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DAVE LOMBARDO Says Current SLAYER Lineup Is Missing That ‘Certain Magic’

Manos Spanos
Former SLAYER and current PHILM drummer Dave Lombardo was interviewed on episode 110 of the "Let There Be Talk" podcast with rock and roll comedian Dean Delray. You can now listen to the chat using the SoundCloud widget below. A few exceprt follow below (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). On the musical chemistry of the original SLAYER lineup: Lombardo: "I appreciate the nucleus of the band. Like [John] Bonham. When Bonham was part of [LED] ZEPPELIN. When his son [Jason] took over, oh my God. C'mon. Really? I have respect for Jason and for what he's done, but when he put a double-bass pedal on a single bass drum, that just blew it for me. It's, like, 'Really, dude? Your dad was about single bass.' "There is a certain magic — just like with SLAYER, just like with AC/DC with Bon Scott — there's a certain magic when you have those musicians and nobody could replace that. Nobody. That's it. You can't. Yeah, SLAYER's new drummer [Paul Bostaph], yeah, a lot of fans like him. But there's that magic. It's chemistry. It's like when you meet a girl and you two get along really well, and it's like a chemistry; it's something special. Same thing with the band: you get these four guys, [and] they may hate each other, but on stage, there's magic. And that's what's missing, I personally believe." On the business disagreements that led to his latest departure from SLAYER: Lombardo: "It's not just [guitarist] Kerry [King] and it's not [bassist/vocalist] Tom [Araya]. It's who handles all the external business. "I don't wanna get into it too much… I just wanted things to be fair for not just myself, but for the band. Because I was noticing that the band was getting shafted. And it was bad. "You see, when I go on stage and I perform, I perform with all my heart. When I go up there, it's like I'm going to war. It's blood, sweat and passion. "When you do the math, it didn't make sense. You don't need a fucking college degree to do some simple mathematics. And when my attorney and I, we did the math, and we demanded the documents that were necessary to back up what my deal was about, red flags were popping up everywhere. "I mean, my statement [explaining my side of why I sat out SLAYER's Australian tour in early 2013] on Facebook is clear. And it's still there, because if it wasn't true, I'd probably be sued for defamation of character. So, no. It's true and it's backed up by fact, and it's why it's still up there. "All that shit, when it's all said and done, I can't go on stage and know that my bandmates, as well as myself, aren't being compensated for the work that we're doing. 'Cause we're out there, we're the ones out there, travelling, we're the ones sweating, peeling off our clothes that are just fucking full of sweat. And it's, like, 'Really? This is it?' So it just didn't make sense. Especially when you see other bands that are as successful as we are, especially during the 'Big Four' [shows that we played with METALLICA, MEGADETH and ANTHRAX]. And to see how SLAYER was travelling and how everyone else was travelling, it was kind of weird. [I was, like] 'What's going on here?' "It's all good. If they wanna work with that organization, then so be it. But, hey, I'm a punk, and I'll always be a punk and I'll never [be a whipping boy]. Absolutely fucking not. I'm not gonna be that. So that subject, fuck it." On SLAYER's late guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who passed away in May 2013 from alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver: Lombardo: "I have text messages [from Jeff]… The last text was, like, a month before he passed. 'Cause I wanted to get together with him to discuss what was happening with SLAYER. He wasn't happy at all. He'd text and go, 'What the fuck is going on, Dave?'" On whether Jeff was still getting money while SLAYER was out on the road with Gary Holt (EXODUS) filling in: Lombardo: "[Laughs] Yeah. Yeah, he was, but who's to tell how much? He didn't know a lot of things that were happening, like the other guys didn't either. And it was a surprise to him. "I wanted to get together with him to discuss what was happening to me and to fill him in what I had discovered. But we weren't able to get together. And there was a time where we were gonna get together and chat, and he said, 'Dave, I had a medical scare. I can't get together. We had a couple of medical scares.' Whatever it was. I think it was leading up to liver failure. "We saw it coming. The years leading up to the spider bite, the drinking was getting heavy — very, very heavy. Including, I mean, Kerry as well. I mean, there was one show in Holland, [Kerry] said his equilibrium or something with his hearing, but I think it was that tall glass of vodka that he poured himself before getting on a ferry in London, and he splashed it with Coke. So here we have a large, 32-ounce fucking… a full bottle of vodka with a splash of soda. You're gonna wake up the next day and you're gonna tell me it was, 'Oh, my hearing. Something with my hearing. I couldn't stand up straight.' No, you were fucked up, man. [Laughs]" On playing two songs with METALL
09 min read

