AVENGED SEVENFOLD has issued the following statement regarding the passing of the band's drummer, James Owen Sullivan (a.k.a. The Rev):
"It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that we tell you of the passing today of Jimmy 'The Rev' Sullivan.
"Jimmy was not only one of the world's best drummers, but more importantly, he was our best friend and brother.
"Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jimmy's family and we hope that you will respect their privacy during this difficult time."
According to The Orange County Register, James Owen Sullivan was found dead at his home on Monday (December 28). He was 28 years old.
Sullivan appears to have died of natural causes, Huntington Beach police Lt. John Domingo told The Orange County Register. Police were notified by firefighters who had responded to Sullivan's home about 1 p.m., according to the report.
THE ARTERY FOUNDATION ANNOUNCE OWN LABEL IMPRINT ON RAZOR & TIE! WELCOME ARTERY RECORDINGS! Info at: www.ArteryRecordings.com
The Artery Foundation has announced the formation of their own label imprint with Razor & Tie for 2010. While many casual music listeners may not be entirely familiar with The Artery Foundation itself, there is no escaping the fruits of their labors, or their artists in the music scene. A management company based in Sacramento, CA they have a knack for finding diamonds in the rough and nurturing them into worldwide prominence. Some of their recent artists flooding the Billboard charts have included The Devil Wears Prada, Alesana, A Day To Remember, Dance Gavin Dance, Attack Attack!, Breathe Carolina and Whitechapel.
On the direction that Artery Recordings will take, Eric Rushing, founder of the company and the label says, “We believe in developing a band from the ground up, just like we have with all of the bands we manage. What more of a perfect situation if we can put out records as well and have a platform for the new bands that we discover. We will concentrate on a small amount of releases per year and keep one of our goals to be a very artist friendly label.” Label manager, Mike Milford, added “I think the great part of our partnership with Razor & Tie is that we have the full strength of a successful label, with a proven track history, and major distribution while retaining the close personal relationships with our artists. Unlike some labels where artists get lost in the shuffle, we will have the opportunity to take every creative idea and concern of our artist and address them with utmost attention and support.”
The Artery Foundation formed in 2004 at which point Rushing had been a successful concert promoter in Sacramento for over fifteen years. He also started a record label called 720 Records, which had helped to nurture the local music scene for over thirty releases before he stopped to focus on management full time. Rushing recalls, “From day one we started Artery it was a full-time operation. Our original roster was The Devil Wears Prada, Drop Dead Gorgeous, A Day To Remember and Alesana. On linking up with Razor & Tie Rushing said, “we initially linked up with them on a possible publishing deal for one of our artists. I then began to talk about other ventures with them and after talking with Cliff Chenfeld of the label several times he flew out to sign a deal with me and I can honestly say he sees my vision. The staff is amazing and eager to work (on) our releases.” Of Artery Recordings, Chenfeld said, “We are very excited to get into business with Eric and The Artery Foundation. Eric has an amazing track record of finding and developing quality artists and we expect to help him create additional exposure and opportunities for them.”
New York-based Razor & Tie is one of the fastest growing independent record labels in the United States. The label has enjoyed success in a variety of genres and garnered both Platinum sales and Grammy awards in the process. The rapidly expanding roster includes such artists as All That Remains, Angelique Kidjo, Dead Confederate, Dave Barnes and The Summer Set, as well as upcoming releases from Norma Jean and Just Surrender.
Artery’s initial two signings will have releases in store for the first quarter of 2010. Information and Artery’s take on each artist follows:
Bury Tomorrow:
Mike: I first heard them in Southampton UK at a club called Joiners. They opened the show for my band and I was blown away. I almost didn’t want to play after them because they owned the show. The band recently released their album, Portraits in the UK and for the U.S. release we went in and recorded some additional songs and packed the album with some of the best songs I have heard in their genre in a while. They are currently on tour with Bless The Fall in the UK and will have a big time U.S. tour to announce for spring 2010.
Eric: This record was an office favorite of ours, getting passed around and played in every part of our office. Their songs are so catchy and melodic at times but then just as brutal and hard at others. We are very excited to introduce such a great band to the U.S. The album is to be released on March 16, 2010.
Chelsea Grin:
Eric: The first time I saw this band I was completely blown away and the crowd interaction was just as intense, it reminded me of the first time I saw Whitechapel. This band is very young and the kids are already loving them coast to coast. Very excited about their debut!
