SAHG To Resume Recording Second Album - June 28, 2007
June 29, 2007
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Norwegian heavy rockers SAHG, who feature in their ranks members of GORGOROTH, MANNGARD and AUDREY HORNE, have issued the following update:
“On June 29, SAHG re-enters the studio to record the final tracks for their second album. For this final recording session, the band has ended up in the same location as ‘Sahg I’ was recorded, now housing a different studio than last time. The band will spend ten days recording five complete tracks, and adding vocals and final touches to the songs recorded earlier this spring. The recording and mixing will be completed by primo August. The yet-untitled sophomore SAHG album is due for release in October 2007 [via Regain Records]. Album and song titles to be announced shortly!”
SAHG is being assisted in the studio by Brynjulv Guddal, who is doing triple duty as drummer, engineer and co-producer.
SAHG was voted “Norwegian Band of the Year” by the listeners of the hard rock show “Pyro”, which airs on Norway’s national radio station NRK P3. SAHG reportedly received more votes than such other bands as SATYRICON, I and KEEP OF KALESSIN.
SAHG’s debut album, “Sahg 1″, was released last July via Candlelight Records. Taking influence from classics — PENTAGRAM, ELECTRIC WIZARD, KYUSS and MONSTER MAGNET (to name a few) — it has been said SAHG rock with a groove that would “make John Bonham proud!”
http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/index.aspx?PageNum=2
Dream Theater Causing ‘Chaos’ With New Album
June 29, 2007
Dream Theater Causing ‘Chaos’ With New Album
“We realize our strength is in our perseverance and in our live shows, and if something were to click with radio, it would be fantastic.”
– Dream Theater’s John James Petrucci
June 26, 2007
Christa L. Titus
Dream Theater’s top 20 entrance onto The Billboard 200 is a vindication in triplicate for the New York band. The No. 19 debut for “Systematic Chaos” heralds the group’s best start for an album, its best sales week (36,000) since 1994’s “Awake” and its first breath of air inside the top 20.
“Chaos” also represents an unexpectedly sweet beginning with Roadrunner Records, which signed the act last December. Unhappy with being shifted among Warner Music Group’s labels and receiving minimal promotion for records following “Awake,” the prog rockers hoped they would get dropped when their eight-album option was up for renewal. But EastWest, then Elektra, then Atlantic, kept picking it up, so Dream Theater self-promoted albums with yearlong tours pegged to the release dates and constant contact with fans through its Web site.
Imagine, then, the band’s chagrin when it finally got a fresh start by signing with Roadrunner only to face the announcement, just days later, that Warner had purchased Roadrunner for nearly $74 million.
“That’s the biggest irony of this whole thing,” drummer Mike Portnoy says with a laugh. “We waited 15 years to get away from Warner, and we actually had several offers from other Warner-affiliated labels that we passed on because we wanted to go with Roadrunner, and then literally a week after we signed was when they announced it.
“Distribution is such a minor piece of the puzzle in terms of marketing and promotion, and the hands-on creative engine and all of that is intact at Roadrunner,” Portnoy continues. “With Atlantic and Elektra we were just kind of this bastard child who was handed from person to person, from staff to staff, label to label, each time we made a record.”
They may not be a bastard child, but they’re certainly a unique one often misunderstood by record companies. “The thing, to us, that’s the most important is that we went somewhere where people really understood the history of the band and what we’ve built,” guitarist John Petrucci says of Roadrunner. “It was actually surprising to some of the labels we were talking to how many records we’ve sold, how many concerts we’ve done [and] how many people we’ve played to. It’s kind of like a best-kept-secret.”
According to Nielsen SoundScan, Dream Theater has sold 2.1 million albums in the United States. Band manager Frank Solomon estimates the band has sold between seven and eight million records worldwide.
“Systematic Chaos” is Dream Theater’s ninth studio album. Number eight, the last one released on Atlantic, was 2005’s “Octavarium,” which debuted and peaked at No. 36. The band’s 1992 major-label debut, “Images and Words” (Atco), was the only one of its albums to garner significant radio and MTV airplay. Lead single “Pull Me Under” hit No. 10 on Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks.
