Image via Wikipedia

On Monday morning we awoke to the news that legendary Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has been diagnosed with cancer. The news felt like a kick to the stomach. Only weeks ago the four original members of Black Sabbath made the announcement that they would reunite for a world tour, and the release of their first studio album by the original Sabbath since 1978’s Never Say Die!

Iommi has been a mainstay in the rock/metal world since Black Sabbath released their eponymous first release in 1970. The album became the stuff of legend as Sabbath was launched into sudden stardom. They snubbed the hippie, flower-power movement so popular at the time. Iommi has been the backbone of the band throughout the years. At times he was the only original member of the band keeping the Sabbath moniker alive against the wishes of many. Now he’s up against the ultimate foe.

Read the full story

Lasers, smoke cannons, and fireballs – you expect and you get from metal masters Judas Priest on their ‘Don’t Call It a Farewell’ Epitaph Tour. With piercing vocals, top-decibel dueling guitars, and pummeling bass and drums, Priest presented a showcase of their entire anthology at the Klipsch Amphitheater at Bayfront Park in Miami.

Vocalist Rob Halford still wails like a banshee about four decades after the band formed. Glenn Tipton and Richie Faulkner (in for recently retired K.K. Downing) propel the band through ear-ringing yet harmonized guitar attack. Powered by Scott Travis’ double bass drums pounding in conjunction with bassist Ian Hill, the band’s music still drives the audience like a diesel truck on overdrive, with twin turbo guitars, and air-horn vocals in your face.

Blasting through “Metal Gods” and “Heading Out to the Highway” early on, the band presented the audience with one anthem after another as the crowd chanted “Priest, Priest” between tunes. Halford introduced “Never Satisfied” from their first album Rocka Rolla, about their hometown Birmingham. Then before hitting early-era “Diamonds and Rust”, a cover of a Joan Baez song, Halford gave high praise for Ms. Baez.

Even in a city with demographics different than this metal onslaught would typically draw, several thousand showed. Included: a couple from Australia, Jim Carallis and Ewa Broeker, who flew in for the show and ditto a man from California who arrived the day of the show and was to fly back after the gig.
Read the full story

Guitarist Glenn Tipton (right, with lead singer Rob Halford) has been with Judas Priest for most of its 40-year history.

Glenn Tipton is back on a worldwide tour, playing in front of headbangers by what will be the millions by the time Judas Priest’s schedule is finished.

But the group’s longtime guitarist almost didn’t leave England at all this time around – and wouldn’t have been at Miami’s Bayfront Park Amphitheatre on Thursday with the group — after his fellow guitarist, K.K. Downing, decided to retire.

“We were all in shock, really,” Tipton said in a telephone interview. “We almost gave up right then and there.”

However, with more than 40 years of history, little has stopped this group from marching forward – they endured when Rob Halford, the group’s lead singer, walked away in 1991 (he came back in 2003 – although former tribute band singer Tim “Ripper” Owens took over and, as Tipton said, proved he was the “only man on the planet who could’ve stepped in for Rob”); they’ve been through eight different drummers (though the latest, Scott Travis, has held the spot the longest – 16 years).

Directions, invite a friend, nearby dining

Read the full story

Iwrestledabearonce: Mikey Montgomery (drums), Krysta Cameron (vocals), Stephen Bradley (guitars), John Ganey (guitars), Mike 'Rickshaw' Martin (bass).

Stephen Bradley, the guitarist for the Louisiana-based band iwrestledabearonce (yes, it’s lower case; yes, it’s all one word), was asked if his group took pride when first-time listeners can’t even begin to guess where their music will go next.

His answer ended up being the perfect example of the bizarrely logical way his band’s musical paths make sense.

“That’s the plan I suppose, or the lack of a plan,” Bradley said. “The plan is a lack of a plan.”

The five-member group’s music is nearly impossible to categorize. At its core, there is a lot of roaring metal, but at various points, you might hear electro, synth pop, jazz and even disco.

Directions, nearby food

And it gets no less confusing, and yet sensible and mindbendingly amazing, when you see iwrestledabearonce in concert – for example, on Friday at Pompano Beach’s Rocketown along with Of Mice and Men, For the Fallen Dreams, I See Stars, Abandon All Ships and That’s Outrageous!
Read the full story

Between the Buried and Me performs at Revolution Live on Friday night. (Photo courtesy Between the Buried and Me)

For metal bands that are touring outside the United States for the first time, it’s an eye-opening experience to travel to Eastern Europe.

That part of the world seems to love metal, no matter who it is. And the better the metal band, the better the reception.

So for a highly acclaimed band like Between the Buried and Me, these particular tour stops were quite the occasion.

“It was the first time in Russia for us,” said guitarist Dustie Waring in a telephone interview. “We played Moscow, and we played St. Petersburg as well. St. Petersburg was my favorite of the two.

“It was freakin’ huge! We played a nice venue, and I think for the second show we had 500 people, which was great for our first time as a headliner. Everyone seemed to enjoy it.”

The tour has been part of what has been a refreshing time for Between the Buried and Me, which performs on Friday at Revolution Live, along with Animals as Leaders and Tesseract.

Read the full story

Buckcherry's Xavier Muriel (on drums), Josh Todd and Jerry 'Two-Fingers' Ashhurst perform at the Pompano Beach Amphitheater. (Erin Marta / rhythmscene.com)

It didn’t start out promising for the Rock Allegiance Tour, as rain poured down during the set of the band Drive A, keeping fans away Wednesday at Pompano Beach Amphitheater.

But once Crossfade hit the stage, it looked as though a monsoon couldn’t keep the fans from the show. The energy built from there, as Red, P.O.D., Puddle of Mudd, Buckcherry and finally Papa Roach took over the night.