Mike: The instant I heard them I was hooked. They are very new to the touring circuit, but have already built a strong draw across the states in their short career. They have shared the stage with such acts as Suicide Silence, Parkway Drive and My Children My Bride. In August of 2009 the band recorded at Lambesis Studio. The result is their upcoming record Desolation Of Eden out on February 16, 2010.
The album isn't expected to drop until sometime in February, so things could change -- but according to High on Fire frontman Matt Pike, the sludge metal trio's forthcoming LP is tentatively titled 'Snakes for the Divine.' And Pike says its perhaps the most progressive offering the band's ever churned out. Arik Roper will once again be handling the album's artwork.
"We went a little over-aggressive with the drumming, and me and [bassist] Jeff [Matz] collaborated a lot more throughout the songwriting process," Pike tells Noisecreep. "We went for a more aggressive approach. It's what we do well. We went for a heavier, ballsier, faster-paced sound that still has a lot of cleverness to it ... there are lots of stops and stalls, crazy licks. It's really heavy, a little more aggressive than our last album, a little less psychedelic. For the most part, the songs are amazing."
The Oakland, Calif., act recorded the new album with producer Greg Fidelman, Rick Rubin's right-hand man. At first, the band had written over four hours of music, which they'd eventually whittle down to an hour's worth of sludgy, doom-riddled metal. Working with Fidelman was a pleasure, says Pike. "He's a genius," the singer says. "He knows what he's doing. We thought we'd butt heads but we ended up seeing eye-to-eye on a lot of things."
High on Fire are currently on the road with Converge, Mastodon and Dethklok, "trying to build momentum" for the release of 'Snakes for the Divine.' But High on Fire's association with Dethklok and Mastodon goes way beyond mutual admiration. In fact, Mastodon's members all met at a High on Fire concert in 1999.
"[Bassist] Troy [Sanders] and [guitarist] Brent [Hinds] were in a band called Four Hour Fogger, and High on Fiore was playing with them. And [drummer] Brann [Dailor] and [guitarist] Bill [Kelliher] just happened to be there that night," recalls Pike. "Six months later, we all saw them at the Relapse offices. We did so many tours together ... like 200 or 300 shows in three years. It's been fun to be on tour with them."
Early on in the tour, Pike claims Hinds stopped the entire tour caravan -- just so that he could ride with the High on Fire guys. "One night, he stopped the convoy of buses to come and hang with me on our bus," Pike says. "He couldn't smoke pot on their bus, so he stopped all the buses to come on ours. We've been best friends since we met, and we love those dudes. And it's really cool to get on tour with them. We're like family."
And on the next season of 'Metalocalypse,' Pike says he'll be featured as a character on the show and did some voiceover work for the cartoon recently in Los Angeles with the guys from Mastodon. "I don't want to say anything more, or I'll start giving stuff away," Pike says.
Reports are currently circulating that "Trivium have acrimoniously parted ways with drummer Travis Smith." While unconfirmed at this point, it appears the Floridian metallers have parted ways with the longtime drummer who sat out the band's most recent tour.
Smith did not travel with Trivium on their most recent trek with Chimaira, Whitechapel and Dirge Within in order to tend to "personal business," and the band enlisted Maruta drummer and former Trivium drum tech Nick Augusto to fill in.
An official statement on the matter is expected this week. Until then, the rumor should be taken with a grain of salt.
Last month, when Trivium frontman Matt Heafy was a guest on Noisecreep's ''Creep Show' podcast, the singer dodged questions about Smith's status in the band and would not comment on the matter other than to say, "Unfortunately, all we can say is he's not on this tour and we hope everything is going amazingly ... that's the only PR response I'll be forced to say."
Christian metal band Underoath has played Warped Tour six years, but one of their biggest highlights is sharing a dressing room with Ice-T and Body Count during the Vans Warped Tour 15th Anniversary Celebration Event in Los Angeles on Sept. 6.
"It was awesome," keyboardist Chris Dudley. "It was seriously, like, the coolest thing ever. He was a nice guy. He just kind of hung out and did the backstage thing. It was fun."
