This just in from 40 Below Summer…. “Hey! What’s up? 40 Below Summer here on tour with Kittie and Motograter, having a fucking blast! Tour has been going great, everyone is awesome, celebrating our new album ‘The Mourning After’ (out November 3rd). We are playing tonight in Bellefontaine, Ohio. It’s a bit cold, but there’s always hot coffee and hot girls! We are looking forward to coming over early next year to bring you ass-kicking “40 Below Style” shows! In the meantime, pick up our new record and play it extremely fucking loud!” Peace, 40 Below Summer

We’ve just launched our new ROADTONES site, with all your official Roadrunner ringtones, logos, and wallpapers for your mobile phone, and to celebrate we thought we’d give some away for FREE! Every day, we’re offering up 50 free downloads of our special Murderdolls or Machine Head tone. Yup, that’s right. Right now you can get a completely utterly FREE new official Murderdolls or Machine Head polyphonic ringtone for your mobile right HERE. Just click on ‘Free Ringtones’ on the page to get yours! All you gotta do to get it for FREE is be one of the first 50 people each day to request it. If you aren’t in the first 50, you’ll get a note telling you to try again the next day! Cheaper than most other places, and definitely better sound quality… you can try before you buy coz we’ll even let you hear ’em first! More tones, logos, & wallpapers to come… let us know your must-haves! Get over to ROADTONES for your free ringtone!

Please note that the Murderdolls Halloween show with Danzig in California this Friday has been cancelled for safety reasons due to the fires currently raging in the area.

Machine Head’s amazing new video, truly a classic in the making, will be hitting TV screens on the Scuzz channel from the bright & early time of 6am tomorrow morning. Be sure to look out for it and request it… wait til you see it.

Machine Head have confirmed that the support for their UK shows will come from Sikth and Breed 77 excluding Dublin, which will be from local acts. Elsewhere in Europe, Kill II This look set to play most dates.

It’s Halloween on Friday! And yes, that is why the site is orange & black this week, in case you were wondering. Normal colours will be resumed next week… So, what are you doing for Halloween? Do send us in any brilliant plans you have made, or tales of your nights afterwards. Who knows, we might post up the best and send you something for writing. Now, Chimaira, Ill Nino, and Spineshank, and no doubt quite a few of you, will be spending Halloween in Glasgow, at the Roadrage show at the Garage. We’re sure you’ll have a monstrously great evening. Be sure to wish Dave Chavarri of Ill Nino a Happy Birthday if you see him there. Machine Head on the other hand, will be spending Halloween in lovely Dublin, airing tunes from brilliant new album Through The Ashes Of Empires, and kicking off their European tour. Our lucky Dublin competition winner Steve White and his girlfriend Charlotte will be joining them, as will Roadrunner and our trusty camera. We’re sure it will be a night to remember!

