Global AZ Media

Dream Theater + Devin Townsend & Animals As Leaders at Arizona Financial Theatre
2023-07-26 19:00 - 23:30 (America/Phoenix) | Arizona Financial Theatre, 400 W Washington St, Phoenix, AZ, 85003, United States
Long Island, New York’s Dream Theater are the globally celebrated standard bearers for progressive metal in the 21st century. Their ability to deliver tight, melodic, musically sophisticated songs and thematic concept recordings encompassing elements of hook-based hard rock, riff-fueled metal, syncopated prog, and refined lyrics have made them the act others are measured by. Their second album, 1992’s Images and Words, established their sonic signature, while 1994’s Awake and 1999’s Metropolis, Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory cemented their place in metal’s pantheon. Dream Theater is well known for high-energy concert performances. While they’ve released several 21st century live albums — Live at the Marquee, Live in Japan, and Live Scenes from New York — they remain one of the genre’s most bootlegged bands. For 2016’s The Astonishing, a double-length dystopian sci-fi opera, they were accompanied by the Prague Symphony Orchestra and three choirs. In 2021, the band issued A View from the Top of the World.
Originally named Majesty (from a lyric in “Bastille Day”), the band was founded by Berklee College of Music students guitarist John Petrucci, bassist John Myung, and drummer Mike Portnoy; they soon expanded with the addition of keyboard player Kevin Moore and vocalist Chris Collins. Releasing an eight-tune demo, Majesty Demo, as Majesty, the group sold 1,000 copies within six months. The departure of Collins in late 1986 left Majesty without a vocalist, and after a long period of auditioning possible replacements, the group settled on Charlie Dominici in November 1987. They decided to change their name to Dream Theater, inspired by a now-demolished California movie theater. Signing with Mechanic Records, the group began working on their first full-length album. Delays caused by label mismanagement limited the group to performing at small clubs and bars. Frustrated by this experience, Dream Theater finally severed its ties with Mechanic.
This was only one drastic change in the band’s course of action. Firing Dominici, the group spent the next couple years searching for a vocalist. The search ended in late 1991 when a demo tape from Canadian vocalist James LaBrie, formerly of Winter Rose, arrived. After flying to New York to audition, LaBrie was invited to join the band. Signing with Atco Atlantic (which came to be known as East West), Dream Theater released its second album, Images & Words, in 1992. One of three videos based on songs from the album, “Pull Me Under,” became an MTV hit. Although Theater showed considerable growth with their third studio album, Awake, recorded between May and July 1994, the group continued to be hampered by personnel changes. Before the album was mixed, keyboardist Moore left the group to focus on his solo career. Hired as a temporary replacement for the band’s Waking Up the World tour, Derek Sherinian later became a permanent member. His first recording with Dream Theater was a 23-minute epic, “A Change of Seasons,” written in 1989 and released in September 1995 on the album of the same name.
Following a mini tour, Fix for ’96, the members of Dream Theater separated for several months and became involved with a variety of outside projects. Petrucci was the busiest. In addition to joining Portnoy and keyboard player Jordan Rudess in the Liquid Tension Experiment — a group that included influential bassist/stick player Tony Levin — Petrucci played guitar with Trent Gardner’s Explorers Club and made a guest appearance on Shadow Gallery‘s Tyranny album. Myung and Sherinian collaborated with King’s X vocalist Ty Tabor in the band Platypus. LaBrie worked with Mull Muzzler, a group formed with Matt Guillory and Mike Mangini.
Dream Theater experienced yet another change when Rudess was tapped to replace Sherinian, who had been fired in 1999. The band released the progressive rock-heavy Scenes from a Memory that year, a conceptual piece that followed the story of the 1928 murder of a young woman and how a modern man is haunted by the crime. It was followed by Live Scenes from New York in 2001, which suffered from an unintentional bout of controversy when its original cover featuring the city of New York in flames was pulled due to the events of September 11. The group continued in the progressive metal vein in 2002 with Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, followed by the leaner Train of Thought in 2003 and Octavarium in 2005. The live album Score: XOX was released in 2006 and featured the band backed by a 29-piece orchestra. It was followed a year later by the new studio album Systematic Chaos, and in 2009 by Black Clouds & Silver Linings.
Sherinian went on to record as a soloist and to play with a prog and jazz fusion band, Planet X. Petrucci released an eponymously titled solo album in 2003, featuring accompaniment by Dave LaRue of the Dixie Dregs and Boston-based drummer Dave DiCenso. In late 2010, Mike Mangini joined the group, replacing drummer Mike Portnoy, who left the band in September of that year. With a rigorous touring schedule that firmly broke in Mangini, Dream Theater somehow found time to record. They pre-released the track “On the Backs of Angels” on YouTube via their label, Roadrunner, in June of 2011, followed by the CD release of the aptly titled full-length A Dramatic Turn of Events in the fall. After a period of rigorous international touring, the band took a break, though its members continued writing. They reconvened in early 2013 and returned with a self-titled studio album in September — this one with Mangini completely involved in the writing process — followed in November with the concert recording Live at Luna Park on CD and DVD, which was recorded during the Dramatic Turn of Events tour over two nights at the Buenos Aires soccer stadium. Recorded live at the Boston Opera House on March 24, 2014, the concert recording Breaking the Fourth Wall arrived the following year, and in late 2015 the band announced their upcoming 13th studio album, The Astonishing. A completely conceptual sci-fi offering, it was released in January 2016. After a world tour in which they performed the whole of the album, the band took an extended breather. At the end of 2018, Dream Theater released the single and video for “Untethered Angel” in advance of a North American tour. The full-length Distance Over Time was the first album by the band to clock in at less than an hour in length in over a decade. Petrucci credited the more economical running time to a more collaborative writing process that took a mere 18 days to complete, and focused on harder-edged songs than on more recent recordings. Distance Over Time was released by Inside Out in early 2019. Taking the album on the road, Dream Theater played a sold-out show at London’s Apollo, which was recorded for prosperity.
Released in November 2020, Distant Memories: Live in London, not only featured live tracks from the album but a 20th anniversary celebration of their 1999 concept album, Metropolis, Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory. In 2021, the band returned with A View from the Top of the World. Its seven extended tracks ranged from just over six to 20 minutes and comprised — for the first time in many years — an aural portrait of the band mapping out prog metal architectures and compositions without a guiding concept or theme. ~ Craig Harris, Rovi

Canadian progressive metal singer and guitarist Devin Townsend has been referred in the rock press as a “multi-everythingist”; in addition to being a celebrated instrumentalist, he is a composer, producer, arranger, and bandleader. While his earliest recorded appearance was as a vocalist with Steve Vai‘s band on Sex & Religion, he also worked with Front Line Assembly and Skinny Puppy, and led the almost unbearably heavy extreme metal group Strapping Young Lad. His recorded solo work since 1997’s rocking sci-fi opus, Ocean Machine (Biomech), has been hotly debated in extreme music circles. He has recorded more than two dozen solo studio and live albums with a variety of musicians. His undeniably progressive, shape-shifting conceptual outfit the Devin Townsend Project is perhaps the best-known of his outlets; their albums Ki (2009), Ziltoid (Dark Matters) (2015), and Transcendence (2016), reveal Townsend delivering his ambition in unified, accessible, and provocative projects readily embraced by the metal and prog-rock communities. The solo album Empath appeared in 2019. The Puzzle/Snuggles double appeared in 2021 followed by Lightwork in 2022.
Townsend was born May 5, 1972 in Vancouver, British Columbia. After picking up the banjo at age five, he moved to guitar at 12, and within a few years was leading the band Grey Skies, later known as Noisescapes. Sending the group’s demo to the Relativity label, Townsend was not only offered a solo deal but was also tapped to sing on Steve Vai‘s 1993 LP Sex & Religion, a collaboration that further extended to the guitar god’s 1996 effort Fire Garden. In between, Townsend worked on a series of projects with Front Line Assembly, and in 1995 issued the solo Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing under the alias Strapping Young Lad. A stint with the satiric punk band Punky Bruster yielded the Cooked on Phonics LP before Townsend began work on the second Strapping Young Lad album, 1997’s City. In a move away from the industrial and death metal of previous recordings, he next formed Ocean Machine — with J.R. Harder and Marty Chapman — for the accessible Biomech, which was issued later that year.
Townsend’s first solo album to be released under his own name was 1998’s Infinity, and it directly followed a difficult period for the artist, in which he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He would later identify his condition as an explanation for the difference in sound and approach between Strapping Young Lad and Ocean Machine. 2000 saw a mentally stronger Townsend release the sharp, focused, and melodic speed metal album Physicist, while 2001’s Terria channeled an ambient pop sound. February 2003 brought an eponymous Strapping Young Lad record which returned to a traditional death metal template. Sessions for this release took place during the same period as those for the acclaimed first album under the Devin Townsend Band moniker, Accelerated Evolution. This record was issued just a month after the SYL release, and Townsend received praise for creating a modern metal album that wasn’t afraid to nod to ’70s and ’80s arena rock in a post-grunge world. While 2006’s Synchestra didn’t quite reach the same high standard, Townsend continued to keep things fresh by following a straight-up ambient record — The Hummer — with Ziltoid the Omniscient, a rock opera about an alien who travels to Earth in search of “the ultimate cup of coffee.”
In the immediate years that followed Ziltoid, Townsend took a break from the music industry to rest, recharge, and rediscover the cathartic aspect of composition. In March 2009, a shaven-headed, teetotaling Townsend announced an intended four-album sequence from the Devin Townsend Project, billed as an opportunity to show that he could create new music without the assistance of drugs. The strongest of these four releases was November 2009’s Addicted, on which he collaborated with former Gathering vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen. Giersbergen returned for a central role on an unexpected fifth Devin Townsend Project album in 2012, the pop-infused Epicloud. In 2014, Townsend released the ambitious Z², a double album that featured a Devin Townsend Project album, Sky Blue, and a conceptual album, Dark Matters, the latter of which was a sequel to 2007’s Ziltoid the Omniscient. 2015 saw the release of Ziltoid: Live at the Royal Albert Hall, a recording of Townsend’s performance at the prestigious London venue in April of that year. Despite a claim that he was taking a year off, Townsend kept writing and recording. In March of 2016 he announced a new DTP album titled Transcendence. It was released in September, and after a tour, he disbanded the outfit. Over the next several years, Townsend toured selectively with his various shape-shifting bands, issued three separate volumes of his catalog on vinyl, and began writing his most ambitious project. Titled Empath, Townsend prefaced its release with a social media warning to fans: “Some of you won’t like it. Some of you will be very confused by it. Some of you will be alienated by it.” The reason for the statement was that in the past, Townsend always recorded albums to showcase where he was at any given time — even if it meant that he would be showcasing a wide variety of styles on an album. With 2019’s wildly diverse and exotic Empath, he chose to create an offering that would depict, under a single sonic umbrella, every musical space he’d inhabited up to the present time — sometimes within a single track — in order to point his way forward. His guest list for the date included Mike Keneally as his music director, former boss Steve Vai, the Elektra Women’s Choir, Casualties of Cool partner Ché Aimee Dorval, Anneke Van Giersbergen, drummers Morgan Ågren, Anup Sastry, and Samus Paulicelli, and Chad Kroeger — the Nickelback vocalist who convinced Townsend to undertake Empath in the first place. Upon release, the set was greeted by mostly positive reviews, but in true Townsend fashion, he claimed to agree equally with critical and affirmative ones. A live rendition of the album, Order of Magnitude: Empath Live, Vol. 1, arrived in October 2020.
In December 2021, Townsend released The Puzzle/Snuggles, his 19th and 20th albums, simultaneously. The former is “an elaborate and much more chilled out” version of 2004’s Devlab, and “more a collaborative, multimedia internet art project.” The latter was “meant to be something you listen to in order to feel better… Puzzle is chaos, Snuggles is calm.” The entire project was meant to express Townsend’s impression that he felt light at the end of a dark tunnel imposed on the world by the pandemic.
The following November, Townsend issued Lightwork. Assembled from a compendium of material written during quarantine, he enlisted veteran first-call producer Garth Richardson to assist in bringing these more traditional, song-oriented sessions to fruition. Lightwork appeared in several editions: the standard ten-track album was appended by a deluxe version that doubled the track list and included the bonus album companion album Nightwork. ~ Jason Ankeny & James Wilkinson, Rovi

It might sound strange to associate “storytelling” with instrumental music. But ANIMALS AS LEADERS jettisoned the rules, limitations, and boundaries of conventional rock music from the start. Armed with palette-expanding eight-string guitars, rich synths, and pummeling percussive grooves, the trio is beloved by metalheads, aspiring virtuosos, jazz fanatics, and casual listeners alike. As Pitchfork observed, “Animals As Leaders have walked the tightrope between sheer technical virtuosity and actual emotional resonance.” Even without vocals, this is intimate, mythmaking music. Animals As Leaders began as a solo outlet for guitarist Tosin Abasi, whose creative partnership with classically trained guitarist Javier Reyes and Berklee-educated drummer Matt Garstka is built on a shared love of everything from fusion to technical death metal. Garstka graced the cover of Modern Drummer in 2015. In one of his many appearances on their cover, Guitar World named Tosin among the Guitarists of the Decade. Rolling Stone featured him as part of their “Young Guns” series. The Chicago Tribune declared him “the closest thing prog-metal has to an Eddie Van Halen.” Quickly ascending beyond the traditional confines of instrumental rock, Animals As Leaders owe much to their unique blend of precision and feel, both in abundance on album five, PARRHESIA. The trio remain connected to their fiercely engaged audience via captivating shows and projects.

In This Moment + Motionless In White at Pepsi Amphitheater at Fort Tuthill Park
2023-07-29 17:30 - 23:30 | Pepsi Amphitheater at Fort Tuthill Park, Fort Tuthill County Park,, Flagstaff, 86001, United States
Initially conceived as a metalcore counterpart to Evanescence, In This Moment moved into more melodic territory with its fantastical 2008 breakthrough album The Dream. Though capable of throat-scraping screams, vocalist Maria Brink shone brightest on mature and atmospheric material, putting In This Moment in the running as a promising goth rock band. The Los Angeles-based act also widened its exposure by touring with the like-minded Lacuna Coil as well as metal veterans Megadeth and Ozzy Osbourne.
Born of a chance meeting and the innate musical rapport established between vocalist Maria Brink and lead guitarist Chris Howorth, In This Moment quickly grew from local cult favorites performing in Los Angeles clubs to a MySpace phenomenon before landing a deal with Century Media. Along the way, the group was fleshed out by rhythm guitarist Blake Bunzel, bassist Jesse Landry, and drummer Jeff Fabb. In This Moment embarked on several U.S. tours with the likes of Diecast and 36 Crazyfists and gradually honed its melodic metalcore songwriting for their 2007 debut album, Beautiful Tragedy. The band supported it on the Hot Chicks of Metal Tour, featuring Lacuna Coil and Within Temptation, among others. The Dream arrived in 2008 and became their breakthrough as well as their first on the album charts. It was followed by the Top 40 A Star-Crossed Wasteland in 2010.
Multiple changes to the band’s original line-up took place in their earliest years, with Landry leaving the band in 2009, replaced by new bassist Kyle Konkiel. Konkiel only lasted a year before he too left the band and was replaced by Travis Johnson in 2010. One of the largest line-up shifts occurred when founding members Jeff Fabb and Blake Bunzel left in 2011. Their replacements — drummer Tom Hane and guitarist Randy Weitzel — stepped in to complete the recording of electro-charged fourth album Blood in 2012. The album was a Top 20 hit.
The group moved to a major label, Atlantic, for their fifth studio long-player, 2014’s Black Widow, and were rewarded with placement inside the Top 10. In 2016, Hane left the band and former 3 by Design drummer Kent Diimmel took over. In June 2017, the band dropped the single “Roots” in anticipation of the release of sixth full-length Ritual, which arrived in July and hit number 23 on the chart. The following year, recording for their seventh album coincided with a tour, teasing the theme of “mother” in its stage show. The band pushed their sound into heavier territory, including on the single “The In-Between” and the album Mother, which appeared in March 2020. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia, Rovi

In 2006, Motionless In White materialized out of Scranton, PA with an inimitable conjuration of sharp metallic rock, industrial, magnetic melodies, and larger-than-life visual imagery. The quintet—Chris Motionless [Vocals], Ricky Olson [Guitar], Ryan Sitkowski [guitar], Vinny Mauro [drums], and Justin Morrow [bass]—quietly clawed their way to the forefront of hard rock, gathering nearly half-a-billion cumulative streams and views to date. Following the success of Creatures [2010] and Infamous [2012], Reincarnate [2014] sunk its teeth into the Top 10 of the Billboard Top 200, bowing at #9 and capturing #1 on the Top Rock Albums Chart. Both Graveyard Shift [2017] and Disguise [2019] cracked the Top 5 of the Top Hard Rock Albums Chart and Top Rock Albums Chart. Along the way, they sold out headline tours and supported everyone from Slipknot and Korn to Breaking Benjamin. Not to mention, Motionless In White have collaborated with Jonathan Davis of Korn, Maria Brink of In This Moment, Dani Filth of Cradle Of Filth, Tim Sköld of KMFDM, Caleb Shomo of Beartooth, and more. The five-piece kept busy throughout 2020 with the Deadstream event performance of Creatures for its decade-anniversary, a cover of The Killers’ “Somebody Told Me,” and the standalone single “Creatures X: To The Grave.” Now in 2022, Motionless In White are set to return with their new album Scoring The End of the World which sees them perfecting the poetically pummeling sound they patented.

Trauma and tragedy transfer from one generation to the next. As difficult as it may be, we still possess the power to break the cycle and start anew. Fit For A King ponder the pain of these cycles and the possibility to end them on their seventh full-length offering, The Hell We Create [Solid State]. The Texas quintet—Ryan Kirby [vocals], Bobby Lynge [guitar], Daniel Gailey [guitar], Ryan “Tuck” O’Leary [bass], and Trey Celaya [drums]—explore this ebb and flow with a deft, yet delicate balance of sharp metallic intensity and soaring melodic energy. “The album is a reflection of the events that happened throughout the pandemic,” recalls Ryan. “In short, my wife and I adopted children and had to homeschool them. She almost died from a stroke. The Hell We Create is by far the deepest and most personal record we’ve ever written.” In 2011, Fit For A King emerged out of Texas with a searing signature style rooted in metal and hardcore and uplifted by hypnotic hooks. Following the breakout LP Creation/Destruction [2013], they earned four consecutive Top 5 debuts on both the Billboard Top Christian Albums Chart and the Top Hard Rock Albums Chart with Slave to Nothing [2014], Deathgrip [2016], Dark Skies [2018], and The Path [2020]. The latter marked their first #1 on the Top Christian Albums Chart and Top 10 on the Billboard Top Album Sales Chart. Plus, the band collaborated with fellow heavy-hitters such as August Burns Red and We Came As Romans.

From Ashes To New utilize their outlier perspective to break boundaries. The Lancaster, PA band consists of—Matt Brandyberry [rap vocals, keys, synths, programming, guitar], Danny Case [clean & unclean vocals], Lance Dowdle [lead guitar], and Mat Madiro [drums]—churn out an anthemic hybrid of hard rock, hip-hop, electronic, and alternative with enough energy to inspire you to get up, move forward, and maybe even, make a change. Since 2013, the group have risen from humble beginnings to the top of the 21st century rock vanguard with hundreds of millions of streams, radio hits, sold out shows across the country, and acclaim from LoudWire, Alternative Press, and more.

