“There are loads of kids down at the shows in old Killswitch shirts,” exclaims Mike, KsE bassist, happily earlier when we grabbed 10 minutes on the phone with him. “Anyway,” says Mike, where are you?! We’re in Bristol, and you’re not…” moving on.. “The shows are going great, really excellent. Everyone seems really appreciative, and Poison The Well are going down great too – we couldn’t ask for better guys to tour with. We had originally thought of bringing our friends 36 Crazyfists, but they are working on a new record right now, and we came over here with them last year on Roadrage, and Poison The Well are awesome too! It’s cool to be back, even without that ‘first-time magic’ of playing a new country. It’s nice not to be in the plain ol’ boring US, although we ARE looking forward to doing the US Ozzfest… it’s been so long since we toured there now, like a year or something! The only problem with the UK, is that everything closes so early!! Like 6 or 7pm and everywhere’s shut. I wanna go shopping and I can’t. Anyway, the tour is going cool. I’m trying to think what I can tell you that you can actually repeat on the website.. haha, no I’m being all good. The first night, in Leeds, some kid threw a bottle at our bus driver, and Howard was standing right there. Howard just went straight over and got this guy in a headlock and was all ‘dude, that’s not nice, that’s our bus driver’… I think that kids friends were all scared Howard was gonna beat him up or something, they were all ‘man don’t hurt him!’ Hehehe. All the shows kinda bleed into one another in the end ya know? But everyone should come down, we’ve been having fun throwing out loads of free stuff during the show. We’re sponsored by Jagermeister, so we’ve been giving out everything from free t-shirts, hats, reflectors, shots, to lanyards and stuff.” So, the tour is going great, and sounds like everyone is having fun, as it should be. What’s the latest word on the new album? “We have 3 songs done without vocals, and 2 more which are inches from being done. In fact, Adam said the other day he’d kinda finished another, so it’s coming. We’ve been practising some of the new stuff at soundcheck, playing it really helps work it out and fit it all together, you know, the intricacies of a song. We have a ton of riffs, it’s all about joining them up correctly… that’s the secret of a song. Joel said he wrote a little acoustic 2 to 2-and-a-half minute interlude thing the other day, so maybe that’ll be new song #6. We were actually thinking of locking ourselves in a house somewhere for 2 weeks or so, take an 8-track and a 4-track in with us, and just see what we come up with. Then it’s into the studio to demo or record stuff straight up!” Killswitch Engage play London tomorrow night, and the Kerrang! Weekender on Friday night.

Monday April 7, 2003. The day that Killswitch Engage played Birmingham, supported by Poison The Well & Beecher, at the Academy 2. Thanks to Paul Clarkin, street teamer, for the below words on the night! Oh what a fun night! The meet and greet went well… We went in and met the band who were just come back from grabbing a coffee from Starbucks. Howard was feeling a bit under the weather so was resting before the show but the rest kept us entertained. I mentioned HP sauce and Adam’s ears picked up! “Where where??” he said! we chatted about it for ages, aboput how great it is! Some “non-belivers” had the cheek to slag off HP and Adam was offended!! I told him I may get him a late birthday present during the show -) I went out after the meet, and handed flyers out while heading to Sainsburys. I got a sandwich, and a bottle of HP!!! During the KSE set, the band stopped to chat about how they loved England, Howard mentioned it was Adam’s birthday a few days ago and the crowd sang him happy birthday! Adam said how he was inlove with brown sauce…at which point I waved the bottle at him! He spotted it like a drunk spots a half discarded can of Special Brew! He said something along the lines of “This guy has brought me the best present…A bottle of brown sauce!” I threw it onstage and he promptly took a huge swig of it! This was in addition to coming onstage with a big furry thing attached to his top lip, making him look like Super Mario! The set was superb, my ears are still ringing! The pit was mental, quite violent at times. The support were brilliant, Poision the Well were great. Some of the guys came out after the show, and Adam thanked me again for the bottle of HP. No problem dude, enjoy it!”

