Orange County, California's ATREYU constantly wants to grow musically with each new record. Many of their fans have noticed a change in the vocals from Alex Varkatzas on the group's latest CD, “Lead Sails Paper Anchor”. In the new behind-the-scenes video, Alex explains the new direction he took and where he wants to see ATREYU go in the future: Real Media, Windows Media, Quicktime.

ATREYU recorded “Lead Sails Paper Anchor” this spring with producer John Feldmann (THE USED, GOOD CHARLOTTE) who worked with the band to create their most infectious, ambitious and musically challenging disc yet. While the band's juxtaposition of hardcore-influenced chaos and rock-influenced melody is still present, the gulf between the two styles is diminished, making the passages flow in a smoother and more naturalistic manner. “Lead Sails Paper Anchor” was mixed by Andy Wallace (NIRVANA, SLIPKNOT, LINKIN PARK).

Source: Blabbermouth

MEGADETH's video for the song “Never Walk Alone” will premiere exclusively on the band's official MySpace page next Wednesday, September 26. The clip was shot on August 22 at Cheyenne Studios in Castain, California.

CLICK HERE to watch fan-filmed video footage of MEGADETH performing the song “Take No Prisoners” on September 16, 2007 at the Ogden in Denver, Colorado:

Source: Blabbermouth

Fan-filmed video footage of MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn's anti-Disney speech during the introduction to the song “Aesthetics of Hate” at Club Firestone in Orlando, Florida on September 17, 2007 can be viewed below.

Los Angeles Times reported last weekend that five heavy-metal concerts scheduled at House of Blues clubs on Walt Disney Co. property in Anaheim, California and Orlando, Florida have been hastily shifted to other venues or canceled recently, according to House of Blues web site calendars.

A Sept. 7 show featuring MACHINE HEAD, ARCH ENEMY, THROWDOWN and SANCTITY, booked two months earlier, was moved on two days' notice from the House of Blues in Anaheim's Downtown Disney entertainment complex to the Glass House in Pomona. Thursday's concert with CANNIBAL CORPSE, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, THE RED CHORD and THE ABSENCE, originally slated for the Anaheim House of Blues, was moved to the Galaxy Theatre in Santa Ana. A Sept. 26 Anaheim House of Blues concert featuring OBITUARY, ALABAMA THUNDERPUSSY, FULL BLOWN CHAOS and HEMLOCK has been canceled outright.

At the House of Blues in Orlando, Fla., on Disney World property, the Sept. 17 concert of the MACHINE HEAD lineup was moved to Club Firestone. The same action has been taken with the Oct. 11 CANNIBAL CORPSE package.

Asked about the scheduling changes, John Vlautin, vice president of communications for Live Nation (formerly Clear Channel), the concert-promotion organization that owns the nationwide House of Blues chain, issued a statement that said only: “House of Blues offers a range of entertainment to match the audience at our venues. It was determined that the mix of entertainment at our two Disney locations should be different from our other venues.”

Vlautin declined to comment on why metal bands have been singled out after years of similar bookings or whether other metal events already scheduled, including SUFFOCATION, EDGUY and STATIC-X, will be affected.

Rob Doughty, communications vice president for Disneyland Resorts, declined to comment, referring inquiries to Vlautin. Paul McGuigan, concert promoter at the Anaheim House of Blues, also declined to comment through a club spokeswoman.

The Walt Disney Co., through Vlautin, issued a short statement that included no specifics about the shifts of the metal concerts: “In consultation with Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, the House of Blues will provide a mix of entertainment for guests visiting Disney Resorts.”

CLICK HERE to watch the video.

Source: Blabbermouth

The Daily Goss says Danii Minogue (Kylie's sister) missed the opportunity to be in Nickelback's video 'Rockstar' because she was too busy being a judge on the X-Factor. This story follows the one about a similar story involving Wayne Rooney in The Sun last week

For the rest of the story click here

The inaugural edition of the White Noise Metal video podcast, featuring an interview with SHADOWS FALL members Brian Fair (vocals), Jonathan Donais (guitar) and Jason Bittner (drums), is available online at http://www.whitenoisemetal.com/

According to a press release, White Noise Metal “fills the gap between shows that focus on the celebrity/lifestyle of heavy metal music and those that are highly technical examples of 'musicians talking to musicians.' Hosted by That BS Dude (a.k.a. veteran broadcast newsman Brian Shields) White Noise Metal is focused on the music from the perspective of the lifelong music fan.”

Source: Blabbermouth

Author/journalist Joel McIver recently interviewed MEGADETH's Dave Mustaine, who is promoting the new “Warchest” box set, for Record Collector magazine. Excerpts from the chat follow:

Q: How pivotal was the 1990 Clash Of The Titans tour for MEGADETH's career?