NF + Cordae at Desert Diamond Arena
2023-08-04 20:00 - 23:30 | Desert Diamond Arena, 9400 W Maryland Ave, Glendale, AZ, 85305, United States
NF raps with raw grit and emotional authenticity, born of a lifetime of taking hits and getting back up again. His intimate yet propulsive tracks received two consecutive No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 with Perception and The Search. Often silent on self-promotion and social media, NF’s massive achievements come from his music and lyrics resonating with fans.   Nate Feuerstein came of age in Michigan, using music as an escape and expression, a way to channel his pain. Through the years, he’s demonstrated the power of vulnerability on hits like “Let You Down” and “The Search.” In 2015, he signed with Capitol Records; setting the stage to climb to rap dominance beginning with his album, Mansion followed by Therapy Session in 2016 and Perception in 2017, which debuted at No. 1 and eventually went 2x Platinum. In 2019, he dropped The Search, which also hit No. 1 and went Platinum. His 2021 project CLOUDS (THE MIXTAPE) debuted within the top three on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums Chart and Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums Chart.   Today, NF has tipped into global dominance having generated 30 billion streams, 39 RIAA certifications,14 Platinum plaques, and 5 multi-Platinum honors and worldwide touring that has sold over half a million tickets. Emerging from a year of no new releases yet remaining one of the most consumed artists in the world, NF releases his fifth studio album, HOPE.

Cordae knows exactly what he wants to say. He chooses his words and phrases carefully. He speaks from a place of truth. That’s why the three-time Grammy Award-nominated platinum-selling Maryland-raised rapper has quietly become one of the modern generation’s most trusted narrators. A remarkable life has given him a lot to say. He went from the trenches and public housing with his mom to stratospheric success. After a series of buzzing singles, he reached critical mass with his 2019 full-length debut, The Lost Boy. It bowed in the Top 15 of the Billboard Top 200 and included four gold-certified singles— “RNP” [feat. Anderson .Paak], “Have Mercy,” “Broke As Fuck,” and “Kung Fu.” Beyond unanimous praise from Billboard, Complex, High Snobiety, New York Times, Pitchfork, and Stereogum, he garnered a pair of Grammy Award nominations in the categories of “Best Rap Album” for The Lost Boy and “Best Rap Song” for “Bad Idea”. He’s the rare artist whose presence can be felt on-screen in a Super Bowl commercial alongside legendary Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese and among XXL’s coveted “Freshman Class.” Along the way, he linked up with Roddy Ricch for “Gifted” as well as joining forces with Eminem for “Killer.” Absorbing wisdom from a life-changing trip to Africa, enduring the loss of a friend gone too soon, and evolving as an artist and a man, he tells this story in widescreen technicolor on his 2022 second full-length offering, From A Bird’s Eye View.

Grupo Frontera & Luis R. Conriquez at Desert Diamond Arena
2023-08-05 20:00 - 23:30 | Desert Diamond Arena, 9400 W Maryland Ave, Glendale, AZ, 85305, United States
It all started as a hobby which soon became a dream come true.
Formed in the Texas Valley with roots from Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, Grupo Frontera was established in 2022.
This group is characterized by its mix of norteño and cumbia rhythms. Their biggest success so far is in the song No Se Va, which has led the members to become known throughout the United States and the Mexican Republic.
Todo comenzó como un pasatiempo el cual pronto se convirtió en un sueño hecho realidad.
Formado en el Valle de Texas con raíces de Tamaulipas y Nuevo León, Grupo Frontera fue establecido en el 2022.
Esta agrupación se caracteriza por su mezcla de ritmos norteños y cumbias. Su más grande éxito hasta el momento está en la canción No Se Va, la cual ha llevado a los integrantes a darse a conocer en todo Estados Unidos y la República Mexicana.

The Mexican singer and composer of corridos, Luis Roberto Conríquez is his birth name, and his stage name is Luis R.Conriquez. He was born on February 1996 in Caborca, Sonora. The artist was signed by the Kartel Music label since its inception and is now a partner of the company that supports more than 15 artists of various genres.
Kartel Music Hiring to kartelmusic2019@gmail.com
El Cantante y Compositor Mexicano De Corridos, Luis Roberto Conrríquez Es Su Nombre De Nacimiento, y Su Nombre Artístico Es Luis R.Conriquez. Nació Un Febrero De 1996 En Caborca, Sonora. El Artista Fue Firmado Por La Disquera Kartel Music Desde Sus Inicios y Ahora Es Socio De La Compañía Que Apoya A Mas De 15 Artistas De Diversos Generos.
Kartel Music Contrataciones a kartelmusic2019@gmail.com

The Offspring + Simple Plan and Sum 41 at Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
2023-08-09 19:00 - 23:30 | Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre, 2121 N 83rd Ave, Phoenix, AZ, 85035, United States
Legends and innovators of the Southern California punk scene, The Offspring have seen massive global success.
The story began when their punk pop sound became a popular sensation in 1994. The Offspring released their self-titled debut album in 1989. Four years later, their 2nd album, Ignition, became an underground hit, setting the stage for the huge success of their 3rd album 1994’s Smash which paved the way to radio success. The Offspring were played on both alternative and album rock stations, confirming their broad-based appeal.
Five successful gold and platinum albums followed: Ixnay on the Hombre; Americana; Conspiracy of One; Splinter; Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace; and Days Go By. The band’s 10th album was their first in 8 years. But 2021 was the year that SoCal legends released their blistering new album Let the Bad Times Roll. Album highlights include the title track which takes a critical eye at the state of America in recent years, the devastating urgency of The Opioid Diaries, and the horn-fueled skank of “We Never Have Sex Anymore” a song that nods to the band’s cheeky humor.
The Offspring have sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, won countless awards, and have toured consistently, playing more than 500 shows in the last decade alone. The band’s music has had a lasting impact across film, television, and gaming and continues to make its mark on pop culture today.

From their new millennium rise to MTV superstardom through pop-punk’s modern resurgence, SIMPLE PLAN have been an indelible part of pop culture since forming in Montreal in 1999. They’ve sold 10 million albums worldwide, won multiple Juno Awards, performed at the 2010 Winter Olympics – and, most recently, launched the omnipresent #ImJustAKid TikTok challenge that’s spawned more than 3.4 million videos, including clips from Hilary Duff, Ed Sheeran, Usher and Venus and Serena Williams.
HARDER THAN IT LOOKS is the first self-released album from drummer Chuck Comeau, vocalist Pierre Bouvier and guitarists Sébastien Lefebvre and Jeff Stinco. The album respects Simple Plan’s storied career while pushing forward in new ways, with songs like “The Antidote,” “Ruin My Life” (ft. Deryck Whibley), “Congratulations,” “Wake Me Up (When This Nightmare’s Over)” and “Iconic” set to stand as fan favourites for years to come.
“It’s amazingly complex to be in a band for 20-plus years, to keep going, stay relevant and manage all the challenges that come your way,” Bouvier says. “It’s the furthest thing from a ‘simple plan’ – it’s truly a lot harder than it looks. Throughout our career, it’s taken a while to be mature enough to understand that our sound is an asset, not a liability. On this album we said: ‘Let’s just embrace who we are and not be afraid to do what we do best.’ Making a good Simple Plan record is just as hard as making something off the beaten path.

Canadian rock outfit Sum 41 hit the worldwide radar in 1996 after their hometown of Ajax, Ontario, proved unable to fully contain the foursome’s mixture of arena-sized riffing, hip-hop poses, and toilet-bowl humor. Their breakthrough major-label debut, 2001’s All Killer No Filler, featured the chart-topping MTV hit “Fat Lip” and follow-up “In Too Deep.” From there, the band’s mischievous pop-punk style was steadily hardened with darker, world-weary lyrics and a heavier, metal-inspired attack. 2002’s Does This Look Infected? veered in that hardcore direction and still managed to maintain their popularity with singles “The Hell Song” and “Still Waiting.” By the time double-platinum third effort Chuck landed in 2004, Sum 41’s metallic tendencies were at the fore on songs such as “We’re All to Blame.” Despite achieving a chart peak with 2007’s Underclass Hero, the band soon found themselves in decline in the mainstream during the 2010s, due in part to lineup changes and creeping health problems. While Screaming Bloody Murder produced the Grammy-nominated single “Blood in My Eyes,” the album was the band’s lowest-charting effort since their debut. Soon after, frontman Deryck Whibley announced serious health issues that would sideline the band until 2016, when they issued the successful comeback record 13 Voices.
In addition to vocalist/guitarist Whibley, the band also originally included guitarist/vocalist Dave Baksh, bassist Cone McCaslin, and drummer Steve Jocz. Wooed by the boys’ goofy antics and incendiary live show (and excited about the prospect of promoting their very own blink-182), Island put Sum 41 on the payroll in 1999. The Half Hour of Power EP followed, and Warped Tour dates put the word out. They returned in 2000 with the fun-filled full-length All Killer No Filler, and the singles “In Too Deep” and “Fat Lip” became staples of both modern rock radio and Total Request Live. An extensive tour followed, and Sum 41 enjoyed their success the way all near-teenage boys would, with plenty of towel-snapping, groupie-loving, and self-deprecating low-ball humor. In 2002, they returned to wax with Does This Look Infected? While the album was a bit harder-edged, it found the band as excited as ever to mix punk-pop business with sophomoric pleasure: The video for “Hell Song” featured the guys acting out a sort of rock-star debauchery cage match with the aid of a few celebrity action figures. Metallica, Jesus Christ, and the Osbournes all made appearances in the hilarious clip.
It was not all fun and games, however, as Sum 41’s involvement in the charity group War Child Canada had them lending a hand in the making of a 2004 documentary covering the effects of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Five days into filming, fighting and gunfire suddenly erupted around them, and they barely escaped unharmed — these events led to 2004’s slightly more mature and serious effort, Chuck, named for the UN aid worker, Chuck Pelletier, who was instrumental in getting them to safety. The DVD Rocked: Sum 41 in Congo was released at the end of 2005, and the live album Go Chuck Yourself appeared the following March.
Guitarist Dave Baksh left the band during the spring of 2006 due to creative differences, going on to form the metal-punk outfit Brown Brigade. Sum 41 continued as a trio, and their first album as such, Underclass Hero, appeared in July 2007. They eventually returned to being a quartet, replacing Baksh with guitarist Tom Thacker, and began to work on a new album. Screaming Bloody Murder appeared in March 2011. “Blood in My Eyes,” a single from the album, was nominated for a Grammy that year. However, due to a series of back injuries for Whibley (and other issues that would soon come to light), Sum 41 would not return with new material for half a decade, despite their critical success.
During the break, Jocz left the band and was replaced by Street Drum Corps‘ Frank Zummo. Baksh also returned to the fold just in time for Sum 41’s comeback in 2016. The group signed with Hopeless Records and embarked on an international tour that included stops in China and a stint on that summer’s Warped Tour. Their sixth LP, 13 Voices, featured the lead single “Fake My Own Death” and became their third highest-charting release in their native Canada, peaking just outside the Top 20 in the U.S. During promotion for the album, Whibley revealed that he had been in an alcohol-related induced coma during the band’s hiatus in 2014. While recovery included learning to walk and play guitar again, Whibley contributed a large part of his healing to the writing process of 13 Voices. To coincide with the album’s release, the band embarked on an international tour dubbed “Don’t Call It a Sum-Back.”
After setting out on another trek to celebrate the 15th anniversary of their breakthrough, they returned to the studio. Their seventh set, Order in Decline, arrived in the summer of 2019. Intensely political and pulling no punches with their message, the album included the tracks “Out for Blood,” “45 (A Matter of Time),” and “The New Sensation,” borrowing from Linkin Park, Bad Religion, and even Muse on a series of rallying cries aimed at waking up a society on the brink of moral collapse. ~ Johnny Loftus & Neil Z. Yeung, Rovi

DOGSTAR at Crescent Ballroom
2023-08-11 20:00 - 23:30 | Crescent Ballroom, 308 N 2nd Ave, Phoenix, AZ, 85003, United States
Dogstar – guitarist/vocalist Bret Domrose, drummer Robert Mailhouse and bassist Keanu Reeves – epitomize the quintessential Southern California storytelling rock band they’ve always been in their hearts, making deeply resonant music that literally comes from Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees. Nearly a quarter century after what seemed to be their final album, Happy Ending (released in 2000), Dogstar has reformed and taken a great creative leap forward, establishing an entirely new path. “Our earlier records were almost in the wrong decade,” says Robert Mailhouse. “Looking back, it’s almost like we started a Seventies band that somehow got lost in the Nineties. When everybody else was shouting, we were trying to tell stories because in Bret, we’ve always had a singer-songwriter in the Jackson Browne tradition. But people kept saying `grunge’ because of the times we were in – or maybe because of the clothes we were wearing.” “This music just sounds like us,” says Bret Domrose with a smile. “One of the things I love about this album is the variety of feel,” says Keanu Reeves. “Every song is not the same – you can hear our diverse influences and a lot of different tones here. And I feel like finally on this album, we’ve managed to take all those influences and our passion for playing together and once and for all turned it all into Dogstar.”

Mudvayne The Psychotherapy Tour At Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
2023-08-16 17:30 - 23:30 | Arizona Financial Theatre, 400 W Washington St, Phoenix, AZ, 85003, United States
Heavy metal quartet Mudvayne formed in Peoria, IL, in 1996, its members adopting the unusual pseudonyms sPaG (M. McDonough) (drums), Gurrg (G. Tribbett) (guitar), and Kud (Chad Gray) (vocals). The group’s original bassist was replaced after two years by Ryknow (Ryan Martinie). During their development, the bandmembers began the practice of applying bizarre makeup. After self-releasing their first album, Kill, I Oughta, they were signed by Epic Records and recorded their major-label debut, L.D. 50, which was released in August 2000 shortly after the end of their first national tour opening for Slipknot. The album later went gold and earned Mudvayne the first-ever MTV2 Video Award at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards. Mudvayne continued touring and reissued their self-released debut EP, Kill, I Oughta, in November 2001 as The Beginning of All Things to End. A year later the band returned with its official follow-up, The End of All Things to Come, which was recorded at Minneapolis’ Pachyderm Studios with Tool producer David Bottrill. With a new album came new personas, this time as space aliens. The bandmembers changed their names accordingly, taking the new monikers of Chüd (Kud), Güüg (Gurrg), R-üD (Ryknow), and Spüg (sPaG). They embarked on a European tour, arriving back stateside in July to join the Summer Sanitarium shed tour, featuring such heavyweights as Metallica and Linkin Park. In 2005, the band released Lost and Found, their third album for Epic. In September 2007, Mudvayne announced they would allow fans to vote on the band’s website to determine the track selection for the compilation By the People, for the People, released the following month. The all new full-length New Game arrived in November 2008, followed six months later by an eponymous 2009 effort. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi

Coal Chamber broke out of the Los Angeles alternative metal scene in 1997 with a sound often compared to Korn, although both bands formed around the same time and are quality representations of the scene’s overall sound — the heavy, detuned guitars of the murkiest Black Sabbath; grungy, noisy textures reminiscent of White Zombie or Tool; the white-knuckle intensity of Pantera and hardcore punk; and perhaps a few hip-hop-influenced beats à la Biohazard.
Coal Chamber were formed in 1994 by vocalist/lyricist B. Dez Fafara and guitarist Miguel “Meegs” Rascon, who met through a classified ad; the two added drummer Mike “Mikee” Cox and bassist Rayna Foss, the latter of whom heard about auditions through her roommate, Fafara’s future wife. A huge local buzz following gigs at the Roxy and the Whisky a Go Go, along with a demo tape championed by Fear Factory‘s Dino Cazares, got the band an opportunity to sign with Roadrunner Records late in 1994, but Fafara suddenly quit due to disagreements with his wife over the band. By the spring of 1995, Fafara changed his mind and returned, a decision that ultimately cost him his marriage, but a renewed sense of energy helped Coal Chamber regain their Roadrunner deal by the end of the year.
Their self-titled debut was released in 1997; Chamber Music followed two years later. The album was a minor success but its mixture of goth rock imagery and nu metal thuggery made for an uneven album. They toured heavily behind it but by the time it came time to record the next album, bassist Rayna Foss-Rose was gone to raise her daughter, leaving the band with Nadja Peulen. Nadja took Foss-Rose’s place during her pregnancy between the first two albums, but she accepted the invitation to come back as a full-time member during the recording of the next record. The resulting album, Dark Days, was released in the spring of 2002.
By May of that same year, the band had begun to fall apart, sparked by an on-stage altercation between Fafara and Rascon. The following year, after issuing a remix and rarities compilation called Giving the Devil His Due, the bandmembers announced that they had officially broken up, with Fafara continuing on with his new band, Devildriver, with whom he would go on to release six studio albums. In 2011 Coal Chamber began hinting at a possible re-formation, and by 2013 they made it official, performing at Download 2013 and hitting the road with Sevendust, Lacuna Coil, and Stolen Babies. Rivals, the band’s first studio recording in 13 years, arrived in early 2015 via Napalm Records. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi

Blood. Spectacle. Lifestyle. Mythology. Costumes. And more blood. When you think of beloved shock-metal outfit GWAR, those words are likely the first that come to mind. And with good reason. At a time when bands have become bland, GWAR stands out for their performances and the intimate connection with their fans. The push-and-pull between GWAR and their fans creates a visceral experience that continues to add to the band’s legend and legacy, one new tour at a time. Few, if any band, can break down a physical barrier with their audience quite like GWAR. Fluids fly, substances spray and the lust for copious amounts of fake blood [and cutting heads off, of course] leaves audiences thirsty for more. The mythological nature of their live shows may be at the forefront of people’s minds, but it is GWAR’s meticulously crafted songs blend (ING) satire, chaos and violence, made them cultural icons.

Masters of, and pioneers in the nu-metal/rap-rock world, Nonpoint has quietly been the biggest and best kept secret of the rock/metal genre. Their songs and renowned performances have had music legends, from all corners of the genre and music industry, standing side stage to revel in the mayhem, to witness magic unfolding and audiences ignited. Hearing the chorus of the crowd as they recite the iconic melodies and lyrics of vocalist and frontman phenom, Elias Soriano. Watching him tentacle his iconic dreadlocks feet from the spinning and flying bodies in front of him and surrounding him onstage. Then with just a look, or wave of his hand, he makes a sea of people transform. Behind Elias, there’s roaring thunder created by co-founder and showman Robb Rivera as he flies through the air just before crashing down with unmatched force into their music. Nonpoint family, rhythm guitarist, vocalist and visual performance master Rasheed Thomas alongside the high-flying, powerhouse on the bass and Adam Woloszyn both bringing force with medusa hair whips and flying guitars; they’ve re-defined the newest incarnation of Nonpoint. Now with the addition of Jason Zeilstra on lead guitar, whose chemistry with the rest of its members has begun to create a concoction that is poised to intoxicate audiences both old and new.

Cementing their spot as metal veterans, Butcher Babies have been crushing stages worldwide with their vicious live performance and explosive energy for nearly 15 blistering years. Their stage presence is a hypnotic spectacle that leaves audiences hungry for more. Frontwomen, Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey, guitarist Henry Flury, drummer Chase Brickenden, and bassist Ricky Bonazza juxtapose brutal, aggressive riffs with beautiful melodies that wail with emotional redemption. With three albums and two EPs under their belt, Butcher Babies have reached a new level of maturity solidifying a triumphant return after a brief creative hiatus to write and rebuild. Rather than sit still throughout the pandemic, they released a barrage of singles followed by several groundbreaking tours celebrating the return to live music. The band is set to release their 4th LP in 2023, reflecting their growth as a band. Butcher Babies are ready to take on new heights while they continue to knock down barriers. Butcher Babies have toured relentlessly among the likes of Megadeth, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Five Finger DeathPunch, In ThisMoment, HollywoodUndead, Cradle of Filth, Black Label Society, etc; played music festivals including Mayhem, Download, Hellfest, Knotfest, Wacken, Soundwave, Hell & Heaven, Rock on The Range, Carolina Rebellion, Louder Than Life, Aftershock, Welcome to Rockville, etc. They have appeared in the film ‘Alleluia! The Devil’s Carnival’ & the Netflix horror hit ‘Slasher’

Metallica M72 Tour at State Farm Stadium Night 1
2023-09-01 18:00 - 23:30 | State Farm Stadium, 1 Cardinals Dr, Glendale, AZ, 85305, United States
Metallica formed in 1981 by drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield and has become one of the most influential and commercially successful rock bands in history, having sold 110 million albums worldwide while playing to millions of fans on literally all seven continents. They have scored several multi-platinum albums, including 1991’s Metallica (commonly referred to as The Black Album), with sales of nearly 17 million copies in the United States alone, making it the best-selling album in the history of Soundscan. Metallica has also garnered numerous awards and accolades, including nine Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, and multiple MTV Video Music Awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009. In December 2013, Metallica made history when they performed a rare concert in Antarctica, becoming the first act to ever play all seven continents all within a year, and earning themselves a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Metallica’s latest studio album Hardwired…To Self-Destruct was released on November 18, 2016 on Metallica’s own Blackened Recordings record label and debuted at No. 1 around the world, selling over 800,000 copies worldwide in its first week.