Why hasn’t the band scored a second traditional hit? It could be simply due to the fact that its songs keep getting longer. “Systematic Chaos” opens and closes with a two-part track, “In the Presence of Enemies,” that runs for practically half an hour. The group also writes complex, technically proficient compositions that can’t be absorbed in one listen, and that’s hard to market in an instant-gratification, increasingly download-centric world.
But these same factors helped Dream Theater create a following among music students and prog fans alike. Vinne Hartong, the band’s product manager at Roadrunner, explains that having experienced success with accomplished musicians like DragonForse and Trivium, the label believes in a market for those audiences. Roadrunner was also attracted to Dream Theater’s status as a heritage act that’s still youthful and relevant. Hartong thinks the label can not only build on the group’s existing fan base, but also recruit new listeners.
“It’s cool to take this band that has been shown no label love in like 10 years and … finally give them what they deserve,” Hartong says. “We have a point to prove. I’d love to prove to Atlantic, ‘If you guys had just done an ounce of work, this is what you could have had.’” Atlantic Records did not provide any comment by deadline.
Roadrunner’s marketing plan for “Systematic Chaos” includes interviews in metal and music instruction magazines, print ads, a free download of first single “Constant Motion” and studio footage of the band posted online. A special edition of the album that features a 90-minute making-of documentary and a 5.1 Surround Sound mix is also being released. In addition, a recent TicketMaster promotion allowed those who purchased tickets for select 2007 North American dates to download a free video of the band recording album track “The Dark Eternal Night” when they also pre-ordered “Systematic Chaos.”
For Dream Theater, this is the first time in years, if ever, that many of these tactics have been employed. One of the biggest steps forward has been doing a video for “Constant Motion,” which is now in post-production. It’s the first clip the band has lensed in a decade.
“There was no reason for us to do music videos because MTV wasn’t gonna play us, so it was a waste of time and money,” Portnoy says. “But now, in the age of the Internet, it makes sense. A great way to market a band [is] through Web sites and YouTube and things like that.”
The road, however, remains the linchpin of Dream Theater’s promotion strategy. The Agency Group’s Steve Martin, the band’s longtime booking agent, says the group plays venues with an average of 3,000 seats. He has seen it progress from filling the 1,000-capacity Irving Plaza in New York the day of a show to selling out the 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall through an Internet-only pre-sale four months in advance.
Dream Theater is currently in Europe on its Chaos in Motion tour, but will return to the States in July and head back overseas in early fall. Martin seconds Roadrunner’s thinking that the band can reach new markets and audiences. “In 2008 we’re going back to South America,” he says. “Last year we played San Juan [for the first time], and we did 5,000 people.” Solomon confirms the band will play inaugural shows in Australia in early 2008.
Hartong says Roadrunner will also give terrestrial and satellite radio a shot. Since the label wants to establish the band “as hip and relevant to the modern metal world” with what Hartong calls “the hardest track on the record,” the nearly seven-minute “Constant Motion” was delivered to metal radio May 28.
The band appreciates giving radio the old college try, but Petrucci isn’t holding his breath. “We realize our strength is in our perseverance and in our live shows, and if something were to click with radio, it would be fantastic,” he says. “We’ve seen the difference, we’ve seen how that really goes, [how it can] sell so many more records. But we’re doing great even without that.”
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/feature/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003604046
HELLYEAH Gray’s Anomaly interview
June 29, 2007
HELLYEAH Gray’s Anomaly interview
Hard rocking American roughnuts Hellyeah keep the power chord alive with their self-titled debut album, writes STEVE TAUSCHKE. They play Metropolis Fremantle on Tuesday, July 3.
Does ye olde team of champions necessarily maketh a champion team, as the ancient adage suggests?
It’s all immaterial to Chad Gray, noted screamer with veteran math-metallers Mudvayne and now moonlighting frontman with Hellyeah, a Southern supergroup also comprising Damageplan and Nothingface members who are hell-bent on putting the fun back into modern metal. Obviously Hellyeah encompasses more your typical hard rock grooves than Mudvayne. It’s been a refreshing move for Gray, who views it as an embrace of his musical origins.
“We wanted to bring the personality of the members out in the music,” he says. “There are so many bands out there right now where everything’s serious and completely political and anti-human. And we didn’t want to be that band. We grew up with bands like AC/DC – it’s about having a good time and letting your hair down and not listening to the preacher tonight.”
