Hard rock juggernaut SAINT ASONIA, featuring former Three Days Grace frontman Adam Gontier and Staind guitarist/founding member Mike Mushok, have shared the new song “Better Late Than Never” from their upcoming Introvert EP. The EP arrives on July 1. Pre-order it here.
The new track finds frontman Gontier laying his cards face up on the table. Listen here.
“This is a song I wrote about growth,” says Gontier. “I’ve battled drug and alcohol addiction for years and years. I’ve been in and out of rehab, trying to change and trying to become a better person. I finally hit a point in my life back in 2017, where I was just done. All of that back and forth with addiction just took its toll. I was tired — and motivated. I got clean and have stayed that way since. It took a long time to become the person I wanted to. As they say, better late than never…”
The EP also features the band’s well-received cover of The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” which arrived last year. Additionally, the single “Above It All” is currently ascending the rock radio charts.
The quartet — rounded out by Cale Gontier [bass] and Cody Watkins [drums]— have perfected a fusion of gut-punching grooves, intricate fretwork, airtight songwriting, and soaring choruses. For as much as Gontier and Mushok had achieved in multiplatinum rock acts Three Days Grace and Staind, respectively, the musicians also architected the framework for a singular legacy together in Saint Asonia. 2015’s self-titled Saint Asonia kicked open the door as Loudwire crowned them “Best New Artist” at the Loudwire Music Awards. The 2019 follow-up, Flawed Design, only ingratiated a growing fan base. Lead single “The Hunted,” featuring Sully Erna of Godsmack, racked up 13 million Spotify streams, bringing their cumulative streams near the 100 million-mark. New Noise awarded it 4.5-out-of-5 stars and urged, “Any fan of hard rock (whether they’ve listened in recently or not) should give Saint Asonia a spin.” Meanwhile, Loudwire named it among “The 50 Best Rock Albums of the Year.” Along the way, they hit the road with the likes of Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, Seether, Alter Bridge, and Mötley Crüe.
INTROVERT EP TRACK LISTING: “Above It All“ “Better Late Than Never” “Chew Me Up” “So What” “Left Behind” “Bite the Bullet” “Blinding Lights“
So Cal rock warriors ATREYU have partnered with Sullivan King to remix their smash single “Baptize,” which is the title track of their latest album.
Check out the remix, on which Sullivan King truly put his own unique spin, here.
“When it comes to remixes, we’re always aiming for someone to truly recreate the song,” the band explains. “Sullivan King has such an energy to his music and his personal vibe. He was the perfect fit. This is a whole new ‘Baptize.'”
It was a fitting collaboration, since Sullivan King is a producer, guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter who fuses dubstep and rock, creating his own space in the electronic and alternative scenes. Sullivan King’s unique live show finds the artist shredding on guitar, singing, DJing, and jumping into the pit. He has previously worked with Excision, Aaron Gillespie (Underoath), Papa Roach, Jason Aalon (Fever 333), Ice Nine Kills, Kayzo, and more.
Atreyu are currently on tour with Nothing More. All remaining dates are below.
ATREYU ON TOUR: 6/12 — Denver, CO — The Fillmore 6/13 — Salt Lake City, UT — The Complex 6/15 — Anaheim, CA — House of Blues 6/16 — Phoenix, AZ — The Van Buren 6/18 — San Antonio, — Tech Port 6/19 — Houston, TX — House of Blues
Fargo, North Dakota’s PHOBOPHILIC have today announced their debut album, Enveloping Absurdity, due for release via Prosthetic Records on September 16. Accompanying the album announcement the death metal group are premiering the lead single, Those Which Stare Back, via Metal Injection. Across PHOBOPHILIC‘s first full-length the four-piece ruminate on philosophical absurdism, existentialism and human consciousness against a backdrop of suffocatingly minacious death metal.
