British thrash metallers XENTRIX have had a long career starting in the 1980’s when they were one of the pioneers of the UK thrash metal movement. More recently, earlier this year, the band played some UK dates with KREATOR and EVILE and are starting work on some new material.
Metal Shock Finland‘s Blackdiamond caught up with Paul ‘Macca’ MacKenzie and Dennis Gasser before their Bloodstock performance on the Sophie Lancaster stage. You can listen to the chat on the audio player below:
Legendary German metallers ACCEPT have had an extremely busy last few years, since their explosive comeback to the worldwide metal scene with their highly successful “Blood Of The Nations” album in 2010. Then came the release of another great heavy album in the shape of “Stalingrad” last year, which the band have done extensive touring with and most recently at many summer festivals.
ACCEPT‘s penultimate festival appearance this summer was at Bloodstock Open Air 2013, where Metal Shock Finland‘s Ali Blackdiamond caught up with one of the most friendly metal musicians, guitarist Wolf Hoffmann.
The interview took place before ACCEPT‘s show on the Friday evening, a review of which can be read at this location. You can read some excerpts below and watch the full interview on the video or listen to the audio player below:
Discussing festivals, Wolf expressed his thoughts about them:
“I love them because it’s almost like a party atmosphere. When you do your own headlining shows it’s all on you – you bring your own production and you worry about how the day goes down, but here you get told what to do. (smiles) You show up, do your thing and the rest is just having a good time, not very stressful!”
When asked about the next ACCEPT album, Wolf said:
“Our upcoming album is hopefully going to be out next year. We’ve started working on writing some songs, we haven’t recorded anything yet. But over the winter and maybe early next year we’ll start recording it and try to make it every bit as good as the last one, maybe even better if we succeed, we’ll see. It’s going to be as heavy as the rest!”
On his next solo classical album, Wolf revealed:
“There’s a lot of it done already, but still a lot to do. Whenever I have some free time when I’m not working for ACCEPT, that’s what I work on. I spent the last few days with Andy Sneap working on new material – we’re getting ready to get the first glimpse of these new tracks. It’s gonna be next year before it’s released, I’ll not start recording till January or February.”
Fan-filmed video footage of LAST IN LINE — the band featuring DEF LEPPARD/ex-DIO guitarist Vivian Campbell alongside fellow founding DIO members Vinny Appice, Jimmy Bain and Claude Schnell, plus singer Andrew Freeman, who has previously fronted HURRICANE and LYNCH MOB — performing the song “Holy Diver” on August 10 at the Bloodstock Open Air festival at Catton Park, Derbyshire, United Kingdom, can be seen below.
LAST IN LINE played its first-ever show (a warm-up to the band’s U.K. tour) on August 3 at Slidebar in Fullerton, California.
The band’s setlist was as follows:
01. Stand Up And Shout
02. Straight Through The Heart
03. King Of Rock And Roll
04. Don’t Talk To Strangers
05. Sacred Heart
06. Evil Eyes
07. Holy Diver
08. Caught In The Middle
09. Egypt (The Chains Are On)
10. I Speed At Night
11. The Last In Line
12. Invisible
13. Shame On The Night
14. Rainbow In The Dark
Encore:
15. Gypsy
16. We Rock
LAST IN LINE performs material from the early DIO records that Campbell appeared on.
Speaking to David “Gus” Griesinger of BackstageAxxess.com at this past January’s NAMM (National Association Of Music Merchants) show at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, Campbell stated about reuniting with the original DIO band: “I’m excited about that. We’re calling it LAST IN LINE after the second [DIO] album. It’s the original DIO band — myself, Vinny Appice on drums, Jimmy Bain on bass, Claude Schnell on keyboards, and we found a terrific singer called Andy Freeman, who can totally do justice to the songs. Actually, he doesn’t sound anything like Ronnie [James Dio], which is great, [because] I don’t wanna draw that comaprison. Ronnie was a very unique singer, but Andy is a great singer in his own right, and he certainly sings the songs very respectfully.
“The original band, we actually wrote the majority of that material as a band, so I feel like we’re entitled to go out and play it. I don’t think we’re a tribute band or a cover band or anything like that.
“There’s obviously a big legacy of DIO music, and I think I’m right in saying that most people would think that those early DIO albums are the strongest, so we are just chuffed to play it.”
Campbell and Ronnie James Dio worked together on the first three DIO albums 1983’s “Holy Diver”, 1984’s “The Last in Line” and 1985’s “Sacred Heart” — before Irishman Campbell left to join WHITESNAKE in 1987.
Manchester four piece progressive metallers BETRAEUS released their debut EP “Towards The Sun,” in 2011 which reached number 3 position on the Scuzz TV chart. The band have been playing many shows around the UK and Metal Shock Finland‘s Blackdiamond caught up with Eddie and Paddy at Bloodstock after their performance on the Sophie Lancaster stage.
Check out what Eddie and Paddy had to say on the audio player below and find the official BETRAEUS facebook page at this location.
The team at Bloodstock have just announced three more additions to the bill for the festival in 2013 -the legendary ACCEPT, and also FOZZY and Greek melodic metal band FIREWIND.
German metal gods, ACCEPT are excited to bring their classic sound to Bloodstock’s hallowed turf. ACCEPT’s founder/guitarist, Wolf Hoffmann, is looking forward to his band’s return to our shores, commenting, “Hey Dudes & Dudettes! It was the UK and Judas Priest who made it possible for ACCEPT, overnight, to be put on the map!! We believe that without our British fans, the career of ACCEPT would have taken a different turn. We are honoured and very grateful to be invited to play BLOODSTOCK 2013 – our only show in the UK! Let’s rock together…See ya there!” ACCEPT’s Andy Sneap-produced ‘Stalingrad’ album hit stores in April; wrap your ears around the title track at http://soundcloud.com/nuclearblastrecords/accept-stalingrad .
What is Bloodstock in for? Watch this recent fan-captured clip of classic song ‘Balls To The Wall’ live from New York City…
FOZZY’s frontman, WWE legend Chris Jericho, is similarly enthused. When asked about FOZZY’s appearance at Bloodstock, he told us; “Next summer, it’s going to be such an honour for FOZZY to be a part of the biggest growing festival in the entire UK! I’ve been following the evolution of Bloodstock for years now, and this fest reminds me a lot of FOZZY…getting bigger every year, and poised to take over the world! I promise that this will be the biggest FOZZY show EVER and we can’t wait to tear your f&@king heads off, England!!!!” Meanwhile, FOZZY released their ‘Sin & Bones’ album through Century Media in August. Check out an album sampler at the following link, including the track ‘Sandpaper,’ which features a guest appearance from AVENGED SEVENFOLD frontman, M.Shadows:
Greece’s biggest metal exports, FIREWIND are also exclusives at Catton Park this year. FIREWIND’s leader, guitar maestro Gus G states; “We are very excited to be returning to the Bloodstock Festival next summer! This will be an exclusive UK gig for us, so you can count on a very special FIREWIND show! See you there!” The band are celebrating their 10th anniversary this year in grand style, with a #1 album in their home country (the first metal band to ever hit #1 in Greece), and are ready to bring Bloodstock a taster of their current ‘Few Against Many’ album, which is out now via Century Media. Feast your eyes on the official video for ‘Wall Of Sound’ in the Youtube video below and see what they have in store for Bloodstock 2013.
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s ASA unveil the long-overdue release of "Collective Failure" + first music video for title-track! Check it out and stay tuned for more news! Click image to watch the video
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