While the good times have rolled, it’s rumoured that former bassist Jerry Montano’s recent sacking was a result of letting his hair down a bit too far recently (read: being thrown out of a club after punching guitarist Tom Maxwell then threatening to return with a gun).
“I’m not going to get into it but it was definitely bizarre how it went down,” Gray says. “But we just kind of moved past it, we had to do the right thing and Jerry understood that - and that was where it was amicable. You’ve always got to keep moving forward (Damageplan’s Bob Zilla now plays bass) and I mean we’re very passionate about this. We don’t look at it as a side band, we look at this as another band that we all play.”
According to Gray, the formation and development of Hellyeah’s music has helped drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott “find his smile again,” after the tragic death of his brother, Pantera/Damageplan guitarist, Dimebag Darrell. As for Gray, he says music has given him a sense of freedom.
“I’m an artist in many areas and I can exercise the demons from my past and I can speak out on things that bother me,” he says. “It’s a very freeing experience to go and put down songs and to be able to re-live it every day. Sometimes that can be painful though if you write about the wrong thing.”
So do you have to careful what you write?
“Oh yeah! Sometimes you’re like ‘oh, I’m glad I got that off my chest’ but the next thing you know you’re singing it and re-living that experience every single day. It kind of freaks you out.
“In the beginning of Mudvayne I really wore my life on my sleeve to the point where you could go through there and see some of the stuff I’ve been through. I still do that to a certain point.”
If you’d like to win one of five double passes to Hellyeah’s show at Metropolis Fremantle on July 3 email win@xpressmag.com.au with your contact details. Please note that this is an 18+ show.
http://www.xpressmag.com.au/archives/2007/06/hellyeah_grayas.php
Music Video footage of METALLICA rehearsing for its “Sick of the Studio ‘07″
June 29, 2007
Music Video footage of METALLICA rehearsing for its “Sick of the Studio ‘07″
http://www.metontour.com/portal/video/videoselect.asp?media_id=5422
TESTAMENT Signs With NUCLEAR BLAST RECORDS for new album- June 28, 2007
June 29, 2007
TESTAMENT Signs With NUCLEAR BLAST RECORDS for new album - June 28, 2007
San Francisco Bay Area metallers TESTAMENT have inked a worldwide deal with Nuclear Blast Records. The group will enter the studio late summer/early fall to record its long-awaited new album for a March 2008 release.
Original TESTAMENT members Alex Skolnick (guitar), Chuck Billy (vocals), Greg Christian (bass), and Eric Peterson (guitar), along with new drummer Nick Barker (ex-DIMMU BORGIR, CRADLE OF FILTH), have finished writing more eight or nine songs for the group’s long-awaited follow-up to 1999’s “The Gathering”.
In a recent interview with RockConfidential.com, Chuck Billy stated about the new TESTAMENT material, “The music is very heavy but it’s very catchy. Eric’s got some really catchy riffs. The vocals are real melodic with some catchy hooks. It’s really heavy. It’s something new. Nick, coming from a black metal background, is adding that spark that we needed. It’s a fresh breath of life to our writing. In the past couple of years we’ve written some songs but they weren’t up to par with ‘The Gathering’. Those songs just went in the trash. We just started over when Nick came into the picture. We’re on a roll and the songs are turning out really good. . . [Lyrically] it’s gonna be covering a lot of stuff, things we’ve experienced in life. Especially my illness, the cancer, and what I went through. I had some healing sessions and did a lot of sweat lodges with some indians and medicine men. I’m sure I’ll be talking about my experiences with the medicine men. My father and Eric’s father both passed away within the past couple of years. The war in Iraq. We’ll be talking about those issues. It’s things that people deal with in everyday life. We’ve gone away from the cliche gloom-and-doom lyrics, the typical heavy metal lyrics.”
TESTAMENT parted ways with Spitfire Records earlier in the year (the Spitfire Records catalog was acquired last summer by Redux Records, the company formerly known as Sheridan Square Entertainment).
Spitfire released a TESTAMENT compilation, “The Spitfire Collection”, in February. Consisting of tracks from such Spitfire titles as “The Gathering”, “Demonic”, “Live at the Fillmore”, “First Strike Still Deadly” and “Live in London”, the 14-track set chronicles an era that ultimately saw the original TESTAMENT reunite for a successful 2005 tour.
http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/index.aspx?PageNum=2