The preeminent metal band of the early to mid-’90s, Pantera put to rest any and all remnants of the ’80s metal scene, almost single-handedly demolishing any notion that hair metal, speed metal, power metal, et al., were anything but passé. Loathe to admit it, the Texas band had in fact been one of those ’80s metal bands, releasing fairly unsuccessful (and later disowned) glam-inspired music throughout much of the decade. The about-face came with the addition of vocalist Phil Anselmo, and the key turning point was the band’s major-label debut, Cowboys from Hell (1990). Pantera’s mainstream breakthrough came next with Vulgar Display of Power (1992), their second major-label album, which thrust the band to the forefront of the metal scene, alongside such veteran bands as Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax, as well as fellow up-and-comers Sepultura and White Zombie. By the time Pantera unleashed Far Beyond Driven (1994), after two long years of touring, they were the most popular metal band in the land: the new album debuted atop the Billboard Top 200 as its lead single, “I’m Broken,” was getting massive airplay.
At the height of their popularity and influence, Pantera began to self-destruct. Less than two months after the release of The Great Southern Trendkill (1996) — an album ridden with allusions to drug abuse and personal destruction — Anselmo overdosed on heroin after a homecoming concert in Texas, and as tensions rose between him and his fellow bandmembers, he began engaging with a growing list of side projects that kept him away from Pantera. A live album, Official Live: 101 Proof (1997), was compiled for release when it became evident that no new studio album was forthcoming any time soon. One final studio album did result, Reinventing the Steel (2000), but that was more or less it for the briefly reunited Pantera. The bandmembers once again went their separate ways, forming such bands as Damageplan, Down, and Superjoint Ritual.
The end of Pantera then became official on December 8, 2004, when guitarist Dimebag Darrell was murdered on-stage by a deranged fan. This much-publicized murder shone the spotlight back on Pantera for an extended moment, and amid all of the emotional outpouring and tributes, a consensus arose: in retrospect, there was no greater metal band during the early to mid-’90s than Pantera, who inspired a legion of rabid fans and whose oft-termed “groove metal” style bucked all prevailing trends of the day — from hair metal and grunge to nu-metal and rap-metal — and remains singular to this day, as defined by the vocals of Anselmo as it is by the guitar of Dimebag. ~ Jason Birchmeier, Rovi

First impressions last a lifetime. Wolfgang Van Halen has prepared a lifetime to make his first impression with his solo band Mammoth WVH. The songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist worked tirelessly on material that would become his debut album. Playing every instrument and singing each and every note, his music presents a personal and powerful perspective, balancing memorable hooks and tight technicality. As many times as audiences have experienced his talent alongside the likes of Tremonti, Clint Lowery, and of course, Van Halen, Wolfgang prepares to step into the spotlight with his own brand – Mammoth WVH – for the very first time now.
“The name Mammoth is really special to me.” says Wolf. “Not only was it the name of Van Halen before it became Van Halen, but my father was also the lead singer. Ever since my dad told me this, I always thought that when I grew up, I’d call my own band Mammoth, because I loved the name so much. I’m so thankful that my father was able to listen to, and enjoy the music I made. Nothing made me happier than seeing how proud he was that I was continuing the family legacy.”

Metallica M72 Tour at State Farm Stadium Night 2
2023-09-03 18:00 - 23:30 | State Farm Stadium, 1 Cardinals Dr, Glendale, AZ, 85305, United States
Metallica formed in 1981 by drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield and has become one of the most influential and commercially successful rock bands in history, having sold 110 million albums worldwide while playing to millions of fans on literally all seven continents. They have scored several multi-platinum albums, including 1991’s Metallica (commonly referred to as The Black Album), with sales of nearly 17 million copies in the United States alone, making it the best-selling album in the history of Soundscan. Metallica has also garnered numerous awards and accolades, including nine Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, and multiple MTV Video Music Awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009. In December 2013, Metallica made history when they performed a rare concert in Antarctica, becoming the first act to ever play all seven continents all within a year, and earning themselves a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Metallica’s latest studio album Hardwired…To Self-Destruct was released on November 18, 2016 on Metallica’s own Blackened Recordings record label and debuted at No. 1 around the world, selling over 800,000 copies worldwide in its first week.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH have amassed over 7.6 billion streams and 3 billion video views to date and have sold over 1 million tickets between 2018 and 2020 alone. Signed to Better Noise Music, they’ve garnered 25 top 10 hit singles and 12 #1 singles and are one of the top global streaming acts in the hard rock space. Having become one of the most recognizable names in music, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH frequently play all major festivals and sell out arenas around the world. Since their debut album, The Way of the Fist came out in 2007 the band has released seven consecutive albums that were certified Gold or Platinum by the RIAA, as well as two chart topping Greatest Hits albums. In addition, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH has earned numerous national and international awards and honors over the last decade, such as the prestigious Soldier Appreciation Award by the Association Of The United States Army, an honor bestowed upon only one other recording artist before them: Elvis Presley. Their 2020 album F8 was produced by Kevin Churko and debuted at #1 on Rock charts around the world with Top 10 Mainstream chart debuts in the USA, Austria, Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and more. F8 features #1 hit singles “Inside Out”, “A Little Bit Off”, “Living The Dream” and “Darkness Settles In”. The band is currently in the studio finishing their highly anticipated follow-up to F8, to be released in Summer 2022.

Like the undead slashers celebrated in their songs, Ice Nine Kills return with The Silver Scream 2: Welcome To Horrorwood, a sequel of gruesome movie-sized proportion to The Silver Scream. The new album carves out a fresh, bloody homage to the VHS celluloid classics that possessed singer Spencer Charnas at an early age, with a devilish new twist.
Ice Nine Kills make music both timeless and timely, mixing metal, hardcore, and punk, with accessible power. New anthems like “Rainy Day” and “Hip To Be Scared” demonstrate Spencer’s fascination with fright, pop culture obsession, and his expertise with inescapably wicked melodic hooks and clever twists of phrase. Producer Drew Fulk returned for Welcome To Horrorwood which includes cameos from members of Papa Roach, Cannibal Corpse, Atreyu, Fit For A King, and Senses Fail.
Decadent, devious, and fiercely insane, Ice Nine Kills celebrate pop culture’s darkest edges, mining a cinephile library’s worth of iconic horror on The Silver Scream and its sequel. The creative marriage made in hell of music and fiction began in earnest with the Every Trick In The Book, which brought the previous three records’ themes to new levels.
The band’s synergy of music and lifestyle draws favorable comparisons to Slipknot and Rob Zombie. Visionary trailblazers and multimedia raconteurs, INK built a thrilling world for a growing legion of devoted true believers, with theatrical shows, high-concept videos, and inventive band-to-fan communion.

Ghost & Amon Amarth at Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
2023-09-08 19:30 - 23:30 | Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre, 2121 N 83rd Ave, Phoenix, AZ, 85035, United States
GHOST continues to elevate & reaffirm its status as one of the world’s most esteemed & celebrated creative forces. Accumulating well over a billion streams, the GRAMMY-winning Swedish theatrical rock band continues to bring the “euphoric spectacle” (ROLLING STONE) of its live shows to ever-growing & increasingly impassioned crowds, headlining arena tours including sold out shows from the New York’s Barclays Center to London’s O2 Arena. In March 2022, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES reported that Ghost had “conquered metal & the charts” when its 5th album IMPERA debuted at #1 in a sweep of the US album charts, entering the BILLBOARD 200 at #2 & bowing at #1 in the band’s native Sweden as well as Germany & Finland, while cracking the top 5 in the UK (#2), Netherlands (#2), Belgium (#2) & more. Produced by Klas Åhlund & mixed by Andy Wallace — & feat. “Spillways”—hailed as a “sweetly constructed rock tune” by THE NEW YORK TIMES, the #7 YouTube trending “Call Me Little Sunshine,” & Active Rock #1 radio single “Hunter’s Moon” — IMPERA finds Ghost transported centuries forward from the Black Plague era of its previous album, 2018 Best Rock Album GRAMMY nominee Prequelle—or as ROLLING STONE put it, “Ghost predicted the pandemic, Now the metal band is foretelling the fall of empires.” All in all, the most current & topical Ghost subject matter to date is set against a hypnotic & darkly colorful melodic backdrop making IMPERA a listen like no other, yet unmistakably, quintessentially Ghost.

Formed in 1992, Amon Amarth became modern metal greats the hard way. The Swedes steadily built a formidable reputation as a ferocious live band and, as the years passed, were increasingly recognised for their recorded achievements. Breakthrough releases like 2006’s With Oden On Our Side and 2008’s Twilight Of The Thunder God, cemented their popularity throughout the metal world. Jomsviking (2015) hit the #1 spot in Germany’s official album chart and swiftly became their most successful worldwide release to date. Amon Amarth return to action in 2019, with their biggest, boldest and most bombastic musical statement to date. Amon Amarth – completed by vocalist Johan Hegg, guitarists Olavi Mikkonen and Johan Söderberg, bassist Ted Lundström and drummer Jocke Wallgren – know that expectations for their next move are at an all-time high. The excellent news is that the band’s 11th studio album, the aptly-named Berserker, is guaranteed to have all discerning metal fans punching the air with joy. Today, Amon Amarth stand tall and unassailable: over 25 years into a career that has seen them evolve from humble origins in the dark, dank rehearsal rooms of their native Tumba to their current status as explosive festival headliners and one of the metal world’s most widely adored bands. All of this and more has been captured in the band’s recent live DVD and documentary, The Pursuit Of Vikings: 25 Years In The Eye Of The Storm.

CAVALERA + Exhumed & Incite at Marquee Theatre
2023-09-15 17:00 - 23:30 | Marquee Theatre, 730 N Mill Ave, Tempe, 85281, United States
Phoenix death/thrash metal act Cavalera Conspiracy, which also operates under the moniker Cavalera, was formed in 2007 by Brazilian metal legends and siblings Max Cavalera (vocals and guitar) and Igor Cavalera (drums), formerly of Sepultura. The group’s sound reflects the punitive, blackened thrash of the brothers’ flagship band, with added hardcore punk and groove metal elements. Between 2008 and 2017, Cavalera Conspiracy issued four studio albums (Inflikted, Blunt Force Trauma, Pandemonium, and Psychosis) before shortening their name ahead of the release of 2023’s re-recording of Sepultura‘s 1986 debut, Morbid Visions.
The formation of Cavalera Conspiracy marked the conclusion of a ten-year feud between the Cavalera brothers, who co-founded Sepultura in their native Brazil in 1984. Rounded out by guitarist Marc Rizzo (Soulfly) and bassist Joe Duplantier (Gojira), the band’s debut for Roadrunner Records, Inflikted, arrived on March 25, 2008. Cavalera Conspiracy took a brief break as Max (Soulfly) and Igor (Nailbomb, Strife) returned to their respective bands, but they regrouped in 2009 for a European tour. The following year, Cavalera Conspiracy went back into the studio to begin work on their follow-up album. In 2011, the brothers released their second blast of groove metal heaviness, the appropriately titled Blunt Force Trauma, with the relentlessly brutal and more grindcore-oriented Pandemonium appearing in 2014. The similarly adrenaline-fueled Psychosis appeared three years later, marking the end of Marc Rizzo‘s tenure with the group. Now operating as a duo, the brothers elected to pare down their name as well, releasing 2023’s Morbid Visions, a muscular re-recording of Sepultura‘s classic though decidedly lo-fi 1984 debut album, under the Cavalera banner. Later that year, the duo issued a re-recording of Sepultura‘s 1985 EP, Bestial Devastation. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi

Since the early ’90s, San Francisco’s Exhumed have honed their brand of gore-obsessed death metal with a tongue-in-cheek flair and an overall musical approach often reminiscent of Carcass, a band that they have frequently acknowledged as a primary influence. Diligently led by founding guitarist Matt Harvey, they have endured constant lineup changes over the years. Their brutal riffs and horrifically grotesque lyrical themes only intensified as the years went on, resulting in uncompromising efforts like 2003’s Anatomy Is Destiny, 2011’s All Guts, No Glory, and 2022’s To the Dead.
Exhumed formed in 1990 with a lineup consisting of Harvey (guitar, vocals), Col Jones (drums), Derrel Houdashelt (guitar), Jake Giardina (vocals), and Ben Marrs (bass). They made their first recordings in this formation, including the Excreting Innards 7″ for Afterworld Records. Giardina and Marrs left the band within the next few years, with Matt Widener (bass) and Ross Sewage (vocals) brought in as replacements. After recording the Horrific Expulsion of Gore demo (1994), Widener left and Sewage took over bass duties. This lineup eventually recorded a split-LP with the Ohio band Hemdale, In the Name of Gore, which came out on Visceral Productions in 1995 and featured an absolutely revolting album cover.
Soon after, Houdashelt left and was eventually replaced by Mike Beams. With this lineup intact, they signed to Relapse Records and finally released their first official full-length, Gore Metal, in 1998, with guitarist James Murphy (Death, Obituary) at the production helm. Sewage left the band shortly after this record, leaving the trio of Harvey, Beams, and Jones to record the follow-up, Slaughtercult. The album was released on Relapse in 2000 and was enthusiastically received on the death metal scene. Exhumed supported the album with three coast-to-coast American tours and a European one, where they co-headlined the Fuck the Commerce Festival in Germany and the Obscene Extreme Festival in the Czech Republic. In 2003, they recorded the more progressively arranged — and most critically acclaimed — Anatomy Is Destiny, which was released by Relapse. Bassist Bud Burke left the band before their tour and was replaced by Leon del Muerte.
Exhumed experienced another critical blow following their U.S. and European tours with the departure of founding member and drummer Col Jones. Rather than enter the studio without a permanent replacement, they chose instead to release the compilation Platters of Splatter and toured using fill-in drummers. The band also eventually lost guitarist Mike Beams before ax-man Wes Caley and drummer Matt Connell joined the band permanently. This version of Exhumed decided to follow Metallica‘s concept of a covers album and issued Garbage Daze Re-Regurgitated in 2005; the band also assembled a concert film before disappearing from the scene for nearly five years.
The quartet of del Muerte, Caley, Connell, and lone founding member Harvey (on guitar and vocals) spent a year writing and emerged with All Guts, No Glory on Relapse in the summer of 2011. Returning two years later in a completely different configuration, Harvey recorded the slow-grooved Necrocracy with a new rhythm section of Rob Babcock (bass) and Mike Hamilton (drums), and a former bassist, Bud Burke, playing guitar. In 2015, with early member Ross Sewage resuming his role as singer and bassist and Burke moving to guitar, Exhumed re-recorded their debut album and issued it under the title Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998-2015. With the same lineup intact, they produced the band’s seventh effort, 2017’s Death Revenge, again on Relapse. Eighth album Horror arrived two years later. Recorded at the band’s home studio, the effort was raw and less complex than some of their earlier material. Harvey conscripted Mike Beams, Leon del Muerte, Matt Widener, and Bud Burke to help flesh out the gore metal veterans’ unrelenting ninth LP, To the Dead. ~ William York & Thom Jurek, Rovi

Now close to 15-years into a career where everything was earned and nothing was taken for granted, INCITE bridges the gap between multiple crowds across various metal sub-genres. As renegade disciples of trailblazing architects like Pantera, Slayer, Sepultura, and Machine Head, INCITE raise the torch for trend-killing and hipster-smashing metal. INCITE is as much a part of the fabric of the style championed by Lamb Of God as the surge of newer bands like Power Trip. INCITE perfected their signature brand of extreme sounds playing shows with DevilDriver, Crowbar, Brujeria, Soulfly, Cavalera Conspiracy, and Six Feet Under. This is a band who can open for Gorgoroth one night and Cancer Bats the next, converting true-believers out of people who grew up on Deftones or Immortal. The band’s fifth album, Built to Destroy, is a visceral, urgent, voracious distillation of modern metal, with reverence for the past, produced by Steve Evetts (The Dillinger Escape Plan, Suicide Silence) and mastered by Zeuss (Rob Zombie, Hatebreed).

Bruno Major at The Van Buren
2023-09-16 19:00 - 23:30 | The Van Buren, 401 W. Van Buren St, Phoenix, AZ, 85003, United States
Britain’s Bruno Major splices classic singer/songwriter confessionals with sleek modern electronic production, girding the entire enterprise with hints of soul. After building an audience in the mid-2010s with a song-a-month series, he earned international attention with his debut album and its 2020 follow-up, To Let a Good Thing Die. A new single, “We Were Never Really Friends,” appeared in 2023.
Based in Camden, London, Major was trained as a classical guitarist and released a live EP — appropriately called Live EP — in 2014, but he first received attention in 2016 when he set out to release a new song every month for a full year, a project that would extend into 2017 and culminate in the arrival of the full-length A Song for Every Moon. He accompanied this steady stream of digital singles with regular live appearances in London, sometimes opening for Lianne La Havas. By 2018, Major had widened his touring circle to include U.S. appearances (including the Bonnaroo Festival) and a tour of Asia. Throughout 2019 and early 2020, he issued several singles in advance of his second album, To Let a Good Thing Die, which arrived in June of that year. A three-year hiatus preceded the arrival of 2023’s lush and cinematic single “We Were Never Really Friends,” which he followed with a spate of international tour dates.

Eric Church + Jelly Roll & Paul Cauthen at Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
2023-09-16 20:00 - 23:30 | Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre, 2121 N 83rd Ave, Phoenix, AZ, 85035, United States
Eric Church’s most recent album, his Heart & Soul three-part project, is available everywhere now. The project features his latest Gold-certified No. 1 “Hell of a View” & recent Top 5 hit “Heart On Fire” as well as brand-new single “Doing Life With Me,” impacting radio now.
He recently wrapped his The Gather Again Tour, visiting arenas for an in-the-round show on the Billboard Music Awards’ Top Country Tour, in addition to a recent headlining spot alongside George Strait & Metallica during the ATLive festival at Mercedes-Benz Stadium & his own headlining stadium shows at Milwaukee’s American Family Field & Minneapolis’s U.S. Bank Stadium. During 2019’s Double Down Tour, he played nights of two unique shows in each market sans opening act. The tour featured a stop at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, where he broke the venue’s concert attendance record with more than 56,000 fans in attendance.
A seven-time ACM Award winner, four-time CMA Award winner & 10-time GRAMMY nominee, Church has amassed a passionate fanbase known as the Church Choir as well as a critically acclaimed catalog of music. His previous project, the Gold-certified Desperate Man, earned a GRAMMY nomination for Best Country Album. Prior releases include the Platinum-certified Sinners Like Me, Carolina & Mr. Misunderstood, the Double-Platinum certified The Outsiders & the 3x Platinum-certified Chief, as well as 30 Gold, Platinum & multi-Platinum certified singles.

Outright genre-bending singer/songwriter Jelly Roll has quietly been building a remarkable career, under the radar and on his own terms. Since his days selling his mixtapes out of his car, he has constantly been releasing new music, touring relentlessly, consistently topping various charts, engaging a rabid fanbase & creating videos that have amassed more than 2 Billion views on YouTube. He pairs deeply personal lyrics with music that blends Old-school Rap, Classic Rock, Country and Soul to create music that is therapeutic, raw and tackles the heaviness in life.
His 2020 single “Save Me” — a confessional, vulnerable expression of self-doubt set the stage for his new season of life and took him to new heights, with more than 171 million views on YouTube and Platinum certification from the RIAA. Born and raised in Nashville’s Antioch neighborhood, the former addict and drug dealer released his album Ballads of the Broken in 2021, ahead of his sold-out hometown show at the famous Ryman Auditorium, which sold out in under an hour. Now after a history-making “breakthrough year” (American Songwriter), having just sold-out Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, releasing the riveting anthem “Need A Favor” from his debut country album WHITSITT CHAPEL, plus earning his first 3 CMT Award wins, the reigning No. 1 of Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart for 25 weeks is well on his way to mainstream, multi-genre stardom.