Speaking on the album announcement, the band comments: “This album feels like a sizable leap forward for us. It’s much more refined than our previous releases in all aspects. We spent a lot of time making sure the songs stood out on their own but also complimented each other and told a full story. Enveloping Absurdity is about recognizing the separation of what we want the human experience to be and what it truly is. It’s the realization of the universe’s complete and utter indifference to humanity, facing that reality and choosing to find meaning from within.”
Of Those Which Stare Back, PHOBOPHILIC add: “Those Which Stare Back is about personal struggles with depression and the loss of loved ones to addiction, accidental overdose and suicide. It explores the guilt that comes with being alive when those around you who were so full of life have died and wishing you could trade your life for theirs. While lyrically it’s the darkest song on the album, musically it’s the highest energy and immediately throws you into the chaos with twisting and turning riffs and melodic flourishes, reinforcing the turmoil expressed in the lyrics.”
Formed in 2016, PHOBOPHLIC have steadily accumulated early releases in the shape of two demos, 2019’s Undimensioned Identities EP and a split release with Canada’s Sedimentum, all the while honing their craft out across the North American touring circuit – featuring live stints with Gatecreeper and Mutilatred respectively, as well as appearances at LDB Fest and Philadelphia Death Nexus – positioning themselves among US death metals most intriguing young acts.
Following their early productivity both in studio and on the road, PHOBOPHILIC pulled together to shape Enveloping Absurdity’s eight songs into existence. Shunning the fantastical in favour of lived human reality, the band opted to center their gaze on what it is to exist. Drawing from French writers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as Germany’s Fredrich Nietzche’s strains of philosophical thought, Enveloping Absurdity is a meticulous vivisection of the philosophical self and purpose, as it asks fundamental questions of life’s true meaning.
PHOBOPHILIC’s formative promise is fully captured with a stellar production job that retains their to-the-bone intensity, but allows room for the underlying grandiosity of their compositions, thanks to Adam Tucker at Signaturetone Recording in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The artwork was then licensed from Finnish illustrator Joonas Räsänen at EvM Art, as the band sought to marry Enveloping Absurdity’s overarching thematic ponderance with aesthetic totality.
On their debut long player PHOBOPHILIC rebel against notions of defeat and pessimism, in spite of the struggles that come with an overabundance of consciousness, to a profound embrace of that which ails as well as thrills. At the beating heart of Enveloping Absurdity’s sonic extremity is a victory of the self, not content with simply surviving, but choosing to live.
Enveloping Absurdity tracklist: 1. Enantiodromia 2. Those Which Stare Back 3. Nauseating Despair 4. Cathedrals of Blood (Twilight of the Idols) 5. Individuation 6. The Illusion of Self 7. Survive in Obscurity 8. Enveloping Absurdity
WEREWOLVES have premiered their utterly crushing new single, Harvest of the Skulls, and its accompanying music video via Knotfest. Harvest of the Skulls is the third single to be taken from the Australian extreme death metal trio’s upcoming third full length, From the Cave to the Grave, due out on June 24 via Prosthetic Records.
WEREWOLVES have also recently announced their first ever set of live performances in their home country, more details on the dates below.
Speaking on the premiere, bassist and vocalist Sam Bean comments: “We thought we’d bring you a happy little track about death and genocide called ‘Harvest of the Skulls’, which we think is our sauciest film clip so far. Most metal tracks out there that deal with genocide gratuitously recount the action itself. We thought it would be way more horrific if we described what it would be like to be in a country where everyone loses their mind and you’re coerced into mass murder… being made to go along with things, like you’re forced into a large public service work.
“As usual, we wrote this a year or two ago and hey presto, just as the song’s coming out the world is waking up to a few large ongoing genocides happening right now. We really need to write a track about everything turning out alright and everyone being okay.”
