wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows — there’s Ghost playing “Enter Sandman,” Royal Blood covering “Sad but True” and Volbeat taking on “Don’t Tread on Me.” More left-field selections include St. Vincent‘s industrial version of “Sad but True,” J Balvin‘s reggaeton “Wherever I May Roam,” and Chris Stapleton turning “Nothing Else Matters” into a country epic.
Other participants include Cage the Elephant, Weezer, Portugal. the Man, White Reaper, Biffy Clyro, Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor, Phoebe Bridgers, Depeche Mode‘s Dave Gahan, Phoebe Bridgers and My Morning Jacket.
However, the centerpiece of The Metallica Blacklist might be an all-star recording of “Nothing Else Matters” featuring pop star Miley Cyrus, Metallica’s Robert Trujillo, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, Elton John, guitarist/producer Andrew Watt, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
The Metallica Blacklist is out today via digital outlets. It’ll be available on physical formats October 1. All profits will be donated to Metallica’s All Within My Hands foundation and the charity of each participating artist’s choice.
Along with the Blacklist, Metallica is celebrating The Black Album‘s 30th anniversary with a deluxe, remastered reissue of the record featuring tons of bonus material including demos, live recordings, and rough and alternate mixes. That’s also out today.
Meanwhile, you can catch Metallica performing Friday night on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, airing at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC.
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham in 2018; Lester Cohen/Getty Images for NARAS
Lindsey Buckingham, who’s preparing to release his new self-titled solo album next week, has a lot to say about his 2018 dismissal from Fleetwood Mac in a new Los Angeles Times interview.
It’s been reported that Buckingham was fired from the group after Stevie Nicks gave Fleetwood Mac a “him or me” ultimatum following an incident at the 2018 MusiCares Person of the Year gala. Buckingham told the Los Angeles Times that he was disappointed that band mates Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie didn’t have his back in that conflict, while suggesting that financial concerns may have been a factor.
Lindsey maintains Mick has “never quite gotten to the point where he’s financially stable all the time,” adding, “He’s been married and divorced many times. He’s just not smart with his money.”
As for Christine, Buckingham reports that she sent him an email after his firing that read, “I’m really sorry that I didn’t stand up for you, but I just bought a house.” Lindsey also posed that Stevie wanted him out of the band so she could garner more attention and more control of the group’s direction. “I think she saw the possibility of remaking the band more in the Stevie Nicks vein,” he maintains.
The Los Angeles Times informed Nicks about Buckingham’s comments, and she sent a message in response, saying that Lindsey’s version of the events surrounding his firing “is factually inaccurate.”
She continues, “To be exceedingly clear…I did not demand he be fired. Frankly, I fired myself. I proactively removed myself from the band and a situation I considered to be toxic to my well-being.”
Nicks says “many lengthy group discussions” followed, and Fleetwood Mac “found a new path forward with two hugely talented new members,” referring to Mike Campbell and Neil Finn.
Wolfgang Van Halen isn’t backing down from the top of the Billboard charts.
The son of the late Eddie Van Halen — and one-time Van Halen bassist — has earned his second number-one hit the Mainstream Rock Airplay ranking with “Don’t Back Down,” the latest single from his Mammoth WVH solo project.
Mammoth previously reached the Mainstream Rock Airplay peak earlier this year with “Distance,” Wolfgang’s tribute to his iconic father, who passed away in October 2020.
With “Distance” and “Don’t Back Down,” both of Mammoth WVH’s first two singles to appear on Mainstream Rock Airplay eventually grabbed the top spot on the chart. The last artist to accomplish that feat was The Glorious Sons, who hit number one with their first Mainstream Rock Airplay entry “S.O.S. (Sawed Off Shotgun)” in 2019, and then again with “Panic Attack” later that year.
You’ll find both “Distance” and “Don’t Back Down” on the self-titled debut Mammoth WVH album, which dropped in June. Wolfgang is currently on tour in support of the record playing headlining shows and opening for Guns N’ Roses.
First Radiohead got a TikTok, and now they’re making a video game.
Thom Yorke and company have announced Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, a “upside-down digital/analog universe” inspired by the band’s albums Kid A and Amnesiac, which were released in 2000 and 2001, respectively. It was made in collaboration with Epic Games, the developer and publisher behind the massive Fortnite.
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition will be released in November on Playstation 5, and on PC and Mac via the Epic Games Store. You can watch a trailer now streaming on YouTube.
Earlier this week, Radiohead announced reissues of Kid A and Amnesiac, due out November 5. They also revealed the details Kid Amnesiae, a compilation featuring “half-remembered, half-forgotten sessions and unreleased material” from the Kid A and Amnesiac eras. That arrives November 5, as well.
Elena Di Vincenzo/Archivio Elena Di Vincenzo/Mondadori via Getty Images
Genesis‘ upcoming tour is called The Last Domino?, but the question mark at the end of that phrase should be an exclamation point, as far as Phil Collins is concerned.
Phil appeared on BBC Breakfast on Thursday along with band mates Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, and said flatly, “We’re all men of our age, and I think to some extent, I think [this tour] probably is putting [the band] to bed. I think just generally for me, I don’t know if I want to go out on the road anymore.”
Phil, who’s 70, has been sidelined by a number of serious health problems; his son Nicholas will be playing the drums on the tour this time around. Asked if he’s still able to play, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer admitted, “No. No. I would love to but…I mean, I can barely hold a stick with this hand, so there are certain physical things that get in the way.”
He added that his condition is “very frustrating, because I’d love to be playing up there with my son.”
During his I’m Not Dead Yet solo tour, which ran from 2017 to 2019, Phil sat on stage and sang while Nicholas played drums, although he did play a cajón — a percussion instrument played with the hands — at some shows.
The Last Domino? tour will be the first time Genesis, which has been in existence for more than 50 years, has toured together since 2007. The trek kicks off in the U.K. next week, and if all goes according to plan, it’ll come to the U.S. in November.
Last week, the MTV Video Music Awards announced that Lorde would no longer be performing at this year’s show, citing “a change in production elements.” Now, the “Royals” artist is explaining what exactly that means.
In the latest edition of her fan newsletter, obtained by Billboard, Lorde shares she was “planning this insanely amazing, many-bodied intimate dance performance, not fully understanding the (very necessary!) safety protocols that are in place, and the masking and distancing just meant it wasn’t gonna be what I dreamed.”
“You know I can’t make something less than outstanding for you guys. I hope you understand,” she adds. “There will be many more TV performances, don’t you worry.”
This is the second time that Lorde’s VMA performance has been unexpectedly impacted. In 2017, she was so ill with the flu that she wasn’t able to sing, and instead performed an interpretive dance to “Homemade Dynamite.”
Artists who will be performing at the 2021 VMAs include Machine Gun Kelly, Twenty One Pilots and Foo Fighters. The ceremony airs this Sunday, September 12.