Paul Cauthen kept the fires of old-fashioned outlaw country burning in the 2010s, spiking his sinewy swagger with an undercurrent of gospel balanced by a hefty dose of midnight sleaze. Nicknamed “Big Velvet” due to his smooth baritone, Cauthen may have been resolutely secular, but he telegraphed those spiritual connections in the very title of his 2016 breakthrough, My Gospel, not to mention the testifying implied by the name of its 2018 successor, Have Mercy. Unlike such peers as Sturgill Simpson, Cauthen didn’t bend his country toward psychedelic rock, nor was he a savvy Nashville operator along the lines of Chris Stapleton. He was a Texas outsider, cutting his teeth in the early 2010s with Sons of Fathers before launching his own solo career with My Gospel, an acclaimed debut that showcased his idiosyncratic take on traditional country. Cauthen broadened his horizons on Room 41, the 2019 sophomore set that contained “Cocaine Country Dancing,” a disco-fied single that brought him a wider audience and set him on a path to the satirical “Country as Fuck,” the lead song from Country Coming Down.
A native of East Texas, Paul Cauthen was raised in Tyler, Texas, learning how to sing and play at the hands of his grandfather, a songwriter from Lubbock who associated with that town’s local legends Buddy Holly & the Crickets. As he grew, he was steeped in classic country and rock & roll, but he found his way toward trouble as his adolescence gave way to young adulthood. After a brief stint in jail for marijuana possession and getting kicked out of college, Cauthen turned to songwriting to stabilize himself.
While residing in San Marcos, Texas in 2010, Cauthen ran into David Beck, a singer/songwriter who shared a similar taste and sensibility. They quickly formed a duo called Beck & Cauthen, switching their name to Sons of Fathers after alternative rocker Beck sent a cease-and-desist letter. Relocating to Austin, Sons of Fathers recorded a debut album with producer Lloyd Maines, which appeared in 2011. Sons of Fathers earned good reviews and climbed into Billboard’s Americana Top Ten with both their debut and Burning Days, the sophomore set that appeared in 2013. The success started to chafe at Cauthen and he quit the group following a performance where the duo opened for Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros.
Following the split, Cauthen roamed Texas, eventually settling in the Dallas area as he slowly started a solo career, gravitating toward gutsy, soulful country as he wrote and recorded the material featured on My Gospel. Appearing in late 2016 on Lightning Rod Records, the Beau Bedford-produced My Gospel peaked at 50 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart and he worked the album throughout 2017, building up a fan base.
Cauthen recorded Have Mercy — a seven-song collection of originals that was somewhere between an album and EP — with Bedford at Modern Electric Studios in Dallas, supported by the collective of DFW musicians calling themselves the Texas Gentlemen. Have Mercy appeared in June of 2018. Around this time, Cauthen endured a difficult breakup with his girlfriend and moved out of his home to live out of Dallas hotel. Written during this tumultuous, alcohol-fueled period, his next album was titled Room 41 after his temporary home.
Room 41 featured “Cocaine Country Dancing,” a country-disco stomper that steadily racked up plays on streaming services. In 2020, Cauthen teamed up with Orville Peck as the Unrighteous Brothers for a pair of Righteous Brothers covers (“Unchained Melody,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” He also released the solo singles “America” and “Bones” that year. Cauthen used the glitzy sound of “Cocaine Country Dancing” as a touchstone for “Country as Fuck,” a glitzy sideswipe at bro country that provided the first taste of his third album, Country Coming Down.

Rob Zombie + Alice Cooper + Ministry & More at Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
2023-09-24 18:00 - 23:30 | Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre, 2121 N 83rd Ave, Phoenix, AZ, 85035, United States
The longtime frontman for ’90s industrial superstars White Zombie, New England-bred multi-hyphenate Rob Zombie went on to forge a highly successful solo career and later branched off into the world of film. A lover of B-movie camp, horror nostalgia, and psychedelic imagery, his enduring 1998 debut Hellbilly Deluxe set him apart from contemporaries by balancing brutal metal power with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and sexiness that never took itself too seriously. Over the decades, he remained a fixture in the U.S. Top Ten, scoring additional hits with 2001’s The Sinister Urge and 2006’s Educated Horses. As his film career took off, he released cult favorites such as 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses, 2005’s The Devil’s Rejects, and a pair of big-budget reboots for the Halloween series. In 2021, he issued his seventh set, The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy, and in 2022 he appeared on the soundtrack for the film The Munsters, which he also wrote and directed.
Born Robert Bartleh Cummings on January 12, 1966, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, his eclectic style was solidified early on: not only was he raised by parents who had worked in a carnival, but he was fascinated with horror movies from a young age. In addition to fostering his creative abilities in art school, he worked as a bike messenger, porn magazine art director, and production assistant for the classic children’s TV series Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Around this time, he founded the band White Zombie with bassist Sean Yseult. They remained an underground act for much of the late ’80s through a series of cult-favorite indie releases. It wasn’t until the success of their 1992 major-label debut, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1, that Zombie was launched to new prominence within the music industry, allowing him to try his hand at animation (most notably a hallucinatory sequence of the feature film Beavis & Butt-Head Do America) and directing (he was slated to helm a third chapter of The Crow franchise, working from his own screenplay, but the studio eventually pulled out of the deal).
In 1998, three years after the release of White Zombie‘s final studio album Astro-Creep: 2000, Zombie made his solo debut with the album Hellbilly Deluxe. When it sold more copies in its first week of release than any White Zombie record before it, he disbanded the group to move on as a full-time solo act, quickly issuing Hellbilly remix album American Made Music to Strip By in the fall of 1999. Starting his own label, Zombie-a-Go-Go Records, he gave bands like the Ghastly Ones a home while creating demented mix CDs like Halloween Hootenanny. He delivered remixes to a number of soundtracks while recording a new song for the Mission Impossible: 2 soundtrack, and rounded out his first major solo run with a Rob Zombie toy produced by Todd McFarlane.
He began to work on a feature film in April of 2000, funded by Universal Studios after he designed a horror display for their amusement parks. The film, House of 1000 Corpses, was produced and edited, but the studio backed out due to its own corporate standards. Zombie wrangled the rights to the film from the studio while taking out his frustrations on his next solo record, The Sinister Urge. Again working with collaborator Scott Humphrey (who had produced his first record), he drafted in a metal superstar cast including Ozzy Osbourne, Slayer guitarist Kerry King, Mötley Crüe/Methods of Mayhem drummer Tommy Lee, and Limp Bizkit‘s DJ Lethal. The record was another success, leading to a huge Christmas tour with Osbourne at the end of 2001 and another solo tour in the spring of 2002.
Zombie sold House of 1000 Corpses to MGM for a Halloween release, although offers from several smaller studios had to be refused because of the financial loss he would have taken. The film was a cult hit, prompting Zombie to begin work on his next piece of celluloid, 2005’s Devil’s Rejects. He returned to the recording studio in 2006 for Educated Horses, which veered down a more experimental path that included blues guitar, acoustic tracks, and even a sitar. Despite debuting in the Top Ten of the Billboard album charts and receiving a Grammy nomination for “The Lords of Salem,” it was his first album not to receive certification from the RIAA. A pair of best-of collections — including hits from both White Zombie and his solo discography — were released that year.
After a stint as director and co-writer of the 2007 remake of Halloween, Zombie Live, his first live album, was released in October 2007, the same month that he began an arena tour with Ozzy Osbourne. The release of his next studio album was pushed back due to Zombie’s involvement with Halloween II and in 2010, Zombie released Hellbilly Deluxe 2, his first solo album written with the help of his band (which featured John 5 and Piggy D.). Intended as a sequel to his breakout solo debut, it was supported by Zombie’s first world tour in a decade. Another remix album, Mondo Sex Head, arrived in 2012 and included reworkings from his back catalog by producers like Photek and the Bloody Beetroots.
In early 2013, Zombie returned with his fifth studio album, Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor, which would be Zombie’s lowest-selling album to date, despite its Top Ten Billboard debut. Months later, his film The Lords of Salem was released in theaters, accompanied by a soundtrack featuring songs by Zombie, Rush, and the Velvet Underground. In the years that followed, he returned his focus to his horror empire, creating the Great American Nightmare haunted house attraction, which incorporated characters from his cult films. He also began work on another movie, the crowd-funded killer clown flick 31 (which premiered at Sundance in 2016). He also released his first concert film, The Zombie Horror Picture Show, in 2014, followed by his second live album, Spookshow International Live, in 2015.
Zombie’s sixth studio LP, The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser, was released in April 2016. Featuring an abrasive, industrial edge that hadn’t been heard since Sinister Urge, Electric Warlock was produced by Zeuss and recorded at Goathouse Studios by Zombie and his band, which included former Marilyn Manson bandmates John 5 and Ginger Fish, as well as bassist Piggy D. That year, he also released the film 31 and recorded his band’s set from Riot Fest for Astro Creep: 2000 Live, which arrived in 2018. Months later, he reunited with Marilyn Manson for a joint headlining summer tour, which was kicked off by their collaborative cover of “Helter Skelter.” Zombie closed the decade with the final installment of his Firefly family film trilogy, 3 from Hell, which was released in late 2019.
On Halloween weekend 2020, the next album era was launched with “The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition),” the Grammy-nominated single from 2021’s The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy. Issued in March, the album became Zombie’s seventh consecutive Top Ten on the Billboard 200. In 2022, he produced, wrote, and directed the horror comedy film The Munsters and appeared on the soundtrack. ~ Neil Z. Yeung & Jason Ankeny, Rovi

The man (and the band) who first brought shock rock to the masses, Alice Cooper became one of the most successful and influential acts of the ’70s with their gritty but anthemic hard rock and a live show that delivered a rock & roll chamber of horrors, thrilling fans and cultivating outrage from authority figures (which made fans love them all the more). The name Alice Cooper originally referred to both the band and its lead singer (born Vincent Furnier), as they played dark, eccentric, psychedelic rock on their first two albums, Pretties for You (1969) and Easy Action (1970). After a spell in Detroit where they soaked up the high-energy influence of the Stooges and the MC5, Alice Cooper scored breakthrough hits in 1971 with “I’m Eighteen” and the album Love It to Death, in which the group finally stumbled upon the formula that made them stars, blending tough, dirty, guitar-fueled hard rock with Cooper’s sneering vocals and lyrics that were by turns relatable (“I’m Eighteen,” “Body”) and willfully spooky (“Black Juju,” “The Ballad of Dwight Frye”). Coupled with a live show that included snakes, electric chairs, fake blood, and mock hangings, Alice Cooper had something to offend everyone, and from 1971’s Killer to 1973’s Billion Dollar Babies, they could seemingly do no wrong. Following the commercial and critical disappointment of 1973’s Muscle of Love, the Alice Cooper band broke up, and Alice went forward as a solo act, delivering a cleaner and more professional variation on the themes of his early ’70s hits, while the band attempted to continue as Billion Dollar Babies, with little success. Cooper’s glossy 1975 solo debut, Welcome to My Nightmare, was a massive hit, and his shows became even more elaborate as he became a regular fixture on television, but subsequent solo releases saw his following dwindle until 1989’s Trash and 1991’s Hey Stoopid, where he blended his trademark sound with hair metal arrangements and production and gained a new audience. Cooper’s dedicated fan base kept him in the game long after his ’70s peak, touring regularly and releasing albums like 2021’s high-spirited Detroit Stories and 2023’s tightly wound, live sounding set Road.
Vincent Furnier formed his first group, the Earwigs, as an Arizona teenager in the early ’60s. Changing the band’s name to the Spiders in 1965, the group was eventually called the Nazz (not to be confused with Todd Rundgren‘s band of the same name). The Spiders and the Nazz both released local singles that were moderately popular. In 1968, after discovering there was another band with the same name, the group changed its name to Alice Cooper. According to band legend, the name came to Furnier during a Ouija board session, where he was told he was the reincarnation of a 17th century witch of the same name. Comprised of vocalist Furnier — who would soon begin calling himself Alice Cooper — guitarist Mike Bruce, guitarist Glen Buxton, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith, the group moved to California in 1968. There they met Shep Gordon, who became their manager, and Frank Zappa, who signed Alice Cooper to his Straight Records imprint.
Alice Cooper released their first album, Pretties for You, in 1969. Easy Action followed early in 1970, but failed to chart. The group’s reputation in Los Angeles was slowly shrinking, so the band moved to Furnier’s hometown of Detroit. For the next year, the group refined their bizarre stage show. Late in 1970, the group’s contract was transferred to Straight‘s distributor Warner Bros., and they began recording their third album with producer Bob Ezrin. With Ezrin’s assistance, Alice Cooper developed their classic heavy metal crunch on 1971’s Love It to Death, which featured the number 21 hit single “Eighteen”; the album peaked at number 35 and went gold. The success enabled the group to develop a more impressive, elaborate live show, which made them a highly popular concert attraction across the U.S. and eventually the U.K. Killer, released late in 1971, was another gold album.
Released in the summer of 1972, School’s Out was Alice Cooper’s breakthrough record, peaking at number two and selling over a million copies. The title song became a Top Ten hit in the U.S. and a number one single in the U.K. Billion Dollar Babies, released the following year, was the group’s biggest hit, reaching number one in both America and Britain; the album’s first single, “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” became a Top Ten hit in Britain, peaking at number 25 in the U.S. Muscle of Love appeared late in 1973, yet it failed to capitalize on the success of Billion Dollar Babies. After Muscle of Love, Furnier and the rest of Alice Cooper parted ways to pursue other projects. Having officially changed his name to Alice Cooper, Furnier embarked on a similarly theatrical solo career; the rest of the band released one unsuccessful album under the name Billion Dollar Babies, while Mike Bruce and Neal Smith both recorded solo albums that were never issued. In the fall of 1974, a compilation of Alice Cooper’s five Warner albums, entitled Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits, became a Top Ten hit.
For his first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare, Cooper hired Lou Reed‘s backing band from Rock ‘N’ Roll Animal — guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, bassist Prakash John, keyboardist Joseph Chrowski, and drummer Penti Glan — as his supporting group. Released in the spring of 1975, the record was similar to his previous work and became a Top Ten hit in America, launching the hit acoustic ballad “Only Women Bleed.” Its success put an end to any idea of reconvening Alice Cooper the band. Its follow-up, 1976’s Alice Cooper Goes to Hell, was another hit, going gold in the U.S. After that album, Cooper’s career began to slip, partially due to changing trends and partially due to his alcoholism. Cooper entered rehab in 1978, writing an album about his treatment called From the Inside (1978) with Bernie Taupin, Elton John‘s lyricist. During the early ’80s, Cooper continued to release albums and tour, yet he was no longer as popular as he was during his early-’70s heyday.
Cooper made a successful comeback in the late ’80s, sparked by his appearances in horror films and a series of pop-metal bands that paid musical homage to his classic early records and concerts. Constrictor, released in 1986, started his comeback, but it was 1989’s Trash that returned Cooper to the spotlight. Produced by the proven hitmaker Desmond Child, Trash featured guest appearances by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, and most of Aerosmith; the record became a Top Ten hit in Britain and peaked at number 20 in the U.S., going platinum. “Poison,” a midtempo rocker featured on the album, became Cooper’s first Top Ten single since 1977. After the release of Trash, he continued to star in the occasional film, tour, and record, although he wasn’t able to retain the audience he’d recaptured with Trash. Still, 1991’s Hey Stoopid and 1994’s The Last Temptation were generally solid, professional efforts that helped Cooper settle into a comfortable cult status without damaging the critical goodwill surrounding his ’70s output. After a live album, 1997’s Fistful of Alice, Cooper returned on the smaller Spitfire label in 2000 with Brutal Planet, and Dragontown a year later. The Eyes of Alice Cooper appeared in 2003 and found Cooper and company playing a more stripped-down brand of near-garage rock. Dirty Diamonds from 2005 was nearly as raw and hit the streets around the same time Cooper premiered his syndicated radio show Nights with Alice Cooper. Three years later he returned with Along Came a Spider, a concept album that told the story of a spider-obsessed serial killer. In 2010, he released the live album Theatre of Death, along with a download-only EP of redone Cooper classics titled Alice Does Alice. 2011’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare, a sequel to his 1975 conceptual classic of the same name (minus the 2), was recorded with longtime co-conspirator Bob Ezrin, and featured 14 brand-new cuts that spanned multiple genres and relied on the talents of a host of previous members of the Alice Cooper band (including Steve Hunter), as well as a guest spot from pop superstar Ke$ha. The same year, he was awarded the Kerrang! Icon Award.
Advancing years didn’t prevent Cooper from maintaining a hectic schedule, and by 2012 he was touring with Iron Maiden and headlining Bloodstock Open Air. Aside from his musical pursuits, he also starred in Tim Burton’s adaptation of Dark Shadows, playing himself alongside Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, and Michelle Pfeiffer. He returned to touring in 2014 as the opening act for Mötley Crüe‘s final tour, and the following year he unveiled a new supergroup called Hollywood Vampires, which included Johnny Depp and Joe Perry. They subsequently released an album of rock covers. He reunited with Ezrin yet again for his 27th studio record. Paranormal was released in 2017, featuring contributions from ZZ Top‘s Billy Gibbons, Deep Purple‘s Roger Glover, and U2‘s Larry Mullen, alongside original bandmembers Smith, Dunaway, and Bruce. The album was also released in a special edition with a bonus disc of live material. Early the following year, an EP was released, centered around Paranormal single “The Sound of A,” which included a handful of live cuts from his 2017 tour. In August 2018, Cooper released A Paranormal Evening at the Olympia Paris, a live album drawn from his European tour in support of the Paranormal album. A 2019 EP, Breadcrumbs, saw Cooper paying tribute to his hometown of Detroit with songs written about his early garage rock heroes. He continued the Detroit homage on his next full length, 2021’s Detroit Stories. In addition to many new songs of his own, the album included covers of Bob Seger, Detroit indie mainstays Outrageous Cherry, and the Velvet Underground‘s “Rock & Roll” presented in the style of Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels‘ 1971 rendition. The LP peaked at number 47 on the Billboard 200 and at number seven on the Top Independent Albums chart. The following year saw the release of the concert album Detroit Stories/Paranormal/A Paranormal Evening with Alice Cooper at The Olympia, Paris. In August of 2023, Cooper released a new album, Road. This set of new, guitar-heavy tunes sought to capture the power his band had in an on-stage setting. In addition to the album’s live sound, Road was held together by the loose conceptual theme of situations unique to the rock and roll touring life. The album came out concurrently with a tour Cooper was booked for supporting Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard, and he had plans for a co-headlining tour with Rob Zombie later in the year. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Mark Deming, Rovi

Born in 1981 in Chicago, Ministry has been the lifetime passion project of founder Al Jourgensen, considered to be the pioneer of industrial music. In its early days, Ministry was identifiable by its heavy synth-pop material in line with the new sounds and technology that were being developed in the ‘80s. Ministry’s output began with four 12” singles on Wax Trax! Records in 1981 before the first LP With Sympathy in 1983 via Arista Records. As time progressed however, so did Ministry, quickly developing a harsher, and more stylized sound that the band soon became infamous for on seminal albums Twitch (1986), The Land of Rape and Honey (1988), and The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste (1989). With the release of Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and The Way to Suck Eggs (1992), Ministry hit an all time high in the mainstream musical realm and received its first Grammy nomination. In total, Ministry has been nominated for a Grammy award six times. After an indefinite hiatus in 2013, Ministry’s 2018 album, AmeriKKKant, continued to reflect Jourgensen’s views on the frightening state of society and politics. Ministry’s newest album MORAL HYGIENE is set to be released on October 1st, 2021 via Nuclear Blast Records.

