Author: fgt

When a band as massive and long-running as AC/DC goes on tour, they inevitably have to leave a lot of songs on the cutting-room floor.

That’s not quite as big a problem for the Aussie rockers as other bands of similar stature, because fans continue to embrace timeless classics such as “Hells Bells,” “Back in Black,” “Highway to Hell” and “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You).” Also, it’s hard to feel cheated or complain about a lack of diversity when nearly all of their songs follow the same blunt-force three-chord rock formula. (That’s not an insult: When accused of “making the same album over and over 12 times,” guitarist Angus Young proudly quipped, “The truth is, we’ve made the same album over and over 15 times.”)

Still, there are plenty of gems that AC/DC fans would be delighted to hear live for the first time. As the band gears up for the 2025 North American leg of its Power Up tour, UCR engages in some wishful thinking and ranks the Top 20 AC/DC Songs Never Played Live.

20. “Mistress for Christmas” (The Razors Edge, 1990)

There’s something sublimely awful about the thought of Brian Johnson singing this hidden holiday gem as he’s approaching 80. Bonus points if they played it in the dead of summer.

19. “Brain Shake” (Flick of the Switch, 1983)

Flick of the Switch marked the beginning of a years-long creative and commercial tailspin for AC/DC, but the album’s closing track bursts with steely riffs and rocks with the same cocksure swagger of their best material.

18. “Back in Business” (Fly on the Wall, 1985)

AC/DC makes no attempt to reinvent the wheel “Back in Business,” but its piledriving groove and eminently badass lyrics (“You want some trouble, I’m the king of vice / I’m a wreckin’ ball, I’m a stingin’ knife / Steal your money, gonna take your life“) make it a prime candidate to play live. Plus, what better message for the band’s first U.S. tour in nearly a decade?

17. “If You Dare” (The Razors Edge)

With its rhythmic strut, nimble riffs and blistering call-and-response vocals, “If You Dare” sounds just unique enough to delight hardcore AC/DC fans while fitting seamlessly into their well-worn set list. To the final track on The Razors Edge, we say: Come outside and play, if you daaaaare!

16. “Hell or High Water” (Fly on the Wall)

When AC/DC released Fly on the Wall, critics slammed the album and accused the band of descending into mediocrity. In hindsight, a lot of its songs just sound like textbook AC/DC — and that’s a good thing! “Hell or High Water” is one such track, boasting a simple-yet-effective drum beat, tasty riffs and roof-raising gang vocals. A can’t-lose proposition on a stadium stage.

15. “Send for the Man” (Fly on the Wall)

Another common criticism of Fly on the Wall was that, in their quest to capture their raw live sound, AC/DC buried Johnson’s vocals in the mix. Yet he’s clearly giving a larynx-shredding, paint-peeling performance on the album’s final track, “Send for the Man.” Why not give this throttling mid-tempo rocker the platform it deserves?

14. “Through the Mists of Time” (Power Up, 2020)

Because AC/DC is still touring in support of Power Up, it would be nice to see them work a few other tracks from the album into their set lists. “Through the Mists of Time” is one of the album’s strongest and most melodically interesting songs, with its lightly distorted riffs, stutter-step drum groove and a, dare we say, uplifting chorus.

13. “Evil Walks” (For Those About to Rock (We Salute You), 1981)

Despite the multiplatinum success of For Those About to Rock (We Salute You), AC/DC has hardly ever played any of the album aside from its title track, which remains a perpetual encore. They’re leaving plenty of killer tunes on the table, including the sinister “Evil Walks,” whose arpeggiated guitars and mid-tempo groove evoke both “Hells Bells” and “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution.”

12. “Rock Your Heart Out” (The Razors Edge)

This lean, mean rocker is a nice rhythm section showcase, as the guitars briefly drop out in the verses and let the drums and bass do the heavy lifting. But more importantly, it’s an exhortation for audiences to lose themselves in AC/DC’s soul-bathing, eardrum-blasting hard rock maelstrom. They should have no trouble following directions.

11. “Squealer” (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, 1976)

There’s a charming, garage-band irreverence to AC/DC’s early albums, and Dirty Deeds‘ closing track is a prime example. “Squealer” is a slow burner, with Angus Young banging out simple chords and Bon Scott talk-singing his way through the verses until it explodes into an array of six-string histrionics. These days, it would make a smart breather track for Johnson and a fun throwback for the day-one faithfuls.

10. “Shot of Love” (The Razors Edge)

Like the best AC/DC songs, “Shot of Love” is an exercise in masterful simplicity, with the Young brothers trading simple but brutally effective riffs as a launchpad for Johnson’s sandpapery vocals. Just think of how many concertgoers the frontman could blindly point at as he wails, “And I warn you / It’s the best shot of your life!“

9. “Meanstreak” (Blow Up Your Video, 1988)

The third track on 1988’s Blow Up Your Video is a legitimate change of pace for AC/DC, insofar as any of their songs break from tradition. It’s one of their funkiest tunes, showcasing Johnson’s deepening mid range and making room for Young’s guitar heroics.

8. “Night of the Long Knives” (For Those About to Rock (We Salute You))

“Night of the Long Knives” is another slinky rocker showing AC/DC at the peak of their powers. Young fires off diamond-edged riffs, and Johnson wails with relentless ferocity. If they broke this one out in concert, it would become the night of the long ovation.

7. “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)” (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap)

Perhaps no other band in history was as good at documenting the process of rocking their way to stardom as AC/DC. “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)” is a tongue-in-cheek chronicle of their hardscrabble early days, and in hindsight it shows a band so audaciously confident that success was inevitable. Nearly 50 years later, they could break it out for the first time as a well-earned victory lap.

6. “Realize” (Power Up)

“Realize” opens Power Up on an almost unbelievably strong note. Young’s power chords still cut like a knife, Johnson’s raspy howl defies the laws of aging and the rhythm section rocks like a freight train. The song marked a thundering return after several tumultuous years for AC/DC, and it would make for a glorious celebration onstage.

5. “Snowballed” (For Those About to Rock (We Salute You))

The best moments on For Those About to Rock are the ones that most closely mimic its predecessor, Back in Black. By that metric, “Snowballed” is the cream of the unplayed crop. Its sinewy riffs and furious vocals recall “Shake a Leg” in spots, while the half-time chorus helps it stand on its own. It’d be another slam dunk live.

4. “Gimme a Bullet” (Powerage, 1978)

Powerage is a common Bon Scott-era favorite among hardcore AC/DC fans, and with good reason: From top to bottom, it’s a solid-gold collection of raucous riffs and snarling vocals delivered with unbridled intensity. “Gimme a Bullet,” the lone song on the album never played live, is a relatively “mellow” cut, but it still bristles with menacing cool and gets maximum mileage out of its simple chord progression.

3. “There’s Gonna Be Some Rockin’ (