Underoath and Ice-T were among about 11 bands that took part in the festivities, which were captured for a one-night-only national theater event presented by NCM Fathom and 4Fini on Thursday, Sept. 17, at 8 p.m. ET and PT; 7 p.m. CT; and 6 p.m. MT. Also appearing are the Aggrolites, the All-American Rejects, Bad Religion, the Decaydance All Stars, Katy Perry, NOFX, Ozomatli, Pennywise and Rise Against.
The movie theater event, which will be featured in more than 460 separate venues, will encompass two hours of performances as well as behind-the-scenes footage. Tickets for the theater event are available at participating theater box offices and online from Fathom Events.
Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman explained the show was four and a half years in the making. "I was trying to figure out what to do with the 15th anniversary," Lyman told Noisecreep. "At one point, I had this grandiose idea to do it with a big NASCAR race in Southern California and have cars painted and all this craziness that goes through my head sometimes. It was probably a little bit of an ambitious project in general. With these economic times, I think it was way over ambitious.
"Then I talked with MusiCares and the Grammy folks. I thought we could raise some money for MusiCares and do it as a one-off show. Then I thought, 'Wait, maybe we can do it with a theater [chain], so we can film it somewhere, but kids across the country can actually be a part of it.' Naturally it started progressing into this monstrous project. We're editing right now. Sunday night was the show, by 8 [AM], 9 [AM] you're starting to get edit notes. We have to work a little bit to make sure the movie stays PG. We're trying to figure out how to make Ice-T and Body Count work. It might be tough."
Besides being fun, Dudley said the atmosphere of the event was slightly weird. "It was at the Nokia Theatre, which is a basic theater-like set up," Dudley relayed. "But it has this rotating stage, so while one band was playing, another was setting up. It was this whole weird thing. They had us sharing a dressing room with Ice T, which was pretty awesome. That just ruled. That made the night pretty interesting. But it was weird. The crowd, I think, was kind of weird, just because each band plays four songs. It was such a diverse bill I don't think the kids really had time to get really stoked on any one artist. Somebody would come up, they'd be stoked and they'd be gone in 15 minutes. It was pretty funny. We had to follow Katy Perry, which was pretty hilarious. We don't really fit with her at all."
This year, Underoath played the Warped Tour after taking a year break from the festival to perform as part of the Rockstar Mayhem Fest, also founded by Lyman. Dudley has seen a drastic change in Warped Tour's lineup. "There wasn't really any heavy bands at all this year," Dudley said. "There was probably two or three heavy bands on the whole tour. It seems like they scaled back a lot this year. Previous years, there were heavy bands on the smaller stages, the main stages, etc., etc. It seems like they might have scaled it back a little bit.
"I guess dancey techno music with the autotune singing and the screaming -- that's really big now," Dudley added. "There was a whole lot of that. That might have been taking over. Different strokes I guess. It's not my thing. But that's what the kids like, not to sound like an old dude. But it's not going to affect what we do. We're going to keep writing the kind of music we want, if kids, or people in general listen to it, then that's cool. If they don't weird still having fun writing it."
However, rock and metal have played a key role in the Warped Tour's history. "It's interesting because we were known as a punk festival," said Lyman, who is currently booking the 2010 festival. "But metal kind of inspired me to start the Taste of Chaos tour that I started five years ago. When I saw that punk and metal were starting to mesh together, there was that line, with bands like the Used, Killswitch Engage, My Chemical Romance. It was punk, but there were metal influences. A lot of metal bands wanted to come on the Warped Tour: Every Time I Die, All That Remains. That kind of inspired me to start the Mayhem Festival.
"These bands need a home to develop. I started looking at the metal festivals, they weren't really set up to develop artists. The side stages were for whoever could pay the most money. I think we've done a great job with the second stages we put on that tour. Metal and rock, it started with Warped, but it spun into some of the other things we do. There's always going to be a place for rock.
"Ice-T and Body Count, that was really cool. Underoath started on Warped and has played Taste of Chaos and Mayhem for us. Underoath and Rise Against and Ice-T sharing a dressing room. When Body Count hit the stage [at the anniversary party], you saw everyone run over and peek through the curtain. People didn't want to miss that. It was cool to see everyone get excited."
