Our favourite day of the year is fast approach! This coming Record Store Day

Rock Sound delved beneath the surface with the guys in The Devil Wears Prada

Latin American metal supergroup De La Tierra

Roadrunner Record’s newcomers & raucous noise mongers Marmozets will be heading stateside this summer to join Warped Tour 2014! The guys will join the tour in Toronto on July 4th & play a total of 27 dates up until August 3rd. It has been a hectic week for the band who also released their latest single ‘Why Do You Hate Me?’ on Monday. Watch the video below & make sure you see the guys on their upcoming headline tour.

To celebrate their 25th anniversary Opeth have teamed up with book publisher Rocket 88 to work on the official Opeth book.

In this amazing book the band will tell you their full story for the first time – the good, the bad, the ugly – in their own words, with a little help from former members, label bosses, management, producers, and anyone else that’s been there for the key moments in the band’s illustrious career.

Opeth’s long and winding story will be illustrated throughout with rare and unseen images of life on the road, working in the studio, and other unique glimpses into the world of Opeth.

Rocket 88 Books are inviting fans to get in touch if they have any items of visual interest: photos/posters/ticket stubs/fliers/anything!

Don’t send images yet, just let Rocket 88 know what you have and they will review all that’s sent in with consideration for inclusion in what will be a truly exceptional book about one of Metal’s most important bands. Your stuff could be in the book!

Please e-mail Rocket 88 at: info@opethbook.com

As Slash along with Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators begin work on a new album, we get a great behind the scenes look at the recording process courtesy of Ernie Ball. In episode

Whilst in the UK The Midlands Rocks spoke to Black Stone Cherry drummer John Fred Young about visiting John Bonham’s grave, headlining the second stage at Download Festival & their eagerly awaited new album ‘Magic Mountain’. You can pre-order ‘Magic Mountain’ on iTunes & Amazon right now.

When asked about the album which is due for release on May 5th John Fred had this to say “Making this record we had an open mind, we’re gonna make the best songs we can. We’re not gonna get in the studio and have a producer try to make us, you know, cut, paste, glue. The last record, I love it dude, there’s nothing wrong with it, I love it to death. But our label guy at the time wanted us to make a record that was accessible for radio listeners in America, radio is the big deal over there.

You see, we built over here off of our live shows and then radio started to come along. We could never get radio to respond to us like we wanted to. So when the third record came around, we wrote for a year, like 58 songs, that’s a lot. We made friends with other songwriters in Nashville and other parts of the country. With this record there’s been a shift in the label and we were allowed to be left alone to create Black Stone Cherry.

Our producer Joe Barresi, he was great, so instrumental in allowing us to be ourselves. He came down to our farm with us, he got it man. All these vintage guitar pedals, stuff you can’t even find anymore. The songs, they’re wild, free spirited, American rock and roll lyrics. I think our fans will appreciate it too. We didn’t want to make a record that will get us ‘5 minute fans’. We have our fans, they love us, we love them. We’re gonna make sure that they’re happy.

Read the full interview right here.