American hard rock outfit Filter crushes caustic, head-rattling aggression into a melodic, electronic-leaning industrial package, bridging the worlds of alternative and metal. Emerging as one of the most popular bands in the mid-’90s post-industrial alternative scene, they evolved from a Nine Inch Nails offshoot into a fully realized entity under the guidance of primary creative force Richard Patrick, who was a part of NIN in their early days. Breaking into the mainstream with their 1995 debut Short Bus, Filter made their contribution to the era with the enduring single “Hey Man, Nice Shot” before expanding their creative scope and incorporating fresh elements for their highest-charting effort to date, Title of Record. That album also spawned their highest-charting single with the surprisingly vulnerable ballad “Take a Picture,” which peaked just shy of the Top Ten on the Hot 100. 2002’s The Amalgamut kept them firmly entrenched as rock radio favorites, but as the landscape shifted into the 2010s, fluctuating chart performance and sales created a lull, with 2013’s The Sun Comes Out Tonight briefly pulling Filter to their best showing on the Billboard 200 in over a decade. At the close of the 2010s, Patrick celebrated Filter’s ’90s peak with deluxe reissues of their first two efforts. Material from sessions intended as a follow-up to one of those albums, Short Bus, would wind up on their eighth album, 2023’s The Algorithm.
Filter came to life in the early ’90s, created by vocalist and primary member Richard Patrick, who had been a guitarist with Nine Inch Nails during that band’s Pretty Hate Machine and Broken eras. In 1993, Patrick decided to leave NIN to form his own band. He met Brian Liesegang through a mutual friend and the pair began to record together. Patrick handled vocals, guitars, bass, programming, and drums, while Liesegang covered programming, guitars, keyboards, and drums. Since they had both experimented with electronics early in their careers, the band’s initial sound was reminiscent of a more-muscular brand of industrial than NIN. In 1995, after signing with Reprise, they released their debut full-length, Short Bus, which was recorded at a small house on the outskirts of Cleveland. The album became a surprise hit and — thanks to the MTV and alternative radio hit “Hey Man, Nice Shot” — was certified gold by the summer. Eventually, Short Bus went platinum. In order to promote the record, the duo recruited guitarist Geno Lenardo, bassist Frank Cavanaugh, and drummer Matt Walker and embarked on tour.
To keep interest stoked, Filter also contributed a prolific string of tracks to cult favorite soundtracks, delivering “Jurassitol” (The Crow: City of Angels), the Crystal Method collaboration “(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do” (Spawn), and “Thanks Bro” and “One” for a pair of X-Files compilations. Despite the band’s burgeoning status, Liesegang departed in 1997 over creative differences. Patrick retained the Filter name for 1999’s sophomore release Title of Record, which was also certified platinum and spawned an even bigger mainstream hit with the crossover Top 20 single “Take a Picture.”
Filter’s third album, The Amalgamut, followed three years later, after which the band went on a short hiatus while Patrick entered rehabilitation for addiction. Around 2005, he announced the formation of a new band, Army of Anyone, which he created with former members of Stone Temple Pilots and David Lee Roth‘s touring band. However, Patrick did not abandon his original group, and Filter returned in 2008 with the emotional Anthems for the Damned, dedicated to a friend who was killed in Iraq. The band’s first greatest-hits compilation, The Very Best Things (1995-2008), followed in 2009.
Filter’s fifth set, 2010’s The Trouble with Angels, marked an unapologetic return to the sound of Short Bus. The Trouble with Angels performed well enough — it debuted at 64 on the Billboard 200, reaching number seven on the Top Hard Rock Albums chart — to attract the attention of the hard rock label Wind-Up, which released the band’s next album, the Bob Marlette-produced The Sun Comes Out Tonight, in June 2013. The album incorporated an updated sound, adding some harmonies and electronic elements close to musical progeny Linkin Park. Sun Comes Out was also their highest-charting album since 2002. While recording a follow-up, Patrick’s supporting band changed again and he was joined by Oumi Kapila (guitar, programming), Ashley Dzerigian (bass), Chris Reeve (drums), and Bobby Miller (keyboards). In January 2016, Filter returned with the single “Take Me to Heaven,” which was included on their seventh LP, Crazy Eyes. While charting modestly on the Billboard 200, the album performed well on the U.S. Alternative and Hard Rock charts.
In 2018, over two decades after Filter’s breakthrough, Patrick reconnected with Liesegang to craft a sequel to Short Bus, which they referred to as “ReBus.” Various setbacks eventually forced Patrick to take another approach, but to celebrate their debut all the same, an expanded edition of Short Bus was released with a handful of remixes. The following year, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Title of Record, Patrick also reissued the album, bundling it with the fan-favorite soundtrack contributions from that era. A smattering of material from those 2018 Short Bus sequel sessions were eventually revived for The Algorithm, the band’s eighth set. Released in August 2023, the LP featured singles “For the Beaten” and Obliteration.” ~ Neil Z. Yeung

Escape The Fate at Marquee Theatre
2023-09-26 17:30 - 23:30 | Marquee Theatre, 730 N Mill Ave, Tempe, 85281, United States
In their almost 20 years as a band there have been many changes to the lineup of ESCAPE THE FATE– with vocalist Craig Mabbitt holding down vocals for 15 of them. In preparation for their upcoming album –OUT OF THE SHADOWS– they have reached peak stability and happiness. They may come at the music from different directions, but both Ortiz and Mabbitt agree on the importance of the band’s live presentation. “Whether it is 500 or 50,000 people in the room, we BRING IT,” says Mabbitt. Ortiz agrees and adds “the honor of the ability to do this for a living for our amazing fans is not lost on us. We are really grateful.” Gratitude and humility are the buzzwords for the new ESCAPE THE FATE.
Another thing that is new is the official addition of longtime bassist, Erik Jensen, to the lineup. TJ Bell has been ‘the glue’ that held the chaotic lot together in his nearly 10 years with the band. Matti Hoffman is the coffee-chugging, guitar-solo-writing, high-energy new guitarist taking on his duties while Kevin ‘Thrasher’ Gruft explores the world of production.
Laying themselves bare for the fans, it is a re-invigorated ESCAPE THE FATE on OUT OF THE SHADOWS. New label (Big Noise – run by longtime collaborator producer John Feldmann), new bandmates and a new lease on life for each of them, the only thing that has not changed is ESCAPE THE FATE’s love for their fans and determination to give them the very best of which they are capable.

Post-hardcore band Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows (D.R.U.G.S.) is back with a new full-length album, ‘DESTROY REBUILD,’ their first release since 2011’s acclaimed self-titled debut album. The new record offers listeners the uniquely nostalgic D.R.U.G.S. sound they have been craving while also exploring new territories making ‘DESTROY REBUILD’ the perfect progression and exciting new chapter. The aggressive melodies are paired with low-tuned guitars and introspective lyrics to create the nostalgic alternative rock sound that we all grew up with and have come to crave.
To capture this sound, Owens connected with A-List producer Howard Benson whose past work with My Chemical Romance and The All American Rejects heavily influenced the modern alternative rock world. Benson’s raw talent for recording helped shape the structures and harmonies of the album. Owens found this collaborative process cathartic and embraced his newfound flow of creativity.
Owens’ knack for creating sincere lyrics shines through while touching on topics like destiny, perspective, and redemption on ‘DESTROY REBUILD.’ It is a physical manifestation of the course he has taken in his musical career and encapsulates each step along the way. It is a bright reflection of one’s life and actions, and it encourages the listener to do the same in their own life.

Point North is a rock band from Los Angeles, California.   Twitter: @pointnorthband Insta: @pointnorthband Facebook: pointnorthband Website: www.pointnorthband.com   Contact: pointnorthband@gmail.com

“Listen to the lyrics, they’re going to make you feel something… ” – Mixi
That something is the essence of Stitched Up Heart – a band built around the strength that comes from realizing we are the only ones that control our lives, and focused on the hope that reminds us there is always light at the end of the darkest tunnel. It’s something heavy and powerful, and it is something undeniable – Mixi’s voice taking flight amidst anthems of self-awareness that bridge the unrelenting confidence of In This Moment’s Maria Brink and the soulful transcendence of Adele.
“When I formed this band I was depressed and going through heartbreak. The name is supposed to give people strength and courage,” professes the frontwoman in a warm and certain tone. “We all go through things that make us think we can’t go further but, especially when times are bad, I want people to see that time will pass and it will get better. The hopeful lyrics on this record are on purpose – I’ve been living in the dark for too long, it’s time to come into the light. You need to pick yourself up because nobody is going to do that for you. There are some sick people out there, but there is beauty in everyone – and you need to love yourself before you can stitch that heart back up.”

Motionless in White at Mesa Amphitheatre
2023-09-27 17:00 - 23:30 | Mesa Amphitheatre, 263 N. Center St, Mesa, 85201, United States
In 2006, Motionless In White materialized out of Scranton, PA with an inimitable conjuration of sharp metallic rock, industrial, magnetic melodies, and larger-than-life visual imagery. The quintet—Chris Motionless [Vocals], Ricky Olson [Guitar], Ryan Sitkowski [guitar], Vinny Mauro [drums], and Justin Morrow [bass]—quietly clawed their way to the forefront of hard rock, gathering nearly half-a-billion cumulative streams and views to date. Following the success of Creatures [2010] and Infamous [2012], Reincarnate [2014] sunk its teeth into the Top 10 of the Billboard Top 200, bowing at #9 and capturing #1 on the Top Rock Albums Chart. Both Graveyard Shift [2017] and Disguise [2019] cracked the Top 5 of the Top Hard Rock Albums Chart and Top Rock Albums Chart. Along the way, they sold out headline tours and supported everyone from Slipknot and Korn to Breaking Benjamin. Not to mention, Motionless In White have collaborated with Jonathan Davis of Korn, Maria Brink of In This Moment, Dani Filth of Cradle Of Filth, Tim Sköld of KMFDM, Caleb Shomo of Beartooth, and more. The five-piece kept busy throughout 2020 with the Deadstream event performance of Creatures for its decade-anniversary, a cover of The Killers’ “Somebody Told Me,” and the standalone single “Creatures X: To The Grave.” Now in 2022, Motionless In White are set to return with their new album Scoring The End of the World which sees them perfecting the poetically pummeling sound they patented.

For A Tear in the Fabric of Life, Knocked Loose wanted to do something different. Or they may have been forced to. With quarantine upending their extensive touring schedule — “we’ve kind of been consistently on the road since 2014,” says vocalist Bryan Garris — the group found themselves in early 2020 sequestered near Louisville, in Oldham County, Ky., where they’re from. By June, they were hunkered down in a cabin in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., focused on writing a concept album. By the end of September they had finished recording.
What they came up with is a six song-EP that expands on the narratives hinted at on A Different Shade of Blue, their 2019 full length, and grows beyond them sonically. It’s the band’s most dynamic and contained offering to date, and a balancing act: a mid-length EP with grand ambitions and scope, one full of new sonic elements and a cohesive aesthetic that hangs onto Knocked Loose’s trademark anthemic delivery.

An uninhibited eight-stringed dual barrage of frenetic riffs and dynamic chord progression is exactly what the crushing new AFTER THE BURIAL delivers with pinpoint precision. This highly anticipated new offering is quickly going to raise the bar for all others within the metal genre as this group effectively unleashes a frenzy of jaw-dropping dual guitar dynamics that is backed by a captivating energy and groove resulting in an overall unrelenting output of punishment. ATB is hell-bent on forging their own unique path within the extreme metal genre and they are well on their way to that very goal.
This is an extreme metal hybrid that is a voracious assault on all the senses forcing your brain to fire on all cylinders in order to process the amount of material that is currently being pounded into your ears. This is thinking man’s metal and it’s not for the weak minded.
The tech-wizardry is amped way up, the breakdowns are massive and face-melting and the vocal delivery is the most devastating yet. Already lauded for their technically impressive yet well structured style of songwriting, AFTER THE BURIAL certainly takes things up a notch or two with this newest outing.

Alpha Wolf have spent the past few years growing, learning, understanding. Taking lessons from past mistakes, and accepting that which cannot be changed. 2017’s Mono saw Alpha Wolf instantly which from that small band from Burnie in Tasmania, to a band that was on the lips of heavy music fans the world over. Then their follow up single Black Mamba caught the attention of SharpTone Records, who joined forced with Australian label Greyscale Records to deliver Alpha Wolf to the world with their new EP Fault. Since then, the band has had their first taste of international stages as part of the Impericon Festival tour through Europe alongside new label mates Emmure. Every night the band won over new fans, fans already hungry for the band’s return.

Corey Taylor + Wargasm & Luna Aura at Marquee Theatre
2023-09-28 18:00 - 23:30 | Marquee Theatre, 730 N Mill Ave, Tempe, 85281, United States
Corey Taylor redefines what it means to be a Renaissance Man. In the span of a year, he’ll go from fronting Grammy Award-winning hard rock leaders Slipknot and Stone Sour to penning a New York Times-bestseller to acting in a film. No matter what he does, he always manages to connect as well. You’ll hear him not only because he’s typically the loudest one in the room (which doesn’t hurt his cause either), but because he’s also got something to say.
Now approaching two decades, Slipknot’s rise is legendary. In addition to notching a 2005 Grammy Award in the category of “Best Metal Performance” for “Before I Forget,” the group has achieved four multi-platinum albums with .5: The Gray Chapter fast approaching gold status. They’ve headlined sold out tours globally as well as numerous festivals Rockstar Mayhem Festival (twice), Rock on the Range, Download (U.K.), Rock In Rio (Brazil), Soundwave (Australia), and Slipknot’s very own Knotfest, in the U.S., Japan and Mexico. Simultaneously, Stone Sour built a legacy of their own. The band’s canon includes two gold-selling albums, a platinum single in “Through Glass,” as well as the sprawling two-disc epic House of Gold & Bones Parts 1&2, which even encompasses an acclaimed graphic novel series of the same name for Dark Horse Comics. Everybody from Dave Grohl to Travis Barker and Tech N9ne have sought Taylor for collaborations.

Wargasm (stylised as 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐀𝐒𝐌) are a British electronic rock duo from London. Formed in 2018 by musician Sam Matlock and model Milkie Way, they have released 11 solo singles including “Spit.” which has gained 5 million streams on Spotify, and over 400 thousand views on YouTube. Alternative Press listed them as a defining part of the 2020s wave of nu metal, and NME listed them as one of 2021’s essential emerging artists. The pair also took home “Best UK Breakthrough” at The Heavy Music Awards in 2021 and have received widespread acclaim from Kerrang! and Revolver. Their debut full-length release, Explicit: The Mixxxtape, was released on September 9, 2022.

Genre-bending alternative powerhouse LUNA AURA is hell bent on paving her own path. The independent singer-songwriter, producer, and triple threat delivers songs that are brimming with messages of rebellion, feminism, and individuality.
LUNA, who began penning songs and performing at age 14, has already shared stages with The Killers, K.Flay, Muse, Weezer, Garbage, P!nk, Odesza, and more of music’s biggest names. She has spent time on the festival market, playing KAABOO, Lost Lake, So What Music Fest, EMERGE and many others. Her work and artistry has been featured in PAPER, GQ, Teen Vogue, NYLON, MTV, VH1, Ones To Watch and more.
The LA-via-Phoenix native draws on childhood influences like Garbage, NIN, Hole and Gwen Stefani. Her latest work is fresh, provocative, and bold. Perfectly matched with her vibrant, in-your-face, live performances.
AURA is set to release her third EP “THE FICTION” in September 2023. To hear more, tune in to Rock This, New Noise, Walk Like a Badass, All New Rock, Totally Alt, Rock Rising, Fierce Femmes, Pulp, and more…

Parkway Drive at Mesa Amphitheatre
2023-10-01 16:30 - 23:30 | Mesa Amphitheatre, 263 N. Center St, Mesa, 85201, United States
In the kitchen of the Byron Bay home of Winston McCall stands a refrigerator, adorned on one side by a quote from Tom Waits: “I want beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
This, the Parkway Drive vocalist says, is a pretty good summation of himself. It holds true, too, as one of the guiding principles behind Darker Still, the seventh full-length album to be born of this picturesque and serene corner of north-eastern NSW, Australia, and the defining musical statement to date from one of modern metal’s most revered bands.
Darker Still, McCall says, is the vision he and his bandmates – guitarists Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick, bassist Jia O’Connor and drummer Ben Gordon – have held in their mind’s eye since a misfit group of friends first convened in their parents’ basements and backyards in 2003. The journey to reach this moment has seen Parkway evolve from metal underdogs to festival-headlining behemoth, off the back of close to 20 gruelling years, six critically and commercially acclaimed studio albums (all of which achieving Gold status in their home nation), three documentaries, one live album, and many, many thousands of shows.
“When Parkway originally started out, we all were trying to push ourselves to do more than we possibly could,” is how McCall explains it. “The better we got at it, the more comfortable we got, to the point where it became all comfortable. That is when we chose to acknowledge that just being comfortable was not necessarily doing justice to the skills and the creativity that you have grown over the years. What you hear on Darker Still is the final fulfilment of our ability to learn and grow catching up with the imagination that we have always had. These are the kinds of sounds we always had in mind. This is the way we always dreamed.”
To understand that growth is to understand Darker Still, both musically and thematically. Those who thought they had Parkway Drive figured out – the unrivalled energy, the high-octane breakdowns, McCall’s trademark bark – need reconsider everything they know about Australia’s masters of heavy. Not that anyone truly paying to their recent evolution should be surprised, though. “This is a journey we began with Ire, and which grew further still on Reverence,” McCall says, referencing the band’s preceding 2015 and 2018 works, respectively. In that context, it is easy to view Darker Still as the curtain-closer on a transformative trilogy that has seen Parkway reach new heights of creativity and success by eschewing the restrictive, safe conventions of genre and abandoning their own self-imposed rules in favour of a wide-eyed appreciation of bold new horizons. “There are compositions and songs that we’d never attempted before – or, to be more accurate, which we have attempted in the past, but not had the courage, time or understanding to pull off,” McCall reveals.
The vocalist would be the first to tell you that in order to grow, you have to let go of the past; a mantra Parkway embraced tighter than ever before when it came to blueprinting Darker Still. McCall describes how “we wanted to make a record that stood alone from the records we hear at this point in time”; one that delivers on “a more expansive sound, which allows a new weight to fall into the music.” Gordon, meanwhile, says it features “some of the heaviest moments we have ever created, but it is a different kind of heavy: an emotional catharsis that you can feel in every cell in your body.” The drummer is brutally honest in his reflection that, between “the ever-changing COVID lockdowns, government mandates, travels restrictions and tense personal relationships within the band”, Darker Still was the most challenging moment of the band’s career. Ling offers agreement, admitting that the three-year journey of writing and recording – which commenced as far back as April 2019 and would conclude in February 2022 following three months in the studio with producer and engineer pairing George and Dean Hadjichristou – “broke me by the end” as he juggled lockdown family life with the “daunting task of trying to stick everyone’s ideas together” in his downstairs home studio.
“When writing songs, we have a few questions that we ask ourselves that helps define our creative path,” he explains of the gruelling process. “‘What will this song achieve?’ ‘Why does this song deserve to be on this album?’ ‘What emotional response will this song provoke in the listener?’ If all these points check out, we know we are on the right path.”
“We are very much a collaborative band when it comes to song writing,” says Gordon. “Each song goes through several layers of scrutiny and refinements before the final version emerges. Some songs are completely unrecognisable from the first rendition to what ends up on the record.”
And so while Darker Still remains irrefutably Parkway Drive, it finds the band sonically standing shoulder to shoulder with rock and metal’s greats – Metallica, Pantera, Machine Head, Guns N’ Roses – as much as it does their metalcore contemporaries. “I wanted a classic guitar tone for this record,” explains Ling, who credits much of his inspiration to the connection his riffs have with a crowd in a live setting. “I’ve always been drawn to early ‘90s metal, so something along these lines with a modern edge was my jive. Creatively my goal was to write intricate and intriguing music that is also simple enough for everyone to understand and enjoy. We made a conscious decision to not go overboard with layering and soundscaping. This move would help reinforce our raw and classic album vision.”
“Production wise, we wanted to have a slight throwback to the ‘90s, leaning into some more real and natural sounding tones, which gives the record more character,” nods Gordon, whose work behind the kit on Darker Still – “Less about how much I could show off, and more about what will best compliment the song,” is his simple assessment – is emblematic of the record at large. “It took us a long time to learn about the importance of dynamics,” he says. “We now pick our moments much more and let the song breathe when it needs to.”
It is a revivified sound that provides the backdrop for some of McCall’s most personal and introspective songs yet. Exploring the concept of the ‘dark night of the soul’ – “The idea of reaching a point in your life where you are faced with a reckoning of your structure of beliefs, your sense of self and your place in the world, to a point where it’s irreconcilable with the way that you are as a person,” as McCall describes – Darker Still unfurls like the great rock concept albums, from Pink Floyd to, most comparably, Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral.
Amongst ruminations on society’s fear of death, societal isolation and a loss of humanity, its 11 tracks play out in a classic three-act structure. Ground Zero opens its ‘setup’; a “reckoning with your own internal monologue, says McCall, which ominously speaks to “the fights, the falls, the scars and broken bones” and how “beneath it all, the cracks begin to show…” Its second act – its ‘confrontation’ – frames the album’s title track at its core: a classic rock epic about “love and time” that spans a near seven-minutes and which evokes Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters. The album’s ‘resolution’, meanwhile, concludes with From The Heart Of Darkness: a brooding monster that opens with McCall’s contemplative searching (“There’s a war going on inside, nobody’s safe from / You can run, but you can’t hide / When it’s your soul you must confront”) before exploding with its mosh-call of “Fury be my victory!”
“I wanted the end of the record to mirror my experience to a degree of what this journey has been like for me,” McCall reveals. “I found that I was always afraid of showing defiance to be honest and true to myself, even if that meant sacrificing who I was to become a better version of who I could be. That has to be ripped from the darkest part of you, because the darkest part of you is what you are always afraid of in the first place. It’s the thing that you don’t want to shine the light on. It’s the element that you don’t want to show people, which you shy away from, which you’re too scared to embody.”
It is a closing statement that truly defines Darker Still. This is the Parkway Drive the band have been striving to be for two decades. Ling says it best: “I’m really proud of what we have achieved together, and feel that as musicians, we have really ascended to new realms of class and ability.” Emerging from the darkness of the past few years, this is the true face of Parkway: redefined and resolute, focused in mind and defiant in spirit.