From the Cave to the Grave tracklist:
Self-Help Book-Burning
We Are Better Than You
All the Better To Eat You With
Crushing Heaven’s Mandate
Harvest of the Skulls
Oedipus Tyrannus
Nuclear Family Holocaust
Pride and Extreme Prejudice
Watch Your Mouth
WEREWOLVES’ debut The Dead Are Screaming was recorded in 2019 and followed by Australia going from medium to well-done in apocalyptic bushfires. The second release What A Time to Be Alive was recorded in 2020 and closely preceded a global pandemic then mass hysteria. WEREWOLVES attempted some caution and tact by only releasing a limited vinyl EP, DeathMetal, in February 2022 and happened to put it out for sale the same day war came to Europe.
From The Cave to The Grave keeps up the searing pace of the first two WEREWOLVES albums, with a mix of black and death metal and unprecedented aggression that is coalescing into a style of its own. Opener Self-Help Book Burning kicks the door in Hate Eternal-style before deforming into a blackened ending. It’s followed by stadium crowd-pleaser We Are Better Than You, blaster All the Better to Eat You With, and social credit score-destroyer Crushing Heaven’s Mandate. Harvest of the Skulls is an ode to the horror of genocide and the rest of the album blasts through to closing threat Watch Your Mouth, leaving you to enjoy your ringing ears and mild trauma.
The mixing is by Joe Haley (Psycroptic) and the artwork is by Mitchell Nolte. Slayer never changed their shit up, neither will WEREWOLVES. “Change” can be mistaken for “progression”, which WEREWOLVES shrinks in horror from.
DAVID PAICH and The Players Club / Mascot Label Group have announced the release of his debut solo album, titled “Forgotten Toys” on August 19th. Furthermore Paich shares on ‘Spirit of The Moonrise’, “This is a recurring dream about a distraught girl, riding neath the moonlight. It has perplexed me over many a night…”.
Boz Scaggs. Mötley Crüe. Steely Dan. Bryan Adams. George Martin. Michael Jackson. Quincy Jones. P!NK. Aretha Franklin. Miles Davis. The Doobie Brothers. Stevie Nicks. Dolly Parton. Jessie J. Cher. Rod Stewart. Tina Turner. Michael McDonald. Joan Baez. Ray Charles. Elton John. Barbra Streisand… and countless others. If you’ve listened to music in the last 50 years, including any of the iconic artists above, you were hearing David Paich. Music is the soundtrack of our lives, and David is one of its architects.
He initially embraced music by his father—jazz icon, musician, and arranger Marty Paich. “I met Jimmy Webb when I was 10 years old, when my father was working with him,” he recalls. “My dad nudged me towards songwriting because I had the ability to write poetry. Somehow, my father saw my lyrical potential. I followed in Jimmy’s footsteps until Elton John’s first record came out in 1970. That really cemented my musical path. I continued to soak up all the great songs from then on.” Together, Paich and his father notably co-wrote “Light The Way” for Ironside, winning an EMMY® Award for “Best Song or Theme” back in 1974.
With Boz Scaggs, he co-wrote the songs “Miss Sun”, “Lido Shuffle”, and Grammy Award-Winning “Lowdown” from the multi-platinum album Silk Degrees.
Around that same time, Paich and childhood friend, iconic studio drummer Jeff Porcaro wiggled their way onto two Steely Dan albums, which helped form some of their musical direction. Paich and David Foster co-wrote “Got To Be Real” with Cheryl Lynn, catapulting her to disco stardom. All of these accolades solidified him as one of the go-to studio musicians for music’s A-list. Paich decided it was time for him and Jeff to form their own band, which you now know as TOTO.
With his TOTO bandmates, David arranged and performed songs on Michael Jackson’s legendary albums, Bad and Thriller. “One of my greatest memories is collaborating with Michael Jackson, on the bestselling album of all time, Thriller, helping arrange the Jackson/Paul McCartney duet, “The Girl is Mine”, is still a musical highlight in my career.”
Over the past several years, David, along with TOTO has had a major renaissance in popularity like few bands at this point in their career and now have a multi-generational global fan base. In fact, “Africa” has amassed over 1 billion streams worldwide and is one of the most covered and sampled songs in music history, including by Jay-Z, Pitbull, Ellie Goulding, and Weezer.