Well, the upcoming Dirty Americans album has been recorded in full. As of present, the album is being mixed. So, for those of you who have been following the Dirty Americans story, you will fully understand each and every word written below. For those of you who are new to this band, read below and know that all is true. The following comes from the band’s A&R Rep here at Roadrunner, Mike Gitter: Be it known that the Dirty Americans record, now officially titled Strange Generation is a sterno-fueled blast of pure rock to the sternum. Got the rough mixes on constant play in my office and this record is a motherfucker. Knock any notion of The Workhorse Movement out of your skull. That’s ancient history. Forget the Kid Rock wannabe bullshit. This is pure shit-kicking music. Foghat. Grand Funk. KISS. Kyuss. The list rolls on… Basically, the boys from Detroit went down to Memphis to make a record with Mr. Paul Ebersold and entered a time-warp somewhere betwixt 1967 and 1974. Get it? Now KICK OUT THE JAMES MUTHAFUCKAS! Soooo many killer jams. The Blue Oyster Cult molesting “Burn You Down,” “Strange Generation,” a ditty called “Car Crash” that rips a page out of the Queens of the Stone Age meets Cheap Trick play-book…the desert rock opus, “Deadman.” The rock just never stops. And let’s talk about the playing. Jeff “Freedom” Piper: mega-guitar hero. Myron….what a fucking cool whiskey-soaked growl. Pete Bever keep the bass a pumpin’ and drummer Jeremiah is behind it all, whacking the shit out of the drums. You may know Ebersold from records like the first mega-selling 3 Doors Down but fukkit, this guy knows how to crank it the fuck up. The Dirty Americans Roadrunner debut is lean, mean and will probably eat your sister for dinner. Like Stan Lee says…. EXCELSIOR!

The latest from Spineshank camp, as told by drummer Tommy Decker: Hello biatches… I’ve got some good news, the record is finally done!!!! We finished mixing early last week and it sounds amazing. Jay Baumgardner ending up doing the final mixes, he co-produced Strictly Diesel with Amir Derakh, and he did an awesome job. This is our best sounding record yet. We are going to master it this week, and as soon as that is done “Violent Mood Swings” will be posted on the site. I’m sure this will convince everyone that we didn’t change our sound too much. This will be the 1st song on the record and it is heavy! I don’t have the final sequence yet but I do know that the album will feature 13 songs. These are the best 13 of 17 we recorded and about 35 that we wrote for this record. It was a long time but I’m glad that we took our time. This record has some of the best stuff we’ve ever done. We also have plans to film a video for “Smothered” and include it on the album, this song will be the 1st single. Not much else going on. We are rehearsing for a tour which will start around May 10 somewhere on the west coast of the USA. These “warm up” shows will be our 1st since Sept 10 2001!! So all of you better be there!!! That’s all for now TOMMY

Yesterday (April 6) the Juno awards ceremony was held in Canada and both Nickelback and Theory Of A Deadman were up for awards. Well glory be, both acts left as winners: Theory took the category New Group of the Year whilst Chad Kroeger and his band Nickelback tied in the category of Songwriter of the Year: Chad Kroeger for “Hero” and Nickelback for “Too Bad” and “How You Remind Me.” Congratulations.

Consider these your advance warnings. On April 19th, and April 26th, the XFM Rock Show will be taken over for a 2 hour period by Max Cavalera (19th) and Corey Taylor (26th). The Rock Show runs from 8pm-midnight… the 2 hour takeover will occur within these hours. The prospect was so shocking, usual presenter Ian Camfield has vowed to be out of the country! Keep your ears tuned for ‘Max Presents’ and ‘Corey Presents’…

Stopped by our NEW RELEASES section lately? Check out the artwork for Junkie XL’s forthcoming single, Catch Up To My Step.

Back in February this year, Spineshank did a new photoshoot with photographer Matthew Welch… and today, the new batch of official Spineshank photos arrived. The first new photo of the band is up. You can see it 2 places: The band’s ARTIST page. Bigger, in the band’s PHOTO GALLERY. More photos to come.

