Metallica To Get Festive With Slayer, Anthrax, And Mastodon

The first show of the travelling festival, now embarking upon its second year in existence, will be on June 16 at Bemowo Airport in Warsaw, Poland and joining us are some longtime friends . . . Slayer, Anthrax, and Mastodon! Additional Sonisphere shows will be announced in the next week, and in the meantime you may even want to consider checking back here in a few hours for some more tour updates both in Europe and Latin America (hint, hint). - more on this story

Beatles Have Best Selling Album of the Decade

The Fab four are still pretty damn fab. At least with people who buy music according to the following Rolling Stone.com report:

Over three decades after their breakup, the Beatles still released the top-selling album of the 2000s. The Fab Four's greatest hits compilation 1 sold over 11,448,000 copies since its release in November 2000 according to Nielsen SoundScan's decade-end sales numbers.

Eminem was the 2000s' top-selling artist with 32.2 million combined in sales, plus two albums in the decade's Top 10: The Marshall Mathers LP was fourth with 10,195,000 sold and Eminem Show was fifth with 9,789,000. - See who else made the grade here

All-American Rejects Give Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas Hell As They Score The Most Played Song of 2009

(Fan Submitted) "Gives You Hell," the lead single off of The All-American Rejects' current album, When the World Comes Down, has officially been named the #1 Most Played Song of 2009 on Billboard's Top 40 Chart, edging out the competition that included Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas, Flo Rida and Taylor Swift.

"We are thrilled that we have been played relentlessly over the past year, hopefully people aren't too sick of us by now," said Rejects front man Tyson Ritter. "But truly, we have the best fans in the world. It's because of them that this band is where we are. They are the ones who kept our song on the charts and on the radio for so long and we thank them."

"Gives You Hell" spent four weeks at #1 on the Top 40 charts making it the group's first #1 song on Mainstream Top 40 and Adult Top 40 Tracks charts. The song was also their first to break into the top five on Billboard's Hot 100 and stayed in the Billboard top 10 for over 13 weeks. With over 3.3 million copies in digital sales alone, these stats make "Gives You Hell" the band's most successful single to date. - more on this story

Iron Maiden To Headline Sonisphere

(Rock Radio) It's just the way Rock Radio told you in August: Iron Maiden have confirmed they'll be headlining Sonisphere at Knebworth Park during what will be a three-day event from July 30 until August 1, 2010.

Rammstein, Alice Cooper, Motley Crue, the Cult and Iggy and the Stooges will also appear - and there's a chance the Big Four of thrash might play the same show for the first time in history.

Anthrax and Slayer have already been confirmed for next year's event, with Metallica lined up to appear at the European versions of Sonisphere - leading to a new bout of rumours that Megadeth might appear too. - more on this story

Minor Threat and Killswitch Engage Stars To Join Eerie Von For In Store Appearance

On Friday January 8th, 2010, punk legend Eerie Von (Danzig, Samhain) will make a special in-store appearance at New York's Generation Records in support of his new photography book Misery Obscura: The Photography of Eerie Von (1981-2009).

Misery Obscura gives fans unique insight into the punk and metal scene of the 1980's and early 90's from the perspective one of its greatest stars, chronicling the rise of The Misfits, Rosemary's Baby, Danzig, and Samhain through the worldwide success of the punk and metal scene as they tour with acts like Metallica and White Zombie.

Eerie Von will play a rare acoustic performance with Lyle Preslar (Minor Threat) and Mike D'Antonio (Killswitch Engage) during the in-store appearance at Generation Records, and sign copies of Misery Obscura along with designer Tom Bejgrowicz. - more on this story

Sweet Cobra Address Guitarist's Death

Sweet Cobra drummer Jason Gagovski released an official statement about the recent death of guitarist Mat Arluck: It is with the heaviest of hearts we announce that Matthew Allen Arluck passed away on November 26, 2009 after a hard fought battle with cancer, surrounded by his loving family at their home near Seattle. He was 39 years old. Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends, and loved ones. There simply are not words to express the loss we are all feeling during this difficult time. He was a truly inspirational person and his ambition for creating music, even in the face of the obstacles that his illness and treatments brought on, was unparalleled. His passion for writing, recording, and playing shows remained steadfast until the end.

A Brief History: Sweet Cobra was lucky enough to have Mat Arluck join our band as second guitar player after the departure of Neeraj Kane during the recording of "Praise" in late 2003. The plan at that time had originally been to continue on as a trio, but once we jammed with Mat we knew that we had to play music together. There was an instant musical chemistry, and a common love for records, skateboarding, and good times. He joined Sweet Cobra in early 2004 and we began playing shows right away and started working on our second album "Forever". Mat's creativity and songwriting was an amazing thing to be a part of and we feel honored to have been able to play with him. He was a great musician and an even better friend.

Unfortunately in late 2004 Mat was first diagnosed with a rare form of stomach cancer. Over the next few years he continued to battle his illness with a positive outlook and we continued to write music, record and play shows. Even during some of his sickest moments he would be the last one sitting at the soundboard, or loading out gear after a show, or wanting to rehearse– while always having an amazing sense of humor. His tireless work ethic is an inspiration to us and he had a musical vision that was so focused. - more on this story

Benefit Concert Set To Raise Medical Funds for Daughter of Sweet / Heaven and Earth Guitarist

Stuart Smith of Sweet and Heaven and Earth was blessed with a beautiful daughter in April. Unfortunately, she was born premature and has needed a lot of medical attention, and she needs additional surgery. So Stuart's friend Robert Tuozzo, the publisher of 22nd Century Rock Magazine, has arranged a benefit concert for early next year to help raise funds for her medical care.

