Hard Rock & Classic Metal

Well it is finally official... the much anticipated (at least for us Pumpkins fans) 20th anniversary tour of the Smashing Pumpkins. 2008 marks the 20th year for this band and I've certainly been glad they've been around that long providing us with amazing music the whole time.

As some of you may be aware, it's been exciting times in the world of rock recently. Rumors are flying left and right and there's been plenty of controversy as well, what with certain political parties deciding to use some "unlicensed" music as part of their campaign. Amongst all of that though, there was an album, first leaked and now released from a little metal band called Metallica. Death Magnetic is the name of the new album and Metallica fans have been clamoring to hear the new music, especially after it was unfortunately leaked shortly before the release date.

Kind of a sad, but also interesting bit of news from the music scene in the past few days. The Australian band that sounded so much like Zeppelin, and Sabbath and Cream, Wolfmother, has decided to disband, or well... reorganize. Bass/keyboard player Chris Ross and drummer Myles Heskett have decided to leave the band to pursue a different project citing personality and artistic differences. This leaves signer/guitarist Andrew Stockdale as the only remaining member of the band and apparently he intends to continue with a new lineup, under the Wolfmother moniker.

Well there's been some more interesting news from the music world recently, namely that new material might be on the way from Alice in Chains. This would be the band's first new material in about 13 years, and of course would also be the band's first without original vocalist, and now deceased, Layne Staley. William DuVall guested as the vocalist on the band's reunion tour and apparently the chemistry is right, the band is having fun jamming, and so Jerry Cantrell and company have started writing.

A few days ago I read an interesting bit of music news that struck another one of those "I'm going to start ranting" chords. Apparently record label, Atlantic decided to sue both Scott Weiland and Eric Kretz of the Stone Temple Pilots for not delivering on their end of their contract and trying to terminate it. Atlantic apparently not only wants the 6 albums that STP already delivered during their heyday, but also the seventh that the recently reunited band has indicated they might like to record, as well as two more albums.