An Aussie metalcore group with highly confessional lyrics and a melody-driven emo-tinged sound, the Amity Affliction emerged in 2008 with Severed Ties. They hit their stride in 2012 with the release of their third full-length effort, Chasing Ghosts, which like subsequent outings This Could Be Heartbreak (2016), Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them (2020), and Not Without My Ghosts (2023), soared to the top of the Australian charts, and found international success as well.
Brisbane post-hardcore act the Amity Affliction were formed in 2002 by Ahren Stringer and Troy Brady, a pair of longtime pals — still high schoolers at the time — who had been affected by the death of their friend in a road accident. The band — a quartet rounded out by bassist Garth Buchanan and drummer Lachlan Faulkner — released a demo in 2003 and an EP in 2004 but didn’t start making waves in earnest until sometime later. In 2005, after unclean vocalist Joel Birch joined the fold, Amity Affliction went on a touring spell, working up a nationwide reputation as a powerful live band. In 2007, they added keyboard player Trad Nathan, switched drummers with Ryan Burt replacing Faulkner, and parted ways with Buchanan, with Stringer taking on bass duties. The newly formed group then hit the studio to record the EP High Hopes, followed in 2008 by the debut album Severed Ties, which peaked at number 26 on the ARIA charts.
Amity Affliction toured Australia again in 2008 and 2009, both as a support and headlining act, and in 2010 they released their second album, Youngbloods, which confirmed that their efforts paid off, reaching number six on the ARIA charts. They would top that achievement just two years later when their third album, Chasing Ghosts, debuted at number one on the ARIA charts. A fourth album, Let the Ocean Take Me, arrived on Roadrunner in 2014 and was the band’s second consecutive ARIA chart-topper. That year, Brady left the band, leaving Stringer as the only founding member.
After months of touring Ocean, the quartet returned to the studio to record their fifth LP. This Could Be Heartbreak arrived in August 2016, topping the ARIA charts once again. The band toured Australia, the U.S., and Europe in support of the record, before Ryan Burt left in February 2018 owing to mental health concerns. Later that year, the Amity Affliction released their sixth album, Misery. Their first concept effort, it featured an overarching narrative chronicling the tale of three friends on a dark quest for vengeance. Two years later the band returned with weighty and depressive Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them, their first studio LP with new drummer Joe Longobardi. 2023’s pummeling Not Without My Ghosts followed an over-arching theme of mortality and featured guest spots from late New Zealand rapper Louie Knuxx, Comeback Kid‘s Andrew Neufeld, the Plot in You‘s Landon Tewers, and Phem.

Northlane’s new offering, Obsidian, is their most expansive and dynamic album yet. Self-recorded and self-produced with the help of their longtime collaborator Chris Blancato, the sound Northlane have been working towards over the span of their career has been fully realised on Obsidian. Sonically spanning the gamut of their entire discography, Northlane’s trademark heavy comfortably coexists with techno, drum and bass, intriguing synths, perplexing time signatures and widescreen choruses. It’s this fearless evolution that keeps Northlane light years ahead of everyone else in heavy music.

Growth, and the desire for eternal forward motion have been the concepts that have defined Make Them Suffer since the very beginning; and have been the foundations that led them from the world’s most remote capital city Perth in Australia, to becoming a household name on stages around the world. As they have traversed previous eras, the five piece have grown through the genres of deathcore, melodic death metal, & heavy metalcore; and as they continue on this path, look to be defined by nothing more than the label ‘creative’. Through ‘Ether’, ’27’, and ‘Hollowed Heart’, the band has worked to shed themselves of the shackles of expectation, and as they look towards the open road that lies ahead of them, the light that guides the way has a name, ‘How To Survive A Funeral’.
To assist in the redefinition of every line the band is known for, Make Them Suffer enlisted the assistance of Drew Fulk A.K.A. WZRDBLD, who has worked with everyone from Motionless In White & Bullet For My Valentine, to Yelawolf & Lil’ Wayne. The band travelled to LA to shack up at Fulk’s studio, the first time in their career working this closely with a producer, and the result is truly something unique in the current climate of heavy music. The band’s fourth full length sees inspirations from their past and present sounds twisted together into a package that will define Make Them Suffer’s place amongst their contemporaries as a truly creative act.

Foo Fighters + The Breeders at Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre
2023-10-03 19:30 - 23:30 | Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre, 2121 N 83rd Ave, Phoenix, AZ, 85035, United States
With alt-rock anthems heavy on melody and personality, Foo Fighters have grown from Dave Grohl‘s humble solo project into one of the biggest — and most enduring — acts in modern rock. Once his self-recorded debut became a hit in 1995, the former Nirvana drummer turned Foo Fighters into a full-fledged band whose lineup coalesced after the 1997 release of The Colour and the Shape. With 1999’s There Is Nothing Left to Lose, the group’s sound gelled into a recognizable signature built upon the hooky loud-quiet-loud dynamics of Pixies and Nirvana, a modern rock sound anchored by Grohl‘s love of classic guitar rock. Alone among their peers, Foo Fighters displayed a rigorous work ethic, recording and touring relentlessly into the 2020s, racking up hit albums, multiple Grammy wins and, eventually, a 2021 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. All this activity allowed the Foos to experiment, whether it was on 2005’s double-album In Your Honor, the travelogue of 2014’s Sonic Highways, or the danceable, feel-good anthems on 2021’s Medicine at Midnight. The dedication to work also carried Foo Fighters through tragedy when their drummer Taylor Hawkins unexpectedly died in 2022. Grohl rallied the group to deliver But Here We Are, a cathartic tribute to their colleague, the following year.
All of this industriousness stems from Dave Grohl, who had been playing guitar and writing songs long before he began drumming. Throughout his early teens he performed in a variety of hardcore punk bands and in the late ’80s he joined the Washington, D.C.-area hardcore band Scream as their drummer. During Scream‘s final days, Grohl began recording his own material in the basement studio of his friend Barrett Jones. Some of Grohl‘s songs appeared on Scream‘s final album, Fumble. After the band’s 1990 summer tour, Grohl joined Nirvana and moved cross-country to Seattle.
After Nirvana recorded Nevermind, Grohl went back to the D.C. area and recorded a handful of tracks that would appear on Pocketwatch, a cassette released by Simple Machines. For most of 1992, he was busy with Nirvana, but when the band was off the road, he recorded solo material with Jones, who had also moved to Seattle. The pair kept recording throughout early 1993, when Grohl returned to Nirvana to record In Utero. He had toyed with the idea of releasing another independent cassette in the summer of 1993, but the plans never reached fruition. Following Kurt Cobain‘s suicide in 1994, the drummer kept quiet for several months. In the fall of 1994, Grohl and Jones decamped to a professional studio, where in the space of a week, they recorded the songs that comprised Foo Fighters’ debut album. Boiling down his backlog of songs to about 15 tracks, Grohl played all the instruments on the album. He made 100 copies of the tape, passing it out to friends and associates. In no time, Grohl‘s solo project became the object of a fierce record company bidding war.
Instead of embarking on a full-fledged solo career, Grohl decided to form a band. Through his wife he met Nate Mendel, the bassist for Sunny Day Real Estate. Shortly before the pair met, Jeremy Enigk, the leader of Sunny Day Real Estate, had converted to Christianity and quit the band, effectively ending the group’s career. Not only did Mendel join Grohl‘s band, but so did Sunny Day‘s drummer, William Goldsmith. Former Germs and Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear rounded out the lineup. The band, named Foo Fighters after a World War II secret force that allegedly researched UFOs, signed a contract with Capitol Records. The band’s self-titled debut, consisting solely of Dave Grohl‘s solo recordings, was released in July of 1995. It became an instant success in America, as “This Is a Call” garnered heavy alternative and album rock airplay. By early 1996, the album was certified platinum in the U.S.
Throughout 1996, Foo Fighters supported the album with an extensive tour, enjoying a crossover hit with “Big Me.” Late in the year, the group began recording its second album with producer Gil Norton. During the sessions, William Goldsmith left the band due to creative tensions, leaving Grohl to drum on the majority of the album. Before the record’s release, Goldsmith was replaced by Taylor Hawkins, who had previously drummed with Alanis Morissette. The Colour and the Shape, Foo Fighters’ second album and the first they recorded as a band, was issued in May of 1997. Smear left the group in the wake of the album’s completion and was replaced by guitarist Franz Stahl, whose stay proved short-lived; 1999’s There Is Nothing Left to Lose was recorded as a three-piece, with ex-No Use for a Name guitarist Chris Shiflett signing on soon after.
One by One, the group’s most polished production, appeared in late 2002, followed by 2005’s In Your Honor, which narrowly missed the top of Billboard’s album chart. After releasing a live album titled Skin and Bones in 2006, the band returned to Norton’s studio and started constructing a dozen fractured, eclectic rock songs to be released in 2007 under the name Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace. Two years later, the group released its first compilation, Greatest Hits, as Grohl launched his new supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, which also featured Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and Led Zeppelin‘s John Paul Jones. Foo Fighters reconvened for 2011’s Wasting Light, a Butch Vig production that doubled as the official return of Pat Smear, who hadn’t played on any of the band’s albums since 1997. Wasting Light wound up as a smash success for the Foos, debuting at number one on the Billboard charts, going gold in the U.S. and garnering the band another four Grammy Awards. In the wake of Wasting Light, several other Foo projects emerged — a limited-edition compilation of covers called Medium Rare released for Record Store Day 2011; a documentary of the band called Back and Forth — and the group toured the album into 2012.
In 2012, Foo Fighters announced they were taking a hiatus and Dave Grohl immediately returned to the confines of Queens of the Stone Age, drumming on their 2013 album, …Like Clockwork. He also threw himself into directing a documentary about the legendary Los Angeles recording studio Sound City. The film appeared early in 2013 to positive reviews, and it was accompanied by a soundtrack called Sound City: Reel to Real, which featured Grohl-directed jams including a variety of Sound City veterans, plus Paul McCartney. Not long after its release, Foo Fighters announced that their hiatus had ended and they were working on a new album. Sonic Highways, released late in 2014, was their most ambitious project yet; each track was recorded in a different city, some with special featured guests, a process documented on an eight-episode documentary series for HBO. Sonic Highways saw international release in early November 2014. During the Sonic Highways world tour, the Foos had the honor of being the final band to perform on The Late Show with David Letterman on May 24, 2015. Soon after, as touring resumed, Grohl fell from the stage during a stop in Sweden, breaking his leg. He performed from a throne for the remainder of the tour, which was rechristened the “Broken Leg Tour.”
In late 2015, both as a gesture of appreciation to fans and a tribute to the victims of the Paris terror attacks, Foo Fighters released the Saint Cecilia EP, a five-song blast that featured Gary Clark, Jr. and Ben Kweller. It returned the band to the Billboard charts, peaking in the Top 20 on the Hard Rock, Alternative, Tastemaker, and Vinyl charts. Soon after, the band announced an indefinite hiatus and would not release new music until two years later, when they returned with the single “Run.” This was the first taste of their ninth album, Concrete and Gold, which appeared in September 2017. Produced by Greg Kurstin, the album found Grohl incorporating some prog rock influences into the group’s sound. It also featured a handful of unexpected guest performers, including Paul McCartney, who played drums on a track, saxophonist Dave Koz, Boyz II Men‘s Shawn Stockman, and the Kills‘ Alison Mosshart; the latter two both added backing vocals. Along with topping the rock charts, the album was also the group’s second to debut at number one on the Billboard 200.
Foo Fighters toured extensively throughout 2017 and 2018, including making an appearance at the Glastonbury Festival. By 2019, they were back at work in the studio, recording in an historic house in Encino, California, and again working with producer Kurstin. Initially scheduled for release in 2020, Medicine at Midnight was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a lead single, “Shame Shame,” did appear in November 2020, topping the mainstream rock chart. Two more songs followed, “No Son of Mine” and “Waiting on a War,” paving the way for the album, which ultimately arrived in February 2021. In March 2022, the Foo Fighters traveled to South America to play a handful of concerts, headlining the Lollapalooza festival in Argentina on March 20. On the morning of March 25, 2022, drummer Taylor Hawkins was found dead in his hotel room in Bogotá, Colombia, where the group was scheduled to perform that evening; he was 50 years old.
At the end of 2022, Foo Fighters announced they planned to continue as a band following the death of Hawkins. Grohl and his bandmates processed the loss of their colleague on But Here We Are, an album that occasionally echoed the spirit of the first Foo Fighters album while also featuring the assured, precise execution of Greg Kurstin, who returned for his third record with the Foos. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

The Breeders started as a way for Pixies bassist Kim Deal and Throwing Muses guitarist Tanya Donelly to let out some suppressed creative energy, but thanks to the success of their second album Last Splash and its smash hit single “Cannonball,” the band became one of the biggest — and quirkiest — acts of the early-’90s alternative rock revolution. Though the large gaps of time between their later albums made their career trajectory less than predictable, the Breeders’ appeal, not to mention influence on later bands, lasted for decades.
Taking their name from the group Deal led with her twin sister, Kelley, in their teens, the Breeders combined the spareness of Throwing Muses with the shifting dynamics and warped pop sensibilities of the Pixies. Deal and Donelly both played guitar, leaving bass to Josephine Wiggs of Perfect Disaster and drums to Slint‘s Britt Walford. Pod, their critically acclaimed debut album, was released in 1990. Two years later, the group delivered the muscular, melodic EP Safari. Soon after its recording, Donelly left the Breeders to form her own group, Belly. Kim Deal brought in her sister Kelley as her replacement. Safari was also the last release to feature Walford, who was billed as “Shannon Doughton” and “Mike Hunt” on the respective recordings. He was later replaced by Dayton drummer Jim MacPherson. The group also played its first high-profile gigs in 1992, opening for Nirvana on their European tour.
As the band worked on its second album in the beginning of 1993, the Pixies split, leaving Kim Deal able to pursue the Breeders full-time. Released in August 1993, Last Splash was a hazier, more disjointed continuation of the hard pop of Safari. With the sonic collage of “Cannonball,” the Breeders had a crossover hit that catapulted the group into stardom: within a year, the album went platinum and the band had a prime spot on 1994’s Lollapalooza tour. That year, the group also released the limited-edition 7″ Head to Toe and Divine Hammer singles, both of which confirmed the Breeders as an artistically willful group that was nevertheless in tune with the commercial pop tastes of the early ’90s.
Just as quickly as success hit the band, the Breeders went on a sudden hiatus, partly due to exhaustion from the rapid nature of their fame and from their extensive touring. Late in 1994, Kelley was arrested for drug possession and was sent to a rehab clinic in Minnesota; the rest of the bandmembers went their separate ways while she recuperated. Wiggs played with musicians around New York, ultimately forming the Josephine Wiggs Experience with them; Kim returned to Dayton with MacPherson, learned how to play the drums, and continued writing songs. By early 1995, Kim had an album’s worth of new material ready to record. Though she considered recording them on her own, Deal decided to assemble a backing band of MacPherson and other Dayton-area musicians, including Nathan Farley and Luis Lerma of the Tasties. Not surprisingly, the Amps — originally called Tammy & the Amps — sounded like a rougher, lo-fi version of the Breeders; their gigs and their 1995 album Pacer emphasized the loose, charming spontaneity of Deal’s style.
Though the Breeders’ break was supposed to be temporary, it lasted several years. Along with her time in the Josephine Wiggs Experience, Wiggs later formed Dusty Trails with Luscious Jackson‘s Vivian Trimble. After Kelley completed her rehab, she formed her own solo project, the Kelley Deal 6000. She toured and released an album with this group, 1996’s Go to the Sugar Altar.
That year, Kim reclaimed the Breeders name and played some California dates with the band, which featured members of the Amps and Pod violinist Carrie Bradley. In 1997, the Breeders played the Tim Taylor Memorial Benefit Concert — in honor of Brainiac‘s singer/keyboardist, who was killed in a car accident earlier that year — with that group’s drummer Tyler Trent replacing MacPherson, who later joined Guided by Voices. Later that year, Kim went into the studio in one of many frustrated attempts to make the third Breeders album. However, the group’s low profile didn’t mean that it didn’t have any hits; a sample from “Cannonball” used in the Prodigy‘s worldwide smash “Firestarter” earned Kim songwriting credits and royalties. By early 1998, Kelley had rejoined the band and the duo continued to write and record songs, though the only song to surface from their sessions was a cover of the Three Degrees‘ “Collage,” which appeared on the soundtrack to 1999’s big-screen adaptation of The Mod Squad.
In 2000, Kim and Kelley spent time in the studio with Steve Albini; late that year, the Breeders played their first gig in over three years (and Kim’s first show with Kelley in over six) at a free, secret show in Los Angeles. Once again, the Breeders’ lineup had changed, with bassist Mando Lopez, guitarist Richard Presley (both formerly of Fear), and drummer Jose Medeles backing the Deal sisters. The group reconvened in the studio with Albini in 2001, completing an album’s worth of songs. The Breeders began a flurry of activity in 2002, including the release of the Off You and Huffer singles and their long-awaited third album, Title TK, that May. After a quiet 2003, Deal was once again in the news in 2004 when the Pixies reunited for tours of North America and Europe.
In late 2007, rumors that another Breeders album was on the way were confirmed, and Mountain Battles arrived in April 2008. The Fate to Fatal EP, which featured a cover of Bob Marley‘s “Chances Are” and guest vocals from Mark Lanegan, appeared in 2009, the same year the Breeders curated the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Minehead, England. The following September, they played the ATP festival in Monticello, New York. In 2013, the band celebrated the 20th anniversary of Last Splash with a deluxe reissue of the album and a tour that reunited Kim and Kelley Deal with Wiggs and MacPherson.
Following the tour’s success, the band began work on its fifth album. The Breeders recorded with longtime producer Albini at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, as well as with Mike Montgomery at Kentucky’s Candyland Recording Studio and with Tom Rastikis at Ohio’s Fernwood Studios. In October 2017, the band delivered its first new music in eight years with “Wait in the Car,” the lead single from All Nerve. Featuring backing vocals by Courtney Barnett, the album was released in March 2018, nearly 25 years after Last Splash. All Nerve peaked at 79 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart in the U.S., cracked the Top Ten in the U.K., and charted throughout Europe.
The members of the Breeders began the 2020s by spending time with their individual projects. Kim wrote a solo album; Kelly worked with R. Ring and Protomartyr; MacPherson played with the surf band the Mulchmen; and Wiggs collaborated with drummer Jon Mattock. In 2021, they reconvened to contribute a version of His Name is Alive‘s “The Dirt Eaters” to the 4AD compilation Bills and Aches and Blues. Two years later, the Breeders hit the road to commemorate Last Splash’s 30th anniversary with dates at Coachella and Riot Fest as well as with the Foo Fighters, Belly, and Horsegirl. September 2023 saw the release of a Last Splash reissue that was remastered from the original analog tapes and included two previously unreleased songs from the album’s sessions: “Go Man Go,” which was co-written by Pixies‘ Black Francis, and “Divine Mascis,” a version of “Divine Hammer” with Dinosaur Jr.‘s J Mascis on lead vocals. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Heather Phares, Rovi