The Concert 4 Sophia will take place on January 6th 2010 at the Avalon Theater in Los Angeles and will feature Sweet, The Band From TV, The Howard Lesse Band, Kelly Hansen of Foreigner, Andy & Tiffany Madadian, David Paich from Toto, Robert Tuozzo, Female AC/DC tribute band ThundHerStuck and many others.

Tickets for the event are on sale right now and are only $55.00 (plus service charge), so it's a small price to pay for a great night of music for a very worthy cause. If you need more information, want to buy tickets or you are not in the L.A. area but would still like to help out, you can visit - help4sophia.org.

Cold Case For Bob Seger

The new Cold Case episode featuring the music of Bob Seger airing this Sunday, December 13th, on the CBS Television Network has been moved up one hour to 9:00 P.M. ET/PT.

In the episode, entitled "Iced," the team tries to determine who murdered a minor league ice hockey player on the memorable night that the U.S. hockey team beat the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics. Jude Ciccolella ("24") and Brian Scannell ("Brotherhood") guest star, respectively, as the 2009 and 1980 incarnations of the victim's team coach. "Bob Seger's raw, honest voice is so evocative of working class America that the idea for an episode centered around the Miracle on Ice seemed like the perfect showcase for his songs," said Taylor Elmore, who wrote this COLD CASE episode.

The featured Seger recordings are "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man," "Her Strut," "Rock and Roll Never Forgets," "Roll Me Away," "Night Moves," "Fire Down Below" and "Against the Wind." - more on this story

Alice Cooper Reissues Coming

As Alice Cooper entered the 1980s, the emergence of punk (which in turn owned a debt to him) revitalized his sound and material, steering him away from the overblown albums of the late '70s and back into the raw, nasty rock 'n' roll which, along with his gothic-horror stage show, brought him his initial fame and fortune. On January 12, 2010, Collectors' Choice will put three oft-overlooked albums in Alice's catalog — Special Forces, Zipper Catches Skin and Dada — back in print. Catalog of Cool author, Luxuria Music DJ and musicologist Gene Sculatti wrote the liner notes for the reissues.

Alice Cooper, of course, originated as a band fronted by Vincent Furnier, who himself became known as Alice Cooper. With a debut album released on Frank Zappa's Straight Records label (Pretties for You) in 1969, the band soon broke into the mainstream with hits like "Eighteen," "Under My Wheels" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy" on albums like Love It to Death, Killer, School's Out, Billion Dollar Babies and Muscle of Love. By the mid-'70s, Alice (the singer) and the band had parted ways. Alice the singer continued to release albums, abetted by musicians from Lou Reed's band including guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, with Wagner remaining a creative partner on into the '80s.

Alice Cooper's hard-edged rock help set the stage for the late '70s punk movement. And in turn the punk movement proved influential on Cooper, whose '80s albums reflect that ethos, returning to the basics of rock 'n' roll from his more theatrical forays in the mid-'70s. - more on this story

In This Moment Look Ahead to Next Album

In This Moment guitarist Chris Howorth fills fans in on the band's plans in the coming months: "Hello everyone, as I sit on our tour bus writing this we are only nine days from the end of our final tour for The Dream campaign. It's a bittersweet feeling coming to the end of a touring cycle. We put so much blood, sweat and tears into making and promoting this album that we almost don't want to stop pushing it, but after 14 months it's time to start the next chapter. We have been working on new music since Warped Tour ended. Maria Brink (vocals) and I have been bashing our heads together non-stop trying to come up with the best possible songs and the best combination of melody and aggression as we want the new album to be even bigger and better than anything else we've done before. We want all the melody and depth of The Dream along with some of the darkness and aggression of Beautiful Tragedy, we feel really good about what we have demoed so far and will be working non-stop thru the holidays.

"The plan is to enter the studio with Kevin Churko (Ozzy, 5FDP) in mid-February. We are really excited to be working with Kevin again, he is such an amazing talent and knowing he will be involved just makes us even more confident in our ability to make the next record better than anything prior. We are planning to have the record done in time for a summer 2010 release date to coincide with big juicy summer festival tour. We could tell you what tour it was, but then we would have to kill you. More info on that coming later. Needless to say, IN THIS MOMENT are really excited!" - more on this story

Singled Out: Bosch

(antiMusic) Welcome to Singled Out! where we ask artists to tell us the inside story of their latest single. Today Christopher Brown from Bosch tells us about "Dreaming of Daybreak" from their brand new self titled album. We now turn it over to Christopher for the story:

Dreaming of Daybreak is typical of the imaginative play that Bosch enjoys. As always, we have no discussion of intention, time signature, key or any such thing. We roll the tape (or rather, spin the hard drive) and start listening and playing. The piece begins with a nebulous feel, with Greenleaf and Brown on percussion and Sims on bass. We have a focus but don't yet know where it is going. A direction begins to show itself and we begin to follow it while keeping the music in tension (the music's intention). What follows is truly like the flocking of birds. The whole has a shape and motion, but none of us has individually sculpted it. Our approach is invitational and open. Often the sound source's are as influential as any of the three musicians. Greenleaf moves on to keyboards and guitar and Sims introduces his groovebox. The music itself seems to take charge as the dominant force, leading us to participate in a ying/yang of passive awareness and initiating creativity. Our egos are subsumed in the excitement of creation. Our pleasure is the same in both a supporting and a leading role, and the delight of discovery and newness maintains our concentration and focus at an incredible level. The music morphs and evolves, very much like a sped up film of a nebulae transforming itself into mature planetary systems. Once that climax occurs time seems to slow down and we see the slow dance of planets and moons. At the end the music seems to take us down to the surface of a planet where daybreak unfolds before us.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album - right here!

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