MICHAEL SCHENKER Says Songwriting Is ‘Like Putting A Puzzle Together And Never Really Knowing What Comes Out At The End’

Manos Spanos
Greg Prato of Songfacts recently conducted an interview with legendary guitarist Michael Schenker. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below. Songfacts: How do you find that you write your best songs? Michael: I just do it the same way over and over. I love to play. I play and discover on a regular basis, so when I bump into a great piece of something that I think, "Wow, I should capture that" — and it's usually just 5 seconds, 10 seconds long — I'll put it on the cassette recorder in its raw form and I'll just leave it there. When it's time to make a new record, I listen to what I have selected, and then that inspires me to write the additional parts to it. So I never really know what the song is going to be until the album's finished. On this album in particular, I was looking for more of a balance: Not too many mid tempos, but enough fast songs and many different elements in it that keep it going and keep it interesting. It's like putting a puzzle together and never really knowing what comes out at the end. Songfacts: How did the songwriting work in the band UFO? Was it more of a collaboration? Michael: Well, when I joined UFO, they were a psychedelic band. They were playing very different music. But I was attracted to them being British, since that's where the music that I fell in love with came from: [LED] ZEPPELIN, BLACK SABBATH and Johnny Winter. Well, Johnny Winter was American, but a lot of the music that we were listening to at that point in time when I was 15 years old was coming from there. When I toured with UFO and SCORPIONS, the guitarist from UFO lost his passport, so in order to continue the tour, I had to play for both bands. That was when I was 16 years old. I opened up with the Scorpions and then I played with UFO for a couple of days. And that's when they asked me to join them. I always told the SCORPIONS that if a British band would ever ask me, I would go just to get to a country where there was the interest for rock and roll. In Germany, it was dead. It was disco music and it wasn't very interesting what I was doing. So I was more than happy to go over there. They invited me over and I took the offer. When I got there I just laid down a riff and another one and another one, and Phil [Mogg] did his vocals to it and it just became a totally different band based on the pieces that I gave them, which every song was built on. I wrote that way right from the beginning, and it's still how I write today. But because I had just joined them, we were more in the mode of making a record, touring, making a record, touring, making a record, touring. Because we were doing everything in the short amount of time, we spent a lot of time at the rehearsal studio. Some very early songs, like "Rock Bottom", were very spontaneous. We were just sitting there looking for an additional song, and when I played "Rock Bottom", the riff, that's when Phil jumped up and said, "That's it! That's it!" So we started putting it together and putting it into form. But in general, I would always come up with some riffs, give it to the singer and he would find something, too. Then we'd go into the rehearsal studio and work on it. That's basically how we used to write. Songfacts: How close did you come to joining Ozzy Osbourne's band after Randy Rhoads' death? Michael: That was around '81. Graham Bonnet just came over and we started writing and doing things, and then I get a phone call in the middle of the night from a very devastated Ozzy Osbourne telling me what happened [Rhoads was killed in an airplane accident, on March 19, 1982]. I said, "Okay, it's the middle of the night. I'll let you know, but I have to speak to Peter Mensch" and so on. And then I had to look... I was tempted to do that, but at the same time I was in the middle of doing "Assault Attack" and it was going to be the second album with Cozy Powell. We were getting ready, and I had to look at my situation. Then I heard some crazy stories about Ozzy dragging people across the stage by their hair and stuff like that. And then some other horror stories that didn't sound too good. I was tempted to do that, but something tells me, you know what, Michael, first of all, the SCORPIONS, my own brother, he asked me to play, to help the SCORPIONS and to join them and tour with them. And I couldn't do it because I'm not made for copying people. I love to invent things, to express myself, and so my vision is a different vision. Sometimes you have to battle a little bit with your true vision and temptation. Same with AEROSMITH: It was a good thing it didn't work out, because again, I would have not enjoyed myself. I know that. At the end of the day, I said, "I can't do that." It came to the point when I stretched it for so long that I think Cozy Powell took it over and told them, "He's not going to do it." And that was that. It was a very strange situation. Read the entire interview a
05 min read

ZAKK WYLDE Says BLACK SABBATH With RONNIE JAMES DIO Is ‘Not BLACK SABBATH’