Killswitch Engage are back in the country, and in fact terrorising Leeds tonight playing at the Cockpit. Called up Mike D’Antonio, KsE’s bassist, earlier today to see how things were, how the flight over was, if today’s instore at Crash went well, and so forth. So, we’ve got Mike on the phone… Mike, KsE: “Where are you?!” Kirsten, RR – “Here in the Roadrunner office, London.” Mike: “London?! What are you doing in London? We’re up here in Leeds!” Kirsten: “Sat here in London, about to write about you guys being up in Leeds.” Mike: “Get up here right now!” Kirsten: “Dude, you’re over 3 hours drive away. You’ll be in bed by the time I get there.” Mike: “I don’t care! I’m not answering any questions til you get up here!” [cackles] [some shuffling goes on] Adam, KsE’s guitarist: “Hey Kirsten! Where are ya?! Why aren’t you up here in Leeds?!” this could be a short phone call… Kirsten: “So Adam, how was the flight?” Adam: “Ah, you know, it was the red eye. We left at like 7pm our time and I didn’t sleep a wink. I stayed up all night watching romantic comedies… I’m such a girl!” [laughs heartily] Kirsten: “Heh. What did you watch?” Adam: “Hmmmm.. 2 Weeks Notice – Sandra Bullock with Hugh Grant. Kinda cute. But I needed a girl to giggle and snuggle up with! I befriended the dude next to me instead… but don’t worry, nothing happened.” Adam: “Do you know the worst bit was after we landed? We had some trouble with the tour bus meeting up with our tour manager or something and we ended up sitting in the airport arrivals lounge for like 10 hours!! Man, it was like the worst day of my life… I was so tired, it was like the middle of the night to us, I was just sitting there, drooling, all kinda ‘arrrrrgghhhh’.” Kirsten: “Ah man, that’s not good.” Adam: “I hafta say, the joy of my day was going to the little Wendys in the lounge area. I had one of their fabulous bean burgers.. and you know, I am SOOOO in love with HP Sauce.” Kirsten: “You don’t have that in the US?” Adam: “Nah man, the delights of the brown sauce. it’s kinda like our A1 I guess. Dude, I was putting that shit on with every bite.” Kirsten: “So, today was your first instore. How’d it go?” Adam: “Did ya see that thing I said before about how you guys can’t make pies over here? Putting shit like meat and horrible things in them? Well at the instore today, this kid came up to me and goes ‘Hey, I brought you this pie, I read what you said about us making pies over here.. this one’s blackcurrent’ – like isn’t that so sweet?! And it’s like my birthday today, so it’s I have a birthday blackcurrent pie! I’m gonna eat that later.. in fact, maybe I’ll eat that onstage later. And do you know, right after that he ran out and bought me a birthday card too! I have to find that guy later and give him a big ol’ hug… I’m just hoping he doesn’t want sex.” [chortles] Kirsten: “Anything else?” Adam: “We’re all trying to grow mustaches on this tour, but we’re not succeeding. You know Dice, our merchandise guy? His is AMAZING. I think he had a mega-headstart on us. The best besides Dice, is probably Tom, our drummer. Mine is terrible!! I’ve been growing it for 2 weeks and it’s so thin – it just looks like my lip is a little dirty! Maybe I should just draw one on, like with a sharpie marker pen or something. Ha! I know, I’ll just write ‘mustache’ in marker pen above my lip, that’ll do it. Actually, I’ll let you do it. This is the mustache tour…” Adam: “Oh, and you know what else?” Kirsten: “What…?” Adam: “I dyed my hair black. It was all blonde last time I was in the UK. I’ve been blonde for so long, when I first did it my mom was totally shocked and like ‘Who are you?! What have you done with Adam?!’ Ya know I like it now, but then, I was just going, ‘Man, I’m like the ugliest dude in the whole entire world!!'” And on that note, we wish Adam a great show and an even greater birthday… KsE touring the UK until April 11th… more to come…

Seeing as we made the rest of Theory Of A Deadman answer our questions, it was only fair that we pinned Tim, the band’s drummer, down as well. RR: Date of birth? Tim: “October 10, 1974” RR: Favourite tour story? Tim: “This one time, at band camp…” RR: Five words that describe you? Tim: “Big, annoying, ugly, not funny!” RR: One album you think everyone should own? Tim: “Nothing Shocking. Jane’s Addiction.” RR: Which famous person would you invite over for dinner and why them? Tim: “Paul McCartney, because he knew John Lennon.” RR: Best piece of advice you’ve been given? Tim: “Never forget where you came from.” RR: If I wasn’t in this band I would be… Tim: “Bored!!!” And so endeth our Theory of a Deadman profiles. Coming up next, Killswitch Engage.