Chevelle + Three Days Grace at Arizona Financial Theatre
2023-10-04 19:00 - 23:30 | Arizona Financial Theatre, 400 W Washington St, Phoenix, AZ, 85003, United States
The members of Three Days Grace began bashing out punk chords when they were in their teens, carving a workmanlike yet energetic sound that fueled their live performances. Combining elements of angst-fueled alternative rock, metal, and grunge, the Canadian group quickly established themselves as lynchpins of the post-grunge movement. Emerging in 2003, the band soared to the top of the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart with platinum-selling efforts like One-X (2006) and Life Starts Now (2009), and have remained at the fore of the hard rock scene in the 2010s and beyond with internationally charting outings such as Human (2015), Outsider (2018), and Explosions (2022).
Three Days Grace were formed in Norwood, Ontario, Canada, in 1997 by Adam Gontier (vocals, guitar), Brad Walst (bass), and Neil Sanderson (drums). The group was originally called Groundswell, a five-piece that lasted from 1992 until transforming into a trio five years later. Gontier and Walst were raised in Norwood, and many of their songs were inspired by living in a place with a population of around 1,500. The bandmembers were still in high school when they had their first gig, and they performed anywhere that would accept them — including opening at a movie.
Three Days Grace eventually relocated to Toronto and were introduced to producer Gavin Brown by their old manager. The band gave Brown a private set, and he selected what he felt were the most promising tracks. The group then produced a demo for EMI Music Publishing Canada. With Brown at the helm, Three Days Grace recorded “(I Hate) Everything About You.” The tune got them a publishing deal with EMI and soon they were signed to Jive after being courted by the company’s president. Brown and Three Days Grace were sent to a studio in Boston, Massachusetts, to start the group’s debut album. The band completed its self-titled full-length in Woodstock, New York, at an isolated location free from big-city distractions. Heavily influenced by Kyuss and Sunny Day Real Estate, the dark, angst-ridden tales of small-town love and hate on Three Days Grace brought the group a Next Big Thing tag.
Three Days Grace was released on July 22, 2003, by which time “(I Hate) Everything About You” was already a hit on alternative radio stations in Canada. The band toured extensively behind the record for the next two years as both a supporting act and headliners, but after a while, life on the road left the band, especially Gontier, feeling isolated and alone. Consequently, this theme of disconnection — coupled with the realization that one was, in fact, not alone — would serve as the basis for their follow-up album. Getting back to their roots by writing the record in the Ontario countryside, One-X was released in June 2006. The album, which hit number five on the Billboard Top 200, marked the recorded debut of the band’s second guitarist, Barry Stock. Three Days Grace supported One-X throughout the summer on dates alongside Staind, Hoobastank, and Nickelback, while “Animal I Have Become” became a number one modern rock hit.
In 2009, the group released its third full-length album, Life Starts Now, which reached number three on Billboard’s album chart. After heading out on tour with bands like Nickelback and Avenged Sevenfold, the group returned to the studio to record its fourth album, the more atmospheric, electronic-tinged Transit of Venus. Again, they charted in the Top Five of the Billboard 200. In early 2013, Gontier left the band, citing a health issue, and was replaced by Brad Walst’s brother, singer Matt Walst of My Darkest Days. After touring and recording with their new singer, two singles, “Painkiller” and “I Am Machine,” were released in 2014 and both reached number one on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart. The band’s fifth album, the darker, loss-inspired Human, followed in the spring of 2015. In July 2017, Three Days Grace issued the single “The Mountain” ahead of the release of their sixth studio long-player, the well-received Outsider, which arrived in early 2018 and earned nominations for Album of the Year and Rock Album of the Year at the 2019 Juno Awards. Recorded partially in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Three Days Grace’s seventh album was heavy with themes of centering one’s self in a world of chaos. Released in 2022, Explosions was co-produced with Howard Benson. ~ Michael Sutton, Rovi

CHEVELLE is the understated musical powerhouse who have continually delivered rock anthems for the past 24 years. 7 number one hits, 17 songs reaching the top 10 charts, over 4 million records sold in the USA and many more worldwide. Platinum and gold albums across their 8 studio records and successful live CD and two live DVD releases completes their extensive body of work to date. It’s all credit to their continuing dedication to be true to their craft, the genre and their fans. Chevelle’s last two album releases, La Gargola and The North Corridor both debuted #1 on the Billboard rock charts and #3 and #8 respectively, on the Billboard top 200 charts. With no signs of this Chicago alternative rock trio slowing down any time soon, their numerous chart-topping releases have certainly earned this band a place in American rock music history. After more than two decades together, numerous releases, and countless worldwide tours, the band consisting of brothers, Pete Loeffler [guitars, vocals] and Sam Loeffler [drums], have confidently sailed through decades of uncharted waters and have emerged with a collection that’s equally intricate and intimate.

Goldrush 2023 at Phoenix Raceway Oct 7th-8th
2023-10-07 12:00 - 2023-10-08 23:30 | Phoenix Raceway, 7602 Jimmie Johnson Dr, Avondale, 85323, United States
Relentless Beats brings you Goldrush 2023, and this year it’s out at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, AZ.

Your Goldrush: Sonoran Skies Lineup
2-Day & Single Day Tickets On Sale Now!

Saturday, October 7
Alison Wonderland • Louis The Child (Playground Set) • Tiesto • ATLiens • Brondo • Champagne Drip • Cloonee • Dabin • Dion Timmer • Dombresky • Kayzo Unleashed • Lizzy Jane • Marie Vaunt • Nostalgix • Ship Wrek • Slushii • Sonny Fodera • Weiss • Will Clarke • Anatta • Svnday Drvr
Sunday, October 8
Zeds Dead • ZHU • Ameme • Ben Bohmer (LIVE) • BLOND:ISH • Bou • Detlef • FrostTop • Hamdi • Jessica Audiffred • Kai Wachi • KHIVA • Lady Faith • Madeon (DJ Set) • PAWSA • Riot Ten • S!CK!CK • TOBEHONEST • Austin Feldman • Michael Hooker • Sed’s Vortex b2b PrettyHard

TICKETS

Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much

Without the brands listed below, we simply couldn’t have the memorable experiences you have grown to love. We would like to extend our gratitude to each of these brands and companies for helping to provide texture to Goldrush and providing a lasting impression to fans!
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Coheed and Cambria + Deafheaven at The Hollywood Palladium
2023-10-07 19:00 - 23:30 | The Hollywood Palladium, 6215 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, 90028, United States
It’s been over two years since Coheed and Cambria’s 2015 album, The Color Before the Sun, was released as the band’s first “non-concept” album over the span of their 15-year career. The album left the sci-fi universe of “The Amory Wars” and instead focused on frontman Claudio Sanchez’s personal life, including the birth of his first child. With 2018 upon us, and a major summer tour now announced, the volume of fans’ chatter for a new album and whether or not it will return to the band’s fictional concept arc will surely reach new heights.
Coheed and Cambria is a rare band whose music is able to transcend “scenes” and effortlessly cross genres of rock – from indie to progressive, to metal and pop-punk to classic rock. The band is frequently compared to progressive, operatic rock bands of the ‘70s, ala Queen, Supertramp or Rush due to their thrilling concept albums that take you on a grand journey of sounds and often clock-in around 10 mins, but still somehow include sugary pop-laden hooks.
The group’s following has grown steadily every album, partly due to their ferocious live show that brings fans to their knees with an equally expansive light show. This summer, the band will be performing songs from their expansive catalog, and we can only imagine they’ll pull a few new tricks from up their sleeves.

Originally formed as a duo in 2010, Deafheaven, now a quintet, are a restless and experimental metal band from San Francisco. Often referred to as black metal, the group finds the term limiting, and sees the metal subgenre as a prime inspiration. Their ever-evolving sound includes elements of black metal, shoegaze, post-rock, and even accessible — but musically challenging — arena rock, as evidenced by albums such as 2013’s Sunbather and the punchier, more dynamic New Bermuda two years later. 2018’s Ordinary Corrupt Human Love wed somewhat gentler and more experimental and cinematic songwriting to their established black metal roots. Their fifth studio album, 2021’s Infinite Granite, was their least metal-influenced record yet, leaning closer to dream pop, ambient, and alternative rock.
Initially made up of George Clarke (vocals) and Kerry McCoy (guitars), the band has a sound that blends black metal with elements of shoegaze, adding a layer of warmth to the genre’s typically icy sound while expanding the emotional range outside of the typical themes of death, despair, and hopelessness. As a duo, Clarke and McCoy wrote and recorded a demo on their own that would get the attention of Converge frontman Jacob Bannon’s label, Deathwish Inc., which released the untitled EP in 2010. The pair expanded the lineup to include guitarist Nick Bassett, bassist Derek Prine, and drummer Trevor Deschryver, who appeared on Deafheaven’s 2011 full-length debut, Roads to Judah, before parting ways with the band the following year. Looking to get back to their roots a bit, McCoy and Clarke worked on the writing for their follow-up album as a duo again, though they would recruit drummer Daniel Tracy to join them in the studio for the recording process. The result was their sophomore effort, Sunbather, which was released to critical acclaim in the summer of 2013. Recruiting new bassist Stephen Clark and guitarist Shiv Mehra, Deafheaven toured across the globe extensively as a quintet, including gigs with Between the Buried and Me, Pallbearer, No Joy, and many others. In 2015, Deafheaven signed to Anti- for the release of their highly anticipated third album, New Bermuda. Produced by frequent collaborator Jack Shirley, it arrived in early October. The set reached number 16 on the Top Rock Albums charts, and was supported by lengthy international tours. Its critical and commercial success brought it to the ears of listeners not normally enamored of heavy metal.
In late 2017, Deafheaven de-camped to 25th St. Recording in Oakland with Shirley again listed as producer. By their own admission, they expanded their heavy, kinetic sound by adding psychedelia-inspired vocals, jazzy percussion, and intricate organic piano melodies to juxtapose against their trademark black metal-inspired and post-hardcore trademark sonics. Ordinary Corrupt Human Love took its title from Graham Greene‘s novel The End of the Affair, reflecting a theme of yearning romanticism. The set’s first single and video, “Honeycomb,” was issued in April of 2018, and clocked in at nearly 12 minutes. While the video images showed glimpses of Deafheaven in the studio and wandering around San Francisco, the song’s lyrics actually referenced the work of Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar. The full-length was released in May. The singer/songwriter Chelsea Wolfe guested on the track “Near.”
In 2020, the band planned a ten-year anniversary tour that had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To celebrate the occasion anyway, Deafheaven released 10 Years Gone (Sargent House) in December, a live-in-studio recording of their planned touring set. In addition to revitalizing long-established crowd favorites such as “Vertigo” and “Kettle,” they also included a recording of “Daedalus,” the first song the band ever wrote together. Infinite Granite, the band’s fifth studio album, arrived in 2021. A departure from their previous albums, Infinite Granite featured barely any screaming or metal riffs, instead featuring swirling guitars and clean vocals reflecting influences including Radiohead, Ride, Tears for Fears, and Chet Baker. ~ Gregory Heaney & Thom Jurek, Rovi

Sleep Token & AA Williams at Fox Theater in Pomona, CA
2023-10-09 20:00 - 23:30, 2023-10-10 20:00 - 23:30 | Fox Theater Pomona, CA, 301 Garey Ave., Pomona, CA, 91766
SUNDOWNING: “Sundowning, or sundown syndrome, is a neurological phenomenon associated with increased confusion and restlessness in patients with delirium or some form of dementia. The term ‘sundowning’ was coined due to the timing of the patient’s confusion. For patients with sundowning syndrome, a multitude of behavioral problems begin to occur in the evening or while the sun is setting…”
From June to November, through 12 tracks and passing seasons, Sleep Tokenreveals an evenly-spaced, precisely-timed sequence of recordings that stand as both individual touchstones and carefully aligned musical pieces, all informed by a common emotional thread plus a flow of graphics and videos specific to each song; the end result is a digital and physical release of the album on November 22, with format choices embracing a bespoke box-set containing a variety of exclusive elements, including early recordings.
Starting with “THE NIGHT DOES NOT BELONG TO GOD,” the opening track on the album, the singles will be issued, in sequence, every two weeks at sundown (GMT). “The Night…” arrives on summer solstice when the sun is highest in the sky in London, descending throughout the subsequent singles releases.

Making her stage debut in April 2019 and selling out her first headline show at London’s prestigious Southbank Centre less than a year later, A.A. Williams hit the ground running. Similarly, the acclaim for her performances and her music has been unanimous from the start. After one self-titled EP and a collaboration with Japanese post-rockers MONO, the London-based singer-songwriter signed to Bella Union and released her stunning debut album, Forever Blue, in July 2020.
That Southbank show would prove to be the last time she would take to the stage for a long while as the world struggled to cope with unforeseen and extreme challenges. Never a musician to sit still, the classically trained multi-instrumentalist focused her creativity on arranging – firstly, by stripping songs back to the most delicate bones on her Songs From Isolation covers record, and now with a complete reimagining of her own material as the four songs from her debut EP become arco.
Not many musicians have the ability – or indeed bravery – to rework a collection of their own full band ‘rock’ songs into a string-and-voice arrangement. A.A. Williams, however, is not like many musicians and the minimalism of Arvo Pärt and Gorecki has long since sat beside Vaughan Williams’ folk-inspired classical work as important influences on her music.

Drowning Pool + Saliva & More at Marquee Theatre
2023-10-12 18:00 - 23:30 | Marquee Theatre, 730 N Mill Ave, Tempe, 85281, United States
Drowning Pool is an alternative/nu-metal band that combines muscular drums, angry riffs, and dark themes. The group found mainstream success in 2001 with the release of their platinum-selling debut album, Sinner, which included the hit single “Bodies.” After the death of vocalist Dave Williams in 2002, Drowning Pool relied on a rotating cast of lead singers (Jason Jones, Ryan McCombs, and Jasen Moreno) to deliver hard-hitting efforts like Full Circle (2007), Resilience (2013), and Strike a Nerve (2022).
Founded in 1996, Drowning Pool represented the vision of drummer Mike Luce and guitarist C.J. Pierce, who formed the band after relocating from New Orleans to Dallas and hooking up with bassist Stevie Benton. Although they initially performed as an instrumental trio, their sound coalesced with the arrival of Dave “Stage” Williams as vocalist. Drowning Pool experienced success from the outset. When a copy of their first demo reached members of Sevendust, they were invited to tour with the industrial metal group. Tours with Kittie and (hed) p.e. followed. Their second demo, recorded after two years on the road, reached the Top Ten on Dallas radio station KEGL and led to a contract with the Wind-Up Records label. Produced by Jay Baumgardner (Papa Roach, Godsmack, Coal Chamber), their first album, Sinner, became an instant hit. It was certified platinum within six weeks of its release, while their first single, “Bodies,” was one of the most frequently aired videos on MTV for a new band. They reached out to an even greater audience with dynamic performances at Wrestlemania XVIII and Ozzfest during the summers of 2001 and 2002. Unfortunately, their streak of success was not to last. Shortly after rousing the crowd at Ozzfest in Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 3, 2002, Williams was found dead of natural causes on the tour bus. In the wake of that tragedy, the band forged ahead. A concert film, Sinema, featuring more than two-and-a-half hours of footage, was released in late 2002. In January 2004, the band announced the addition of singer Jason “Gong” Jones, and their sophomore effort, Desensitized, followed several months later. In 2006, former Soil singer Ryan McCombs assumed the vocal duties, and a year later they released Full Circle, which was followed by live album, Loudest Common Denominator, in 2009. A self-titled album dropped in 2010, making McCombs the first DP singer to record more than one album with the group. However, it was not to last: he departed the following year, and was replaced by Suicide Hook vocalist Jasen Moreno, who made his official debut on 2013’s Resilience. Three years later, Moreno would match McCombs’ record with the announcement of the second Moreno-led and sixth overall Drowning Pool album, Hellelujah. Produced by Jason Suecof (Deicide, Motionless in White), the release featured the uncompromising single “By the Blood.” Originally slated for release in 2020, the band’s seventh long-player, Strike a Nerve, was pushed to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Billed as their heaviest effort to date, the 11-song set saw the band digging hard into their blue-collar Southern metal roots. ~ Craig Harris & Neil Z. Yeung, Rovi

After acquiring front man Bobby Amaru in 2011, Saliva became infused with new blood, energy, and spirit. The same energy launched Saliva’s career in 2001 with the release, _Every Six Seconds – a certified Double Platinum-selling album, containing the hits, “Click Click Boom” and 2002 Grammy nominated, “Your Disease.” Saliva’s in-your-face, anthemic writing style continued with a certified Gold-selling album *Back in to Your System_ with hits: “Always,” “Raise Up,” and the Nikki Sixx co-written, “Rest In Pieces.”*
Saliva will continue to release tracks and ultimately a full album in Spring of 2023. The new music has a contemporary feel but sticks to the blue collar roots that their fans love.
Saliva is Brad Stewart (bass), Wayne Swinny (guitar), Sammi Jo Bishop (drums) and Bobby Amaru (vocals).

Edgy Las Vegas-based Adelitas Way broke into the mainstream in 2009 with the song “Invincible,” which appeared on numerous television spots for CSI Miami and served as the theme song for the weekly WWE Superstars show, Raw vs Smackdown Video game, appeared on FAW ,served as The legacy Theme song, and performed at numerous Large WWE events. A Blue collar grass roots work ethic has the band touring the world for over a decade, building one of the strongest fan bases in Music today. Independently AW has over 180 Million Streams on their strong Catalog of songs. Formed in the mid 2000s by vocalist/songwriter Rick DeJesus, the band (includes drummer Trevor Stafford, Bassist Andrew Cushing, Guitarist Tavis Stanley) released its debut in July 2009. AW sophomore effort, the acclaimed Home School Valedictorian was a massive success. In July 2013 the group entered the studio to record Stuck, which featured the hit single “Dog on a Leash,” which peaked at number Five on the U.S. Mainstream Rock Chart. 2016, the band issued their fourth studio album, Getaway Independently, and featured the Top 10 Rock radio hit “Bad Reputation”. 2017’s Notorious album included hit singles “Ready for War (Pray for Peace),” which served as the theme song to TLC: a WWE PPV event. The hit single “Notorious” was released In the fall Of 2017 and is one of the bands Most successful songs to date with over 40 Million streams. Adelitas way is a fan Favorite for their songwriting, Live shows, and Fan Experiences

Every once in a while, a singer comes along that single-handedly resets the bar for what a rock vocalist should be. Someone with such raw emotion and power that it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Maryland-based rock band ANY GIVEN SIN’s Vic Richie is that singer. ANY GIVEN SIN spent much of 2019 generating buzz with the release of their single “Dynamite,” which quickly became the number one most spun song on SiriusXM’s Octane. The band soon solidified its position on Octane, landing the coveted Accelerator Artist title, and blazing past some of the biggest names in rock on the weekly BIG UNS Countdown. As the number two most requested song on the channel, it ended up at number twenty-nine on Octane’s Top 100 year-end countdown. The success of their first single was quickly followed up with the release of their second single, “Another Life,” which, in turn, became the number one most spun song as well. Any Given Sin recently released their third single, “Insidious.” The band has been working with some heavy-hitters in the rock world including Trevor Kustiak (Evans Blue), John Moyer (Disturbed), and most recently, Chris Dawson (SAUL, Seasons After), who produced both singles, “Another Life” and “Insidious.” Complete with epic, crunchy guitar riffs and put-a-hole-in-your-soul, massive drums, this is a true-blue American rock band with both authenticity and power.