Mustaine: “Very. I look back with great fondness at that tour, even though there were some differences of opinion between the bands, and some conflicts of personality. I look back on it as a tremendous success. I'm friends with Chuck Billy [TESTAMENT], I see him all the time. I'm not really friends with the guys in SLAYER, but we're cordial. And I see Scott Ian [ANTHRAX] all the time. Unfortunately, with what happened to ALICE IN CHAINS [i.e. Layne Staley's death] I don't see all of them, but I saw Jerry Cantrell recently. I just saw Mike Muir of SUICIDAL TENDENCIES too, and he's looking as intimidating as ever!”

Q: Will we ever see a UK Gigantour?

Mustaine: “It would be my pleasure to do something like that. I dream of taking Gigantour internationally. I feel a kinship towards the UK and I want to do everything that we do with our fans over there properly, so if we were going to do something like that we'd have to make sure we took our time and did it with the right bands in the right places with the right ticket prices. Sometimes you have to lose money in order to be conscientious of the ticket prices the fans are paying, so I've got to be able to take that risk too if we're going to keep the spirit of Gigantour alive. People like the idea of Gigantour – it sounds like a good, fun metal tour, not like the Blackened Testicles tour or something.”

Q: Do you think you're a good guitar player?

Mustaine: “Yeah, I think I'm good. I enjoy playing how I'm playing right now: I like setting the guitar down when I'm done playing the song, and then looking at someone else and going, let's see you do that! Even though there's hundreds and thousands of players who are better than I am, it's fun to me to push the limitations of my playing.”

Q: You're 46. Does that make you an old guy?

Mustaine: “Yeah, I think I'm old. I don't look old, and I don't play like I'm old, and I'm in really good shape right now – but there are mornings when I wake up and it feels like someone's sucked oil out of my hinges, ha ha! I just creak back and forth until I get motion flowing inside me. But I think that's just an occupational hazard: this job is so strenuous on your skeletal system and your respiratory system that most people would be dead. I stay fit, though – I still work out, go to the gym and do cardio stuff – and then, of course, there's the obligatory two hours of metal calisthenics every night.”

Q: How long can you keep your musical career going?

Mustaine: “Oh, I'll know when it's time to stop. I thought it was time to stop before, when my arm got hurt. I honestly thought I'd lost the fire, but then I thought, 'I think I'll do this a little bit more, because there's something left unfulfilled inside me.'”

Q: Is your best work behind you or ahead of you?

Mustaine: “I think it's ahead of me. I don't know that the next record I write's going to be any good, or if there's gonna be one, or if it's gonna be with Roadrunner, or what's gonna happen. There will be another offering of music from me, but whether it's going to be another MEGADETH record or me going off on my solo career… because all my commitments are fulfilled with MEGADETH. I love playing with the Drovers [guitarist Glen Drover and drummer Shawn Drover] and with James Lomenzo [bass], and I could see this going for a long time, because those guys are very functional. Even though there's the typical boy stuff that goes on, there's a tremendous respect for one another and a tremendous respect for our families, which makes touring very clean and respectful for everybody.”

The interview will appear in Record Collector's November 22 issue. See http://www.joelmciver.co.uk/ for more information.

Source: Blabbermouth

The first video footage has surfaced of MACHINE HEAD performing with temporary bassist Brandon Sigmund from fellow San Francisco Bay Area metal band HOSTILITY. A six-minute fan-filmed clip of the band's live rendition of the song “Aesthetics of Hate” recorded on September 7, 2007 at the Glasshouse in Pomona, California can be viewed here.

Sigmund is the temporary replacement for regular MACHINE HEAD bassist Adam Duce, who was forced to sit out the trek after suffering a broken leg while dirt biking in Redding, CA. Also joining the band onstage to reproduce Adam's backing vocals is Jared MacEachern of tourmates SANCTITY.

Source: Metal Hammer

Brian Sweeney of Blistering.com recently conducted an interview with DOWN guitarist Kirk Windstein. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Blistering.com: What direction did DOWN go with “Down III: Over The Under”?

Kirk Windstein: We really didn't have anything in mind, it just kind of came out. In general I think we kind of just – we're the type of band that's not really afraid to go backwards. We like to move forward of course, too, but in some ways we gathered together and decided to put DOWN back together and make it a real band and not a side project and stay focused and give 100% dedication to this band. We went back and started listening to a lot of the stuff that influenced DOWN to form as a band in the first place. Bands like TROUBLE, BLACK SABBATH and a lot of Southern rock – SKYNYRD, THE ALLMAN BROTHERS, stuff like that. All of the old stuff that really inspired us to form as a band way back when. We all played in heavy bands, for lack of a better word, and we kind of wanted to do something different. On this one we did make a conscious effort to go back and listen to the stuff that influenced us the first time around.