A while back we asked you to send in your guitar-related questions for Acey of The Murderdolls. An online guitar clinic of sorts, if you will. Acey kindly took some time out to answer a whole bunch of your questions, and here is part 1 of Acey’s Guitar Clinic. 1. I wanna start learning guitar but my mum says to start with the acoustic rather than electric which one is easier? – Char Char- Your mom is DEAD……wrong. It’s easier to learn on an electric, plus do you want to play electric guitar or learn Coldplay songs? Parents do this to discourage you and frustrate you. Tell her to give in and get you an electric. 2. I wanna know whether you can use Guitar Pedals for a Bass, cos I use my mates ancient 80’s Marshel Overdrive on my bass all the time. Would this be a good idea? – Vamp Bassist Sure! But the best one to get is either a Big Muff or a Sans Amp Bass DI. they can be kind of expensive, like 100-200 US Dollars, but that’s what most people use. But try a few things and see what works. Maybe you like the sound of the Guitar pedal better! 3. What was the first song you ever learned on guitar? – Becky Wow….I think it was Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. I don’t really like Led Zeppelin, but it was pretty easy. 4. I don’t have a clue about pickups…I hear all the different types of pickup like humbucker and stuff but I don’t know what they mean?? I would like the sound of Machine Head/Ill Nino etc…I like the sound they get from their guitars it’s cool… if it helps I have a 38 watt fender frontman amp, a boss MD-2 mega distortion pedal, and a jim dunlop cry baby. Could you please suggest a good pickup that could give me this sound? OK a single coil pick up is kind of like the ones found in a Fender Strat. They have one coil in them. This can give you a Jimi Hendrix to Kurt Cobain type of tone. A Humbucker has 2 coils in it. What happens is that you get a ‘hum’ with one coil. When you have 2 they cancel eachother out. Hence the name ‘Humbucker’. Those kind of look like 2 single coils put together. NOW….for Metal their are two ways you can go. Active and Passive. Active pickups run of of a 9 volt battery that is stashed someplace in the body of the guitar. The Battery powers an onboard pre-amp. It’s all tiny and you cant see any of it. Guys who use Active pick ups are Zakk Wylde, Dino from Fear Factory, lot’s of Metal guys sware by them. That’s all Joey uses…there is a good chance that the guys in Machine Head and Ill Nino use them as well. EMG makes the best Active pick up for Metal. Passive pick ups are normaly a little more smooth sounding. Slash, Dimebag and Dave Navaro uses them and so do I. I love Seymour Duncans and also stock Gibson pick ups. For metal I would suggest the Duncan Distortion, Invader, Dimebucker or even the JB model. I use the JB and so does Wayne Static and Slash. check out SeymourDuncan.com it’s a great site. SOOOO…. what should you use? I like passive, but when I record I try to double everything with an Active Pick up Guitar just for different textures. Check out the Duncan site and see if any of your favorite players are on there. I’ll bet they are. Part 2 coming soon. Meanwhile, check out ROADTONES, and download yourself a polyphonic ringtone of The Murderdolls song I Love To Say Fuck – absolutely FREE for the first 50 people EVERY day!

KORN, FEAR FACTORY and STATIC-X will be hitting Australia together for 3 dates in February. The dates are as follows: Feb 12 – Brisbane Entertainment Centre Feb 14 í¢ä‰åäóì Sydney Superdome Feb 16 – Melbourne Rod Laver Arena Tickets go on sale November 14.

We’ve had a ton of emails in from you guys over the few days about the awesome new Machine Head album, and your disagreement with surprising and disappointing Kerrang! review. Many of you also wondered what the band thought of it… The band have posted a response today on their official website: www.MachineHead1.com – and we have posted part of it below… for the full piece (and it is worth a read!), click HERE. “”In what came as a complete shock to band members, U.K.-based teen nu-metal weekly, Kerrang!, have absolutely savaged MACHINE HEAD’s new album, ‘Through the Ashes of Empires’. Referring to it as ‘a directionless mess of an album’, that is chock full of ‘widdlesome solos and moments of musical ‘complexity’ that actually get in the way’, and declaring it ‘the sonic equivalent of eating last nights delivery pizza, reheated today’. Add to those comments the fact that they give the record a mere 2 ‘K’s’, only one ‘K’ above the worst Kerrang! review rating of 1 ‘K’, which the UK magazine refers to as ‘bollocks’. The review comes at a time when the international press is absolutely raving about MACHINE HEAD’s ‘Through the Ashes of Empires’, calling it a return to form, with every single major metal magazine in the UK and Europe decidedly praising the record, with even the Australian edition of Kerrang! handing out a staggering 5 ‘K’ review. Which, strangely, leaves K! writer Daniel Lukes as the only scribe to not only barely review the record, but out and out attack the band. MACHINE HEAD drummer Dave McClain called the review ‘gutter journalism, closer to what you might find on an internet message board,’ while frontman Robert Flynn simply added that the reviewer could ‘suck our fuckin’ dicks.'” The best Machine Head album since ‘Burn My Eyes’, ‘Through the Ashes Of Empires’ is out now and available on CD (for around 퉌£11.99) & limited edition double CD (for around 퉌£13.99) from the following retailers: HMV – 퉌£2 off with your ‘Download 2003’ discount card, VIRGIN, MVC, MUSIC ZONE, and OFFICIAL ‘ROADRAGE’ STORES – Free ‘New Shit’ sampler CD when you buy the album from one of these stores.

Out on the road with Slayer in the USA at the moment, Hatebreed’s singer Jamey Jasta is keeping a diary… check out one of his entries below! Jasta has made another journal entry…. 10/27/2003 5:04:00 PM OK, so on the way to Iowa we all partied on the bus listened to music and shot the shit. Got to bed around 4 am, woke up at the venue pretty hung over and bands were already playing. I had forgotten that it was a fest with a shit load of bands on it and multiple stages. I turned my phone on and there was a message from Sworn Enemy who were already at the venue. Met up with those dudes for a bit, showed them our new video and headed over to the hotel to shower and stuff. Got to the hotel and hit the bar with Frank 3 Gun for some Bloody Mary’s (aka hair of the dog) met some fans who were already partying as well. Shout out to Mangy Bear and crew. Saw Kerry King at the front desk waiting in line for at least 15 minutes behind our bus driver Rick who loves to fuck with people and waste time. It was hilarious, Rick was arguing with the hotel manager about having to show him ID. Because he thinks that someone will steal his identity. Meanwhile Kerry King is late for sound check and is standing in line behind him watching and waiting in disgust. Me and Frank just sat at the bar laughing at the whole situation. Finally Kerry King just slaps money on the counter in front of Rick (our driver) and yells í¢ä‰åñkeep the change assholesí¢ä‰åŒ and stormed out of the hotel. It was classic. I then went up to the room showered and took a quick nap, got up about an hour later and met up with Pauly No Neck from Sworn Enemy in the bar for a beer and then the runner picked us up and headed over to the show. On the way over I talked to Frankie from Slytheren who I had met in Japan when we both played Beast Feast together. Nice kid. It turns out they were on the show along with a bunch of other bands like Anal Blast, Dope, etc. etc. etc. Got back to the bus charged my phone and returned some calls and then I started to warm up for the show. Our set was really fun. There were like 4000 people there and the pit was insane. I guess it was because it was a full moon. The stage sound was a little weird because it was only day two and we were still working out the bugs but we added some songs into the set and the crowd was really responsive to the new songs. Saw a lot of familiar faces from the Quad Cities, Peoria and Des Moines. It was cool to see how many people had traveled for the show. Afterwards I saw UFC fighter Sam Hoger and invited him back to the bus to see our new videos and to check out our CD. Hopefully he’ll come out to his fights to our music and beat someone’s ass! We hung for a bit and then headed over to the 2nd stage to see Sworn Enemy. They ripped it up as usual but Mike their bass player fell during the first song and broke his ankle. I felt real bad for him. He had to play the rest of the set sitting on a stool. He was a trooper though and they sounded great and they crowd loved them. Later that night we would leave to head over to Kansas City. Got to Kansas City, KS in the early am and woke up and went into the venue and had some breakfast. There was absolutely nothing to do around the club so me, Beattie and Frank 3 Gun had the runner girl bring us over into Missouri to this big ass mall. We wanted to find a sports bar that had the Yankees/Red Sox game and I needed to get some sneakers and wrist bands and some other things so it all worked out. Ate some Chinese for lunch, lurked around the mall for a bit and then went over to Ruby Tuesday’s to watch the game. Turns out a bunch of the employees were fans and were headed to the show so we got hooked up with some coffees and drinks and even a CD. Thanx! That was the game that Pedro threw Don Zimmer on the ground and both teams were beefing. The whole bar was in an uproar, it was great. Later on the runner girl came back to pick us up we headed back over the show. It was Arch Enemy’s first show so I wanted to go say what’s up to them and catch their set. They were great and the crowd loved them. We went on afterwards and the stage sound was really good so I thought we had a pretty good set. We had never played that city before (only nearby cities) so it was great to see how many people knew us. I was actually really happy with the show, we threw in í¢ä‰åñHealing To Suffer Again, Under The Knifeí¢ä‰åŒ and some other songs we hadn’t been playing on the Rise Of Brutality 2 tour so that was cool. Hopefully one of these days we’ll get around to jamming with Kerry King at sound check so he can come out and do Final Prayer with us. We’ll see what happens, everyone has been so busy that we haven’t really been sound checking….. Head on over to www.Hatebreed.com and take in the new look website (best viewed with flash player version 7)… The Rise Of Brutality in stores November 3rd with European bonus track.