Manos Spanos
Greg Prato of Songfacts recently conducted an interview with Zakk Wylde (BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, OZZY OSBOURNE). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below. Songfacts: I think a band that never gets the credit is the original KISS lineup, which wrote some really great songs as well. Zakk: I was never a KISS guy growing up as a kid, but my friends were just complete KISS freakos. They had the dolls, the whole nine yards. Nick [Catanese] is a complete KISS freak and so is J.D. The thing that got him into playing bass guitar was Gene Simmons. He got into Jaco Pastorius and all the cats, every insane bass player; Victor Wooten and all the guys, but that was later on. But his introduction, the reason why he wanted to play bass was because of Gene Simmons, because he loved KISS. But I was always more of a SABBATH guy and ZEPPELIN and stuff like that, and I dug Elton John. If you listen to those KISS records the production on those records is phenomenal. And they're great songs. They really are. It's great classic '70s riffs and just well structured songs. Very hooky songs. Songfacts: How would you say that you write your best songs? Zakk: I don't think it's so much writing. I remember reading this thing on Robert Plant, and he goes, "I don't think it's so much you write them — you receive them." It's like God is the radio station that it's all coming from, and it's just a matter of tuning in until you hit His frequency. A lot of times I'll just sit in the morning, having a cup of java just chillin' out. If I sit at the piano or I sit at the acoustic guitar and I start writing something mellow, it's going to be what it's going to be. But if I sit behind an amp, between a Marshall, that always dictates what frame of mind I'm going to be in. If I sit down with an electric guitar what's going to come out are SABBATH/ZEPPELIN type riffs, but if I'm sitting behind a piano late at night, I might write something like "Desperado". You're not going to write "Desperado" between a wall of Marshalls and thumping, crushing volume. Songfacts: With those first two Ozzy solo albums ["Blizzard Of Ozz" and "Diary Of A Madman"], how much do you think that Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake played a part in the songwriting? They seemed to be a pretty big part of the songwriting with those albums. Zakk: Yeah. Bob's always been great with Oz. Just a great pairing like the Elton/Bernie Taupin thing. Bob's a great lyricist. He worked with us on "No Rest For The Wicked", he worked on "No More Tears". So yeah, I think Bob's great. Songfacts: I've always wondered what that original "Blizzard Of Ozz" lineup would have gone on to do if they had stayed together. Zakk: I think that original lineup was phenomenal. You can't even argue that. Just listen to the records. They're timeless, classic albums. Hands down, that line-up was fuckin' sick. When they were making the record, they didn't know. Randy [Rhoads] didn't know any of the guys. Randy never met Bob Daisley or Lee Kerslake before. I'd mean, if me and you took four complete strangers, stuck 'em in a room, and then they ended up coming out with two amazing records — what are the chances of that happening? Songfacts: And I've always wondered what the second lineup with Ozzy, Randy and also Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge would have come up with in the recording studio. Zakk: I think it would have been a completely different thing. How could it not have been? Look at it like the Patriots — Ozzy and Randy, would be [Bill] Belichick and [Tom] Brady, but now we're going to have different wide receivers, different running backs, different defenses. Obviously, we don't have to worry about Captain America and Father Belichick, since we know what they're going to deliver. But the rest of the team around it, without [Wes] Welker there, let's see what happens now. Without a doubt, even when I play with BLACK LABEL, when we have different guys I play with, everyone always brings their own magic, their own flavor to the soup, hands down. You listen to BLACK SABBATH with Ronnie James Dio in it, and it's not BLACK SABBATH. They should have just called it HEAVEN & HELL right from the beginning. Because you listen to that "Heaven and Hell" album, that doesn't sound anything close to BLACK SABBATH. I mean, that sounds about as much like BLACK SABBATH as "Blizzard Of Ozz" sounds like BLACK SABBATH. If you were to play BLACK SABBATH for me — and I'm a huge SABBATH freako — and then with Father Dio over there, I'd be going, "Oh, cool, what band is this? This is good stuff." I mean, the songs don't even sound BLACK SABBATH-y. I mean, "Neon Knights", could you picture Ozzy singing over that song? Songfacts: No, I can't. Zakk: I can't either. It's weird. It's a whole different band. But like you said, there are different dynamics by bringing different people in, especially if it's a songwriting team. With NINE INCH NAILS, it's all Trent Reznor. So when we get a new record from NINE INCH NAILS, it depends on what side of the bed Trent's waking up on and what he's been eating lately and what he's been into. Because he's preparing the whole meal. It's not like a songwriting team where everybody's throwing stuff at it: you came up with the pre-chorus, I had the main riff, Mike came up with that middle bit right before the guitar solo, and then the ending bit Joey came up with. That's like a band dynamic right there. But if it's a NINE INCH NAILS thing, that's all Trent's everything. He's the Salvador Dali of the whole thing. And then talking about songwriters, when you take Paul McCartney and you have him in WINGS, that's a completely different thing. His songwriting throughout was insanely good, as well. "Maybe I'm Amazed" and everything like that can hang with all the BEATLES stuff he wrote. Read the entire interview from Songfacts.
06 min read

