Hatebreed are celebrating Valentine’s Day by releasing the pummeling new song “When the Blade Drops”, their first new track in four years.
Up until now, the Connecticut hardcore metallers hadn’t release new music since their 2016 album, The Concrete Confessional. According to a press release, that LP has garnered 42 million total Spotify streams.
“This is just a taste of what’s to come, and we’re definitely going hard on this one,” Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta said in a statement. “The speed, intensity and brutality that people have come to expect from us is on full display. Can’t wait to play this one live and see the pit erupt.”
Hatebreed are on target to release their eighth full-length LP later this year, but “When the Blade Drops” will not appear on the album. As the band explains, “The anthemic track is a special treat for fans as Hatebreed finish their new album.”
Jasta and company will be touring Europe this spring with Parkway Drive, and later Australia with Parkway Drive and Every Time I Die. They’ll also unveil new U.S. tour dates soon.
Grunge act Violent Soho are back with a new album and supporting tour dates. The record, dubbed Everything Is A-OK, comes out April 3rd via Pure Noise. To celebrate, they’ve shared a new track called “Lying on the Floor”.
The follow-up to 2016’s Waco, Everything Is A-OK marks Violent Soho’s fifth studio album overall. Technically, “Lying on the Floor” is the first single they’ve shared since announcing the news, but it was preceded by “A-OK” and “Vacation Forever”, which we now know will both appear on the record, too.
“Lying on the Floor” sounds like a wonderful blend of Black Lips combined with Ty Segall. With an undeniably catchy chorus and some pleasing yet crunchy guitar melodies, Violent Soho know the best introduction to a new album is by sharing a song you can’t help but put on repeat.
In the accompanying Michael Ridley-directed music video, Violent Soho can be seen playing the song in a spacious venue. With chic backlighting and a grainy viewfinder, it feels like you’re watching a throwback MTV music video during grunge-pop’s heyday. In other words, it scratches all the best itches. Watch it below.
Violent Soho will play a few shows in the US and Europe this spring in support of Everything Is A-OK. Over the course of four tour dates in April, they plan on stopping in Amsterdam, London, New York City, and Los Angeles. Hopefully more dates will be announced soon, but until then, you can grab tickets to all of their upcoming concerts here.
Below, check out the album’s artwork and tracklist in addition to their full tour schedule.
Violent Soho 2020 Tour Dates: 02/15 — Brisbane, AU @ The Zoo
04/21 — Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
04/22 — London, UK @ Electric Brixton
04/25 — New York, NY @ Rough Trade
04/27 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Troubadour
Everything Is A-Ok Artwork:
Everything Is A-Ok Tracklist:
01. Sleep Year
02. Vacation Forever
03. Pick It Up Again
04. Canada
05. Shelf Life
06. Slow Down Sonic
07. Lying on the Floor
08. Easy
09. Pity Jar
10. A-OK
Following the announcement that her debut solo album, ‘To Love Is To Live’, will be released on May 8 via Caroline Records, the Savages singer has shared the video for the record’s first single, directed by Peaky Blinders‘ Anthony Byrne.
Jehnny Beth will also release her first book, ‘Crimes Against Love Manifesto’, featuring a collection of her erotic short stories along with photography from Johnny Hostile, on June 11.
The sensual black-and-white video for ‘Flower’ features Beth in a number of intimate scenes with co-star Rebeka Adams. Written about a pole dancer at the Jumbo’s Clown Room strip club in Los Angeles, the clip shows Beth singing to Adams: “She loves me and I love her, I’m not sure how to please her“.
Watch the video below:
Arriving on May 8, ‘To Love Is To Live’ was produced by Flood (Smashing Pumpkins, Foals, Depeche Mode, U2), Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails, legendary film composer) and her longtime co-creator Johnny Hostile. The record also features guest appearances from The xx’s Romy Madley Croft, Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy and IDLES’ Joe Talbot.
“That night I was in L.A., I opened my phone at 3am, saw that [Bowie] was dead and couldn’t sleep so I listened to his music all night,” said Beth.
Beth also promised that the record will be “a mixture of light and darkness and hard and soft” and lyrically dealing with “self-reclamation, borderline sexuality and dealing with what it is that makes us human”.
Morbid humor. Drug-inspired songs. A decadent favorite meal. The Prince of Darkness and his all-star collaborators tell an intimate crowd the backstory behind the musician’s upcoming album
Morbid humor. Drug-inspired songs. A decadent favorite meal. The Prince of Darkness and his all-star collaborators tell an intimate crowd the backstory behind the musician's upcoming album
Last month, fans of the emo-rock group My Chemical Romance made headlines after expressing their disgruntlement on social media over Ticketmaster’s faulty queue system, which screwed more than a few hopeful attendees out of buying a ticket to their highly anticipated reunion tour, even after waiting over an hour on the website.
This, however, is a gripe fans of the Korean mega group BTS, called ARMY, have had with the ticketing site for years. Ever since the group was playing at the small theater level years ago, tickets to their shows have been hard to get. ARMY even have a running joke that the members should attempt buying tickets for their own concert as a challenge for an episode of their YouTube series, Run BTS!, just so they can know the pain and stress they go through.
The competition for a ticket to see BTS live is strong, as they always play sold-out shows across the country. 2019’s “Love Yourself World Tour” and its “Speak Yourself” encore made BTS the top-grossing touring group of the year ahead of legends like The Rolling Stones and Metallica in the US. And this year’s followup — the “Map of the Soul Tour”, which kicks off in April — is already breaking records only one week after tickets went on sale. Receiving a major upgrade this year by almost doubling the number of US stops from last year’s tour, seven out of the 15 stadium shows are already sold out, including stops in Pasadena, Dallas, and Chicago.