Blistering.com: I heard some rumors that there are a slew of acoustic songs that you didn't put on the record. Is there any substance to those rumors?

Windstein: We have acoustic songs written. The way this album was coming out, we just kind of looked at each other and said, “Let's make a hard-hitting, straight-ahead classic rock'n'roll record.” We do have some dynamics on some of the songs, of course. We try to make everything a little different: songs written in a different key, different tempos; there is mellow stuff, just hard-hitting, heavy stuff – everything. The acoustic thing, we talked about incorporating it into the record. The way it was coming out and the way it was flowing we felt it was best to go with a classic rock'n'roll record. We do have some acoustic stuff done. We have songs that we recorded that didn't make the record that are killer songs that could be used somewhere down the line. We have songs that were written that we demoed that we didn't even record in the studio that are killer, so we have an abundance of material and I'm sure that we're going to do something with the acoustic stuff and some of these other tracks sometime soon.

Blistering.com: When you're writing music, do you get together with everybody and sit around a table and just jam, or do you think of stuff on your own and bring it to the group?

Windstein: A little bit of everything. Everybody wrote stuff at their own house or whatever, to bring to practice; a lot of it was written at practice. Phil spent countless hours going through the riff tapes. In fact, the tune “On March The Saints” was something that he found on a riff tape from like '97, '98 or something like that, and I remembered it, so I was like, “Dude, I remember that,” so we kind of worked that up, and of course it's a lot different than the original thing. But we had hours and hours of jam sessions from way back when, and we went through those – Phil basically did – and made notes of the ones that he felt were worth listening to. And some of those things were taken and rewritten with everyone else's input. It depends. A lot of time [guitarist] Pepper [Keenan] will come up with his stuff right there on the spot. A lot of times we'll get to the rehearsal room and he'll be in the “lair,” we call it, where we jam, and he'll come up with a good idea. He'll come over about an hour or two later, and he's got a really good idea and we'll work on that. Everyone definitely adds in their own two cents, but that's kind of how the writing process goes. It's a little bit of everything. The riffs that I brought in were written and demoed and presented to the band, and everyone would put their own twist on them.

Blistering.com: The band is pretty much synonymous with New Orleans, but you recorded the album in Los Angeles. Was that change of scenery difficult to adapt to, just being away from New Orleans?

Windstein: Well, I think the one positive is that there are no outside distractions when you do something like that. I have a house, I have a wife, I have a little girl – not that that's a distraction – but when you're isolated, whether it be in the woods at Phil's where we did the last record when we lived there for a damn month and didn't even leave, or if you're isolated in a hotel and being shuttled straight between the hotel and the studio day in and day out not even seeing the sun, you only have one focus, and that one focus is the record, is creating the best record you can create. Performing the best that you can perform. And I think if we were to do it in the studio in the city here and be going home every night some of our “regular-life responsibilities” would come into play a little bit more. For me personally, I enjoyed getting away and just being isolated and focused in on nothing but the record. Some of us are able to do it at home, some of us aren't, but I think it was a good, positive thing. The change of scenery was good. We always write in New Orleans just to get that vibe, you know. But recording out in L.A. was nice. The problem with New Orleans is that the majority of the really good studios here were destroyed in the hurricane and aren't even back up and running, if they're ever even going to come back. So it was a pretty limited selection as to where we could record. Our producer lives out in L.A. so he was able to get everything coordinated and it worked out great. On DOWN I, “NOLA” was basically a straight-ahead disc that had a few little segue pieces, and we intentionally did a lot of the stuff that we did on “Down II” with acoustic stuff and just kind of broadened our whole spectrum. We feel as though we can do whatever we want to do. If we want to make a damn acoustic record, we'll make it. If we want to make a hard-hitting heavy record, we'll make it. If we want to make a combination of the two, we'll make it. We don't feel we're backed into any corner, you know? We feel like we're free to express ourselves and write what we feel as individuals and collectively as the five guys in DOWN.

Read the entire interview at Blistering.com.

C.Ryback from Finland's Get in the Pit TV conducted an interview with DREAM THEATER guitarist John Petrucci prior to the band's September 26, 2007 concert in Helsinki, Finland. Watch the interview in two parts below.

To watch Part 1 CLICK HERE

To watch Part 2 CLICK HERE

Source: Blabbermouth

DOWN held a release party for its new album, “III – Over the Under”, on Tuesday (September 25) at the The Plush Lounge at The Key Club in Hollywood, Califoria. The entire group attended the event, as did former BIOHAZARD frontman Evan Seinfeld and video director Dean Karr, among many others. Check out photos at DirtJunior.com.

Source: Blabbermouth