Noctum
Final Sacrifice

Panagiotis Karagiannidis
Our decade is the decade of occult heavy metal. Ghost, Witchcraft, Year of the Goat, all those bands have something in common; Doom metal sound, along with soft, melodic vocals and occult lyric themes.
03 min read

SLIPKNOT’s JOEY JORDISON Has No Interest In Seeing BLACK SABBATH Without BILL WARD

Manos Spanos
U.K.'s Metal Hammer magazine recently got the chance to chat to SLIPKNOT and SCAR THE MARTYR drummer Joey Jordison and asked him for his thoughts on some of metal's big-hitters that have been grabbing headlines this year. Here’s what he had to say. On AVENGED SEVENFOLD: Jordison: "Honestly, I don't own any AVENGED SEVENFOLD records and I've not heard the new record. I've read about comparisons to METALLICA on the new record, and I guess there's a certain controversy around that, but I've not paid that much attention to it. Nothing against them, I'm not knocking them, but I was just never a fan: not that they're bad, they're just one of those bands that kinda bypassed me." On METALLICA: Jordison: "That's the fucking band. Without METALLICA, I wouldn't be doing what I am doing. I have every METALLICA record, of course, and I would spend hours on drums in my parents' basement, with the stereo behind me, cranking those records and learning Lars' [Ulrich] drum beats, beat by beat. And nowadays, for me, METALLICA can do whatever the fuck they want. I'm not sure that 'Lulu' is something I'd be getting into, but METALLICA have a free pass from me to do anything, I can't really knock anything they do. I mean [LED] ZEPPELIN and THE WHO passed the torch to METALLICA; they're that band for our generation. Everything they do now is going to be met with a little bit of a backlash just because they're so big, but without METALLICA, there would be no heavy bands, hardly. People have a hard time saying that, and obviously there's a ton of other great bands, but there's a reason that they're huge and have been able to expand their audience to millions and millions and millions of people. I have nothing but praise for them."
02 min read

AVENGED SEVENFOLD Singer Responds To MACHINE HEAD Frontman’s ‘Covers Album’ Critique

Manos Spanos
AVENGED SEVENFOLD singer M. Shadows claims that he isn't bothered by MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn's criticism of AVENGED SEVENFOLD's new album, telling a radio station in Canada that "everyone should be entitled to say whatever they want." In a lengthy critique of "Hail To The King" at MACHINE HEAD's Facebook page, Flynn wrote that the new AVENGED disc is a "blatant jackery" of material from other acts. Flynn didn't pull any punches, writing, "Congratulations to AVENGED SEVENFOLD on their latest 'covers album' coming in at #1. Who knew that re-recording METALLICA, GUNS N' ROSES, and MEGADETH songs could be such a worldwide hit!!?? Ba-dap Psssssss!!" The singer/guitarist went on to list his "Top 10 jokes about the new AVENGED SEVENFOLD record," starting with Number 10: "AVENGED SEVENFOLD — Now with even MORE METALLICA. " For Number Seven, Flynn wrote, "Eyeliner sales skyrocket as thousands of heartbroken goth girls realize 'Hail To The King' is actually 'that ugly AC/DC band's song 'Thunderstruck'." It was back to METALLICA for Number Three, as Flynn wrote, "'Black album' sales skyrocket as fans realize where new songs came from." And at Number Two, he fired off, "After hearing AVENGED's GUNS N' ROSES cover 'Doing Time', Axl actually calls Slash, says, 'Dude, what the fuck?!'" Flynn maintained that he was just having some fun with AVENGED in his critique, saying he was "happy" for the band's success and adding, "While I like the new record, and really dug the last record 'Nightmare' . . . It's time to poke a little fun at A7X."
04 min read