As a six-time Grammy® Award Winner, Paich has contributed to over 2,000 albums, shaping the sound of popular music as a songwriter, performer, producer, arranger, vocalist and primary composer of the seminal band TOTO. With TOTO, Paich has released 17 albums, sold over 40 million records and garnered over 3 billion streams worldwide. Paich wrote or co-wrote TOTO’s biggest hits, “Hold the Line”, “Rosanna” and “Africa”.
Like most treasured mementos and keepsakes, we hold on to songs forever. We dust them off when we need them, put them back on the shelf, and discover them again months or sometimes years down the line. With his diverse catalogue, he has been kicking around song ideas for a solo album for some time. The COVID lockdown presented Paich the opportunity to revisit those songs, and the result being a collection of tunes that he has carried in my head for years. He shares, “It seemed like it was time to put something together. Some of these really are forgotten toys. It had been a while since I’ve been in my studio and I found myself listening to these little pieces continuously. I kept rediscovering them, hoping to fit the tracks together like a musical puzzle.”
For as much as it may be a “solo” album, Paich couldn’t help but invite a few friends to play. Joined by Joseph Williams as co-producer and sometimes co-vocalist, he welcomed everyone from Toto’s Steve Lukather to Brian Eno, Michael McDonald, Ray Parker Jr., Don Felder, and Steve Jordan of The Rolling Stones.
The album cover artwork provides a poetically nostalgic representation of the concept. It features a variety of memories Paich’s wife has held onto over the years. “I hope this will give everyone a glimpse into another side of me, one they’ve never heard in a musical context.”
Music is the soundtrack of our life. For David, music is much more than the soundtrack of his life. As one of its architects, it is his life.
Track list Forward willibelongtoyou Spirit Of The Moonrise First Time Queen Charade All The Tears That Shine Lucy
Fusing together the 2018-debut Badlands Part One with their much anticipated successor, Badlands Part Two, MAN IN THE WOODS has announced the release of Badlands in its entirety! Slated for a July 29, 2022 release with Argonauta Records, today the four-piece has shared more album details and a brand new single taken of their Badlands.
With a colossal, brute soundtrack that often blurs the lines between stoner rock, sludge, doom metal and grunge elements, MAN IN THE WOODS takes you on a wild trip to dystopian, dark new worlds. Following a first single, Icarus Landing, released by the end of last year, today the band has shared a fierce new track! Says bassist & vocalist Marc Vincent: “The Abduction of Barney Hill was one of the first songs we wrote as a band and it highlights the beginning of the apocalypse that is featured in the overall concept of the Badlands album. The song is based on an infamous claim of Alien abduction that occurred in the state of New Hampshire during the 1960’s, and provides a prologue to the eventual alien invasion that attempts to eliminate mankind and which is captured within the stories featured throughout Badlands.”
Badlands sees MAN IN THE WOODS deliver a progressive and colossal journey through a vibrant blend of heavy riffs and a crushing rhythm section while these harsh vocals guide you through the story of Badlands into hopelessness and a bleak, post apocalyptic world. The band, who was formed in 2016, manages to craft a unique mix of hard rocking fuzz and grunge, heavy stoner rock yet brutal sludge and doom metal to create such dark, dystopian and apocalyptic vibe. The album will be out on July 29, 2022 via Argonauta Records, with a pre-sale to start soon at THIS LOCATION.
“As a band we are extremely stoked to be getting the album out,” Marc adds. “There are tracks on Badlands which show a side to Man in the Woods that has not yet been heard outside of our live shows. We are excited for people to hear the vast expanse of the Universe created within the Badlands concept.”
Badlands tracklist:
Icarus Landing
Speedeater
The Abduction of Barney Hill
Philosorapture
Iron Strider
Toxicology
Trenchfoot
Angel Of Gasoline
Signal, Saucers, Satellites
THE ROCK ALCHEMIST – Italian Rock Band from Turin with a strong sonic identity that blends modern rock with progressive, hard, alternative, and pop elements!
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 