Beyond official sales, secondary market ticket retailer StubHub saw almost twice as many tickets for the tour sell in just three days as the total amount sold for the Super Bowl. BTS is currently the top-selling artist on the website, outpacing the likes of Post Malone, Billie Eilish, and even the aforementioned, highly anticipated My Chemical Romance reunion tour.
Through a statement, the general manager of music and theatre for StubHub, Jeff Poirier, said, ”In fact, the BTS 2020 tour is driving demand unlike anything we’ve seen from a pop act in recent years, outperforming the on-sale demand of Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, among others.”
When it comes to concert production, BTS only has themselves to outdo. Last year’s tour featured Jungkook flying over the audience during his solo performance of “Euphoria”, Jimin popping out of bubbles for “Serendipity”, inflatable sets, and Disneyland-level fireworks and pyrotechnics. In a recent corporate briefing, the group’s label, Big Hit Entertainment, revealed the enlistment of the design team Stufish Entertainment Architects (Beyoncé’s Coachella set and Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”) for the “Map of the Soul Tour”. Big Hit also announced that fans will get to participate in festival-like experiences prior to the concerts — a feat previously exclusive to concerts held in Seoul — as well as theme hotels, pop-up stores, and exhibitions in touring cities dubbed “Tour Village”.
During last year’s end-of-the-year awards shows in Korea, BTS went all out with their revamped performances of their tour opener B-side “Dionysus”, which they included in a medley of their past hits. From a giant snake to their reinterpretation of an ancient Greek festival complete with harp players, real horses, Last Supper staging, and temple-like sets, the group have not only been foreshadowing the grandeur of their upcoming tour, but maybe even the new album’s theme as well. During one particular performance earlier this year, leader RM proclaimed on the intro “City Dionysus Begins”, further highlighting the song’s themes and concepts, and even implying that it doesn’t end as the new album approaches.
Through recent interviews, three new songs, and the teaser pictures for the upcoming album, BTS is signaling a darker, more introspective era for Map of the Soul: 7, which drops next week. Having advocated for youth throughout their entire discography, 7 seems to present a shift to more mature imagery and themes and recalls their history and prior releases put out by the act over their seven years together. Calling on Jungian theory for their Map of the Soul series, which explored the persona on the first installment, judging by the interlude “Shadow” and outro “Ego”, it seems BTS are reaching an understanding of who they are as people, both on and off the stage, and coming to terms with it.
“One message that penetrates the album as a whole is that you must face your inner shadows, but resist becoming submerged into its depths,” Suga said in a recent interview. “You must face it and move on forward.” For the teaser pictures, the members have used the chiaroscuro technique, appearing in strong, bright, and dark contrasting images to embody that messaging. Fans were quick to identify that as representing the coexistence of the brightness of Persona and the incoming darkness of 7.
How that will all translate into the “Map of the Soul Tour” remains to be seen, but what BTS has presented thus far is nothing short of epic and only raises the bar on what they’re capable of doing. They’ve been on a winning streak with their last three albums landing at the top of the Billboard 200 chart, and with the new album already selling over three million pre-order copies, Map of the Soul: 7 will undoubtedly follow suit. They’re already the biggest, most coveted band in the world and are leaving their mark in history. Getting to see them live is being able to be a part of it.
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BTS kicks off the US leg of the “Map of the Soul Tour” in Santa Clara, California, on Apr. 25 and will be hitting Canada, Japan, and Europe. The album Map of the Soul: 7 comes out Feb. 21. The best tickets available can be found on StubHub.
A prosecutor in Atlanta is deciding whether to open a formal investigation into claims that the godfather of soul was murdered.
According to Sky News, a woman is said to have approached the district attorney saying that she has evidence that his death was caused by another person.
Brown passed away in the early hours of Christmas morning in 2006 after being admitted to the Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta due to suffering from pneumonia.
Now, circus performer and singer Jacque Hollander has reached out to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard’s office, claiming that Brown’s death was caused by another person, according to the prosecutor’s spokesman Chris Hopper.
Sky News reports that Howard met with Hollander on Wednesday (February 12) and shared with him various materials that relate to Brown’s death.
Howard’s spokesman said that the prosecutor is now assessing the information and deciding whether to open an investigation.
NME reached out to Brown’s family who declined to comment.
Coming after Hollander contacted a CNN reporter, the new investigation suggests the singer may not have died from natural causes. It details interviews with nearly 140 people, while tens of thousands of pages of police and court records are said to also be included. Forensics testing and 1,300 pages of text messages are also part of the investigation.
Charlie Lightening was speaking backstage at the NME Awards 2020 after picking up the award for Best Music Film for his documentary about Liam’s solo career on Wednesday night (February 12). When asked about how he managed to get football legend Cantona to appear in the music video for ‘Once’, which he also directed, he answered: “It was just one of those magical moments where everything aligned.”
He continued: “We saw Cantona post that video singing the song and so Liam texts me and goes, ‘Oh mate, it’d be fucking amazing if….’ And just by pure coincidence, I had [Cantona’s] contact details.”
Lightening went on to explain that he in fact had Cantona’s agent’s phone number “from something else that didn’t come off”. The team quickly set about asking if the ex Manchester United footballer would like to star in the music video.
“He was like, ‘I’m right up for it’,” Lightening recalled Cantona saying. “And he just came on his own. I went out for dinner with him the night before the shoot and we talked through the idea. Honestly, I can’t say enough nice things about that man.”
Elsewhere in the video interview, which you can watch in full above, Lightening responded to what he thinks the chances are of an Oasis reunion.
“You can never say no,” he answered, adding that he knows both Liam and Noel Gallagher well personally. “They’ve got to become friends again and become brothers.
“You can never say it won’t happen, you know. Who knows?”
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