VNV Nation + Traitrs at The Van Buren
2023-10-18 20:00 | The Van Buren, 401 W. Van Buren St, Phoenix, AZ, 85003, United States
VNV Nation is a European based alternative electronic project led by Ronan Harris in the roles of singer, songwriter and producer.
Never content with fitting in a category, VNV Nation’s sound blends poetic and thought provoking lyrics with a sound that ranges from melodic dance beats and indie-electronic anthems, to haunting ballads and post-classical soundtrack pieces. The live shows are legendary for their energy and positive emotion, drawing a devoted fanbase from across the musical spectrum to sold out tours and headline appearances at festivals in Europe and America.
Over the course of the project’s career, VNV Nation has continued to reach new heights, with its last 3 albums charting top 10 in Germany, as well as its last album achieving top 5 Billboard Chart positions in the US.
Ronan Harris was born in Dublin, Ireland, and lives in Hamburg, Germany

With their emotive melodies, propulsive rhythms, angular guitars and dark cinematic electronics, TRAITRS have quickly become one of modern post-punk’s fastest rising independent bands. Consisting of Sean-Patrick Nolan and Shawn Tucker, TRAITRS formed during the summer of 2015 in Toronto, Ontario Canada. The duo recorded demos with producer/engineer Josh Korody (Nailbiter, F*cked Up, Japandroids, Dilly Dally), garnered the attention of Pleasence Records label head James Lindsay and released their debut cassette Rites And Ritual in April 2016. After gaining buzz in the European and North American dark music scenes, TRAITRS released their critically acclaimed LP Butcher’s Coin (Pleasence Records, Manic Depression Records, Alchera Visions) in May 2018. Backed by the strength of lead single ‘Thin Flesh’, the duo embarked on a series of lengthy tours overseas, performed in over a dozen countries including showcases at Wave Gothik Treffen, Castle Party, Extramuralhas, Nocturnal Culture Night, Wavefest, Canadian Music Week and Pop! Montreal. Their relentless touring schedule and work ethic caught the attention of Schubert Music Publishing’s Thomas Thyssen and Eric Burton, and in October 2020 they announced TRAITRS as the first signing to their brand-new record label Freakwave Records. This year, TRAITRS will release ‘The Sick, Tired And Ill’ EP on July 30 and the full-length LP ‘Horses In The Abattoir’ on November 19.

The HU + Blind Channel & Nerv at The Van Buren
2023-10-26 20:00 - 23:30 | The Van Buren, 401 W. Van Buren St, Phoenix, AZ, 85003, United States
In 2019, an NPR story put a spotlight on “a band from Mongolia that blends the screaming guitars of heavy metal and traditional Mongolian guttural singing,” accurately highlighting the cultural importance & unique musical identity of The HU. Founded in 2016 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, The HU blend traditional Mongolian instrumentation & throat singing with Western rock in what they call “Hunnu Rock.” Their debut album, 2019 ‘s The Gereg, debuted at #1 on the World Album and Top New Artist Charts while receiving critical acclaim from the likes of Billboard, GQ, The Guardian, The Independent, Revolver, & Sir Elton John. It saw the band receive Mongolia’s highest state award, The Order of Genghis Khan, by the President of Mongolia. A deluxe version included collaborations with Jacoby Shaddix (Papa Roach) and Lzzy Hale (Halestorm) & caught the attention of Metallica who enlisted them to cover “Through The Never” for their 2021 Metallica Blacklist album. THE HU were also featured performing an original song for EA Games’ Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Their second album, Rumble Of Thunder, was released in 2022 following sold-out tours across the world in North America, Europe, Asia, & Australia including festival appearances at Coachella, Lollapalooza, Download Festival and more. In November 2022, The HU became the first-ever rock/metal band to receive the prestigious UNESCO “Artist of Peace” Designation. A deluxe version of RUMBLE OF THUNDER is due in 2023 via Better Noise Music.

Darkness which envelopes Finland is what fuels Blind Channel. The veritable coal to their roaring furnace of ambition, embracing it is the DNA that runs throughout their music. Balancing their tenacity with sincerity, “It’s this feeling of never being enough is what drives us forward right now,” vocalist Niko Vilhelm says.
When forming back in 2013 in the city of Oulu, way up in the North of Finland, vocalists Niko and Joel Hokka, drummer Tommi Lalli, guitarist Joonas Porko and bass player Olli Matela, plus the later addition of DJ/Percussionist Aleksi Kaunisvesi – knew that it was all about going big or going home. When they were told to sing in their native tongue, they refused. It was simply never an option. The doors that closed only made them want to grab an axe to break through, The Shining style, to properly make themselves known. This is exactly what they did when they found their way onto the largest stage in Europe: Eurovision, after competing in the Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (UMK), Finland’s annual contest to discover their entry. Winning the spot, by the largest landslide the competition has seen, Blind Channel captured and enamoured the continent with the fiery nu-metal charge of ‘Dark Side’.
Be warned however, Eurovision isn’t the crux of Blind Channel’s story. This stepping stone that saw them take to that hallowed stage, was just that, a gambit towards the bigger picture.
MANAGEMENT Backbone Management antti (at) backbonemanagement (dot) fi

We are Nerv, a 4-piece genre-bending rock band residing in California. The band’s members are originally from all over the US with vocalist Dillon Jones (Sacramento, CA), guitarists Jordan Grokett and Scott Buchanan (Dallas, TX) and drummer Tyler Clark (Atlanta, GA). Nerv burst onto the scene in November 2017 with their heavy hitting debut single ‘Enough’. Then in Spring 2018 the band released their highly successful debut EP ‘Bad Habits’, working with producer Erik Ron (I Prevail, Godsmack, Hollywood Undead). In October of 2022, Nerv released their long-awaited debut full length album, ‘We’re All Patients Here’.

STATIC-X + SEVENDUST at Marquee Theatre
2023-10-30 17:30 - 23:30 | Marquee Theatre, 730 N Mill Ave, Tempe, 85281, United States
American metal crew Static-X emerged at the tail end of the ’90s, pushing an aggressive thrash metal blend with industrial overtones and a techno pulse. Their breakthrough debut, 1998’s cult classic Wisconsin Death Trip, rocketed them to stardom in the heavy music world, their image boosted by frontman Wayne Static‘s distinctive hair and vocal delivery. While maintaining momentum into the 2000s with additional efforts like Machine and Shadow Zone, Static‘s passing in 2014 effectively halted the group in their tracks. However, at the close of the decade, the original lineup made a comeback with the help of previously recorded Static vocals, issuing Project Regeneration in 2020.
Static-X’s roots trace to the Midwest, where vocalist/guitarist Wayne Static grew up in Michigan and drummer Ken Jay in Illinois. They ended up in Chicago separately and met at the record store where Jay worked, introduced to one another by future Smashing Pumpkins vocalist Billy Corgan (who was in the band Deep Blue Dream with Static). Static and Jay decided to head west to California and start up a new band. Shortly after their arrival, Osaka native Koichi Fukada responded to the duo’s ad and became their new guitarist, as well as programmer. Bassist Tony Campos, the only true Californian, was the final piece of the puzzle. Signed to Warner Brothers in February 1998, Static-X debuted with Wisconsin Death Trip a year later. The album was a hit and eventually certified platinum, bolstered by the strength of the singles “Push It” and “Bled for Days.” Despite the success, founding guitarist Fukada briefly left the group in 2000, replaced by Tripp Eisen (ex-Dope) for 2001’s gold-certified Machine, their highest-charting effort to date. Further lineup changes followed, as drummer Jay left after the 2003 album Shadow Zone. Soon after, misdemeanor charges forced Eisen to leave the band in 2004 (he was later convicted and spent a year in prison). Still, Static-X was undeterred. Static tapped Fukada to rejoin on guitar and programming in 2005, while touring drummer Nick Oshiro took over full-time.
In June 2005, a rejuvenated Static-X returned to recording with Start a War, home to the single “I’m the One.” Fifth album Cannibal arrived in 2007, charting inside Billboard’s Top 40. The band toured and released a CD/DVD document, Cannibal Killers Live, then settled into the recording of their sixth studio album, Cult of Static. Released in March 2009, it debuted inside the Top 20, their second highest showing to date. The group went on hiatus not long after finishing a lengthy tour, with Wayne Static announcing a renewed focus on his Pighammer side project, with contributions from his wife, Tera Wray. In 2011, Pighammer appeared as a solo album under his own name. A year later, he re-formed Static-X — minus any of the original members. The lineup, which consisted of his solo backing band, mounted a tour but broke up by 2013, and a year later, Wayne Static was dead of a drug overdose at the age of 48. Just over a year after that, his widow Tera Wray took her own life.
This tragedy seemed to spell the end of Static-X, but a few years later, the remaining bandmembers patched up their differences and decided to see if they could salvage anything from past recordings. Starting from a slew of unreleased demos, the group went into the studio, once again with Ulrich Wild, where they stripped Wayne‘s vocals from the demos and composed entirely new tunes around them. The resultant album, Project Regeneration, was released in two volumes, with Vol. 1 arriving in the summer of 2020. To support the release, the band embarked on tour with a new, masked frontman named Xer0, rumored to be Edsel Dope of Dope. Lead single “Hollow” crashed the U.S. Dance/Electronic chart, peaking in the Top 15. ~ Neil Z. Yeung & Josh Loehr, Rovi

Sevendust never follow a linear path. Instead, they continue to bulldoze a lane of their own with a proven one-two punch of rumbling grooves, unpredictable riffing, and stirringly soulful vocals unlike anything else in hard rock. As a result, their music connects straight to the heart as evidenced by their full-contact live shows and diehard “family” of fans. It’s why they’ve been around since 1994, tallied global sales of seven million, logged three gold-selling albums, delivered three Top 15 debuts on the Billboard 200, and garnered a GRAMMY® Award nomination in the category of “Best Metal Performance.” They’re the rare force of nature who not only graced the bills of Woodstock and OZZfest, but also Shiprocked! and Sonic Temple and some of the largest stages around the globe. Along the way, they’ve notably collaborated with everyone from members of Deftones, Daughtry, and Staind to Alter Bridge, Periphery, and Xzibit. 2020 saw them deliver one of the most-acclaimed albums of their career with Blood & Stone, which Metal Hammer christened “Sevendust’s best work in years” and Outburn dubbed “everything a Sevendust fan could want.”
However, the Atlanta quintet—Lajon Witherspoon [lead vocals], Clint Lowery [lead guitar, backing vocals], John Connolly [rhythm guitar, backing vocals], Vince Hornsby [bass], and Morgan Rose [drums]—defy expectations yet again on their fourteenth full-length and debut for Napalm Records, Truth Killer.

An uncompromising New York City-based outfit that draws from both heavy metal and industrial music, Dope’s confrontational emissions evoke Ministry, Skinny Puppy, and White Zombie. Emerging in 1999 with the hard-hitting Felons and Revolutionaries, the group continued to beat the post-industrial drum on 2005’s American Apathy and 2018’s Blood Money, Part 1, while managing to weave in elements of speed, alternative, rap, and nu-metal.
The quintet was formed in the Chicago area by brothers Edsel Dope (lead vocals, rhythm guitar) and Simon Dope (keyboards). Simon studied chemistry at the University of Florida, then received a scholarship to Polytechnic in Brooklyn. There he was joined by his brother, with the two claiming to have financed their demos by selling drugs. The initial incarnation of the band included lead guitarist Tripp Eisen, bass player Acey Slade, and drummer Preston Nash. They began a selective series of gigs in late 1997. In October 1998, they were signed to Flip Records, which made a production deal with Epic.
Dope’s debut album and best-selling release to date, Felons and Revolutionaries, was released in September 1999. The Dope brothers gutted their lineup after the ensuing tour, switching Slade to guitar and bringing in original bassist Sloane Jentry, guitarist Virus, and drummer Sketchy Shay. In the fall of 2001, they released their second album, Life. Two years later, the band inked a deal with Artemis and issued the nu-metal-leaning Group Therapy. The punitive American Apathy arrived in summer 2005, featuring covers of Depeche Mode‘s “People Are People” and N.W.A‘s “Fuck tha Police.” It topped the Billboard Heatseekers chart upon release. No Regrets was issued four years later, and featured a guest appearance by Zakk Wylde. After an extended hiatus, Dope’s classic lineup returned with a new album and coinciding tour. The band — Edsel Dope, Acey Slade, Virus, and Racci Shay — released Blood Money, Pt. 1 in late 2016, with a sequel, the aptly-named Blood Money, Pt. 2, arriving in 2019.

No matter where you go, loyalty means the same thing. It represents a promise to uphold a code of honor. You remain true to yourself, your friends, and your family. Lines Of Loyalty maintain this level of commitment to both their craft and their mission. The Kenosha, WI trio—Nubz Morrison [vocals, guitar], Redo Ianni [bass, vocals, keys],—deliver melodically magnetic rock anthems with unapologetic dedication and diligence. After years of success under the name Mixed Company, they assert themselves as a hypnotic heavy rock force on a series of singles in 2021.
In fact, they’re so committed the word “Loyalty” adorns Nubz’ face…
To bring this vision to life, they hit the studio with producer Chris Dawson [Saul] to record in 2021. Now, they officially introduce Lines Of Loyalty via the single “I’m Not The One.” Anchored by a thick beat and punchy bass line, the track twists and turns through unpredictable riffs towards an instantly chantable chorus.
Due to this honesty, the guys will ultimately inspire just as much loyalty from listeners as they unleash more music.

Wednesday 13 + Gemini Syndrome & More at The Nile
2023-10-31 18:00 - 23:30 | The Nile Theater, 105 West Main Street, Mesa, 85201, United States
The Duke of Spook has returned once more from beyond the grave to reveal the “NECROPHAZE!” This latest full length offering from the ghouls of WEDNESDAY 13 will be available on September 27 2019 via Nuclear Blast Records. Heavily influenced by the real night terror occurrences of Wednesday himself, historical serial killers & a slew of 80’s horror films, the ideas behind NECROPHAZE are bizarrely familiar, frightening, & a hell of a lot of fun. While still consistently horrifying, this new album certainly carries with it a more humorous sentiment than its gloomy predecessor (and 1st album with Nuclear Blast Records), “Condolences” (2017). Songs like “Bring Your Own Blood (BYOB),” clearly a play off the phrase “bring your own booze,” manage to intertwine opposing ideas of the blood sucking undead w/ a teenage house party. “In every 80’s horror movie there’s always a party,” Wednesday chuckles, “so we wanted to get that vibe. The title made me laugh so we wrote a song that’s sort of a more violent ‘Monster Mash.’” The 1st single “Decompose,” which was initially written by drummer Kyle Castronovo, and was also the first song/demo brought to the table, is like a catchy anthem for the idea of “I know you’re dead, but I really wish you could be deader.”
Recording & mastering by Michael Spreitzer; producer, engineer, as well as the long time guitarist of DevilDriver. Dropping just in time to enjoy on Halloween, creepsters of the night, prepare yourselves, to ENTER THE NECROPHAZE.

GEMINI SYNDROME welcomes you to the third and final degree of your initiation into the Synner Society. 3rd Degree – The Raising, is GEMINI SYNDROME’s third full length album. Following the band’s 2013 debut Lux, and 2016 sophomore LP Memento Mori, this new album offers the closing chapter in a trilogy of song and narrative. This order of three steps, and three albums, is not by chance, but is a nod to many of the initiatory traditions that exist and act as a vessel for transmitting and preserving the Sacred Knowledge throughout the ages. The intention is to provoke the listener to think about the mystery of life, the nature of reality, the roles we play, and the masks we wear in this world. Wherein Lux, meaning “Light,” was concerned with birth; and Memento Mori, meaning “Remember That We Must Die,” dealt with the finite nature of life; the focus and message of 3rd Degree – The Raising, is of traversing Death, being Reborn and reintegrating with our True Self, and thus being raised into the next degree of experience.   “Every quest within deserves a good soundtrack…” — GS°

Moldovan progressive modern metal unit INFECTED RAIN have been turning heads in the metal world this fall with the next chapter of their metamorphosis – their otherworldly fifth album, Ecdysis, out January 7, 2022 via Napalm Records.
INFECTED RAIN have become one of the most exciting new acts in the heavy music world, with charismatic, multi-talented frontwoman Lena Scissorhands emerging as one of the fastest-rising leading ladies of the genre. Now, the band arises from the dark depths once again – freshly off their very first tour of the USA with Butcher Babies and Stitched Up Heart. Produced once again by Valentin Voluta, Ecdysis successfully demonstrates ultramodern brutality without sacrificing emotion and melody – showcasing a new layer of INFECTED RAIN that longtime followers and new fans alike will embrace. Frontwoman Lena Scissorhands adds about Ecdysis: “While the whole world was in a deep depression, Ecdysis was slowly but surely maturing. The time in isolation away from all our plans and goals, away from loved ones and the stage, brought out something so new and different in us. A new chapter starts with this album, a chapter of raw emotions and complete commitment.”

Hailing from NYC, Black Satellite, comprised of Larissa Vale and Kyle Hawken, is creating waves in the rock scene with a sound that’s dark, edgy, and distinctly their own. Fusing industrial and metal influences, their music transcends conventional boundaries solidifying their place in the genre. The band continues to break new ground through ceaseless hard work and non-stop touring, showcasing their dedication both on and off stage.
Shortly after launching their first single VALKYRIE from their debut album ENDLESS, Black Satellite garnished attention from press outlets such as Billboard, Huffington Post, Revolver, Loudwire, Knotfest, and Alternative Press.
The band recently concluded writing and recording their sophomore record, AFTERMATH, mixed by veteran producer Ben Grosse (Marilyn Manson, Breaking Benjamin) with tracks produced by Kane Churko (Papa Roach, In This Moment). Their single VOID is the first taste of the brand new album.
In 2021, they released a cover of Rammstein’s “Sonne” to critical acclaim with Revolver Magazine describing the track as “a masterclass in metal covers.” Followed by the release of their latest single BROKEN.
Black Satellite has since completed tours supporting John 5, Fozzy, Nita Strauss, Cold, Sumo Cyco, and Drowning Pool. The band also toured with with Cradle of Filth and Devil Driver in March, 2023. Continuing with the second leg of the tour in October 2023, directly followed by a massive Fall tour with Wednesday 13.

Phillip Phillips & Jonah Kagen at El Rey Theatre
2023-11-02 21:00 - 23:30 | El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, 90036, United States
Former American Idol winner, Phillip Phillips is best known for his melodic radio hit, “Home” which launched him to fame in 2011 and marked the most successful coronation hit of any American Idol winner to date. Shortly after “Home” climbed the charts, Phillips released his first full length album The World From The Side Of The Moon, followed by Behind The Light and brought together by his 3rd release, Collateral. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Phillip, like many others, had to take a hard look at his life and career. After welcoming his son Patch in 2019, he found a new inspiration for writing music. 4 years after his last release, Phillips has brought us “Love Like That,” a song dedicated to the unconditional love he has for his wife and child. As he reintroduces himself to the world with his latest single, Phillips hopes to reconnect with his fanbase and get back on tour.

23-year-old singer and songwriter, Jonah Kagen, grew up in Savannah, Georgia. He took up guitar at the age of six, diving deep into the instrument’s technical aspects after his musician grandfather showed him performance videos. He further found inspiration in the music of guitarist Andy McKee, whose finger-style technique lit a creative fire within. “He opened my eyes to what an acoustic guitar could be,” he recalls, as he dove deeper into creating music on his own. “If you can bring somebody something with your music that they can’t get anywhere else, there’s nothing better than that.”
Jonah’s debut EP, ‘georgia got colder,’ was released in December 2022 on Arista Records. He’s already cut impressive figures with over 140M+ global streams, a US tour supporting Maisie Peters, ~2 million Spotify monthly listeners, and was included on Shazam’s 2023 predictions list. An exciting new voice bringing undeniable energy and sincerity through his multifaceted sound, he is undoubtedly on the rise.