Meeting the required complexity needed to earn the tag as a post-metal, instrumental band means La Fin Du Monde are a hard act to describe. Most songs have a foundation of jazz that weaves in and out of a metallic atmosphere that flags down feelings of an intelligent aggression that enjoys still moments. "We tend to use instrumental/progressive rock quite a bit," bassist Mike Crew confessed to Noisecreep of how he describes the Chico, Calif. band.
"I think of progressive as basically not having any set rules or limits as far as sound goes, like some jazz and other experimental genres. So we think it fits in that way, not in the way that describes a band that does 30-minute keyboard solos while wearing capes. Though we are also kind of a heavy rock band at the core ... just an unconventional one."
Formed in 2004, La Fin Du Monde was not a band posed to last long. The band had a plan; it was to break up soon after a few shows playing their noodling instrumental music, because original guitarist Jeremy Root was set to ship off for the Marines. "We just liked the songs to much to stop," Crew said. "We didn't play for a little while right after Jeremy left. I think we all realized we really missed it and wanted to keep going." And they have kept it going, having four releases now under their belt, including the new album 'Monolith.' And in 2006, they won the award for Best Indie/Experimental Band at the Chico Area Music Awards.
When most people hear the band for the first time the first thing to grab them is no member doubles up on an instrument playing the role of rhythm. The reason that can do this is they have two bassists. "It really frees up the guitarists to try different things. They don't have to worry about playing power chords or rhythm guitar type playing to hold down the low end, so they can try different textures and melodies," Crew said. "It also allows our drummer to lock in with different players throughout the song instead of just locking in with one bass or guitarist. It seems to open up possibilities for everyone in the band." Crew informed us that line up of two bassist was one of accidental design when the ashes of other local bands were used to form La Fin Du Monde.
And for the record, though the band's name can be seen in the beer isle, the band didn't take their moniker from the Canadian golden ale. "We had a song with a working title of 'The End of the World' when we first started out," Crew reveled. "We still didn't have a name though. Someone suggested naming the song La Fin Du Monde, which is the French translation. We liked the sound of it for the song, but liked it even better for the band name. So we changed the song title and used La Fin Du Monde for the name. It also happens to be a great beer. People do mention that a lot. We've even had people send us pictures of a bottle they saw in the liquor store. 'Dude, check it out!'
New York death metal institution Immolation are currently holed up in the studio doing what the band does best: writing headbanging anthems! Vocalist/bassist Ross Dolan told Noisecreep, "This is going to be our eighth full-length release, and it is going to be our first release for Nuclear Blast Records. We have 10 songs this time around, and I would have to say we are all really happy with these new tracks."
Dolan made a large statement about the tunes, saying, "People can expect our fastest, most intense album to date." For a band like Immolation, the descriptors "fast" and "intense" are pretty much par for the course, so Dolan is certainly setting up some large expectations for the album!
"[Drummer] Steve [Shalaty] has really pushed the limits of his playing with us and has forced us to push things up a notch," Dolan also revealed. "The end result will be nothing short of Immolation at our absolute best." Blast beats and super-human drum work is the hallmark of death metal and it appears as Shalaty is laying a strong foundation.
Dolan continued, "Each song has all the traditional Immolation elements, from the dark and twisted guitar melodies, the big sinister epic parts, the heavier-than-hell slow parts to the never stopping militant parts! I think this album will surprise both the die-hards and the newcomers to our style. It's a very well put together album with many twists and turns and great dynamics. Each song is unique on its own, yet each is a very important piece in this ten song puzzle. It blends perfectly the classic old style with the newer, fine-tuned style of the last few albums, and really has something to offer everyone."
So if you like Immolation or like the musical cocktail that Dolan just described, then you'll be first in line for the new Immolation album when it drops next year.
Capital Chaos, founded & created by Zoran Theodorovic was originally created as music video television show to be aired on public access in Sacramento, California. Our first show aired May of 1998 and still runs weekly to this day. In the middle of 2005 Mr Theodorovic invited Clint A. & William P. to participate in the show and a Youtube channel and a website were created. At some point in 2006 Clint went on his way leaving William & Zoran to soldier on, which they did together until January 2012 where William was let go due to irreconcilable differences. Capital Chaos currently enjoys the company of Amb Pirate and Kevin Champ. A new Youtube Channel was created & the website switched to Facebook(because let's face it everybody is on Facebook all the time now and who wants to go to some silly website and miss out on very important Facebook stuff. LOL!!!) and Capital Chaos continues on.