Crossfade played a few songs, including one off their new album We All Bleed called “Colors.” They saved their 2004 hit, “Cold”, for last which brought up the crowd’s energy despite the rain.

Photos: Rock Allegiance Tour, with Papa Roach, Buckcherry, P.O.D., Puddle of Mudd, Red and Crossfade

Red was up next, and they really amped the crowd. They ran all over the stage and head-banged along with the audience to “Let Go” and “Breath into Me” from their first album, End of Silence. They also played “Lie to Me (Denial)” from their album that was released in February, Until We Have Faces.
Read the full story

Image via Wikipedia

The internet was abuzz yesterday with rumors about a Black Sabbath reunion. The rumors ran so rampant that “Black Sabbath” was trending first on Yahoo! for a large part of the day.

The Birmingham Mail in England first reported the story. The report claimed that guitarist Tony Iommi and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne had been in contact since June coming up with material for a new album with a tour to follow. Since the initial report, various media outlets including Rolling Stone decided to run with the rumor without getting “official” word.

Iommi posted his denial yesterday on his website. He also apologized to his former band mates for talking to a journalist who decided to take a casual conversation and turn it into fact. Although a reunion wouldn’t be a shock, the sudden news did come as a surprise. Though the report did mention the four original members getting back together, the supposed meetings between Iommi and Osbourne didn’t include bassist and main lyricist Geezer Butler. Any talk of writing sessions would have to include Butler who was the architect of most of the Sabbath catalogue.
Read the full story

The fact that Ozzy Osbourne is still alive is considered by many to be a miracle. He’s cheated death more times than Wyle E. Coyote. His outrageous behavior and self-inflicted abuse is legendary. His memoir released in 2009 entitled I Am Ozzy tells of a guy who always fell off the cliff but never died.

What’s more miraculous perhaps than his longevity in life is the fact that after being unceremoniously dismissed from Black Sabbath in late ’79, Ozzy got his life together long enough to release his first solo album. The year was 1980; the album, Blizzard of Ozz. It was a groundbreaking hard rock/heavy metal work of art that ushered in the Randy Rhoads era. Ozzy soon followed up this huge release with Diary of a Madman in ’81. Diary is arguably better than Blizzard, but both remain two of the greatest rock releases of all time.

Sony decided to re-release both albums in deluxe re-mastered editions. The results are absolutely fabulous. Thirty years of advances in technology has spruced up both albums to a point of perfection rarely heard in anything released today. One of the main reasons for a re-release was due to the fact that Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy’s wife and manager for nearly 30 years, decided to settle a lawsuit by tinkering with history. This move was one of the more ridiculous and horrible decisions made by someone who is known to be ruthless, but very intelligent and who knows the music industry as well as anyone. Her father, the late Don Arden, was Black Sabbath’s manager throughout the ’70s and early ’80s. It was Sharon who chose Ozzy as a reclamation project after his firing from Sabbath. It was her chance to break away from her father and have success on her own. She took a huge gamble and it has paid off larger than anyone could have imagined. However, her decision in 2002 to replace the drum and bass tracks on Ozzy’s first two solo releases and release them as original recordings was music blasphemy!
Read the full story

Black Sabbath’s Born Again, I dare say, ushered in a new era of heavy metal. This album has been maligned in the press, panned by critics, and parodied in the movie Spinal Tap. But hardcore Black Sabbath fans and future thrash metal bands would recall the album as one that changed the course of metal.

Led by the undeniably talented Ian Gillan, Born Again was the first post-Dio album. The Sabs saw great success with Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules, but when Ronnie James Dio left to front his own successful band, it left the three original members of Sabbath in a situation with which they became all too familiar — in search of a vocalist.

How this marriage came to be is the stuff of legend. The story goes that over a few pints at the local pub, an initial conversation turned into Gillan joining Sabbath as they became more and more inebriated. The thought was that this would not be a Sabbath album or tour, but a new super group. However, it was too tempting not to capitalize on the Black Sabbath brand, thus Black Sabbath had its new vocalist.

Gillan didn’t fit the image of a Sabbath vocalist. He didn’t where the appropriate leather that the early to mid eighties metal bands made vogue, and he came much more from a blues vocal background as heard in his solo work, and the work of legendary rockers Deep Purple. The great thing about Born Again is that it provided a sound and style that no one expected. It could be the reason that it was misunderstood. There exist no better anthems than “Trashed,” “Disturbing the Priest,” “Zero the Hero,” “Hot Line,” and “Digital B***h” (a little ditty about Sharon Osbourne).
Read the full story

There are concerts where audience members are discouraged from singing along, or standing up, or rocking out, or visibly displaying any music-related exuberance outside of clapping between songs.

Last night’s tour opener for Def Leppard and Heart at Cruzan Amphitheatre was decidedly NOT one of those shows. Arms were raised, feet were stomped, heads were banged and air guitars were enthusiastically strummed. And it’s not just that the audience went rogue — it was by command.

“It’s like, for the next eight minutes, you’re part of the band!” explained Def Leppard lead singer Joe Elliott, during a well-received acoustic set done on a wee stage extended into the crowd. Both his band and Heart, fronted as always by power sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, have the distinction of never having to have staged a reunion tour, because they never broke up, never stopped rocking.

There are some that will label such acts as guilty pleasures. Believe this — there was no guilt at this show. There was no one looking around their expensive beer sheepishly regretting being there. It was all a proud, loud celebration of the hair or the car you used to have, the things you used to do or the people you knew when “Never” or “Photograph” or “Barracuda” or “Pour Some Sugar On Me” came out. It’s not high art, whatever that means. But it’s solidly and enthusiastically played by people who’ve been mastering the craft of cultivating and keeping an audience, there on the edge of their seats. Or, more appropriately, on the soles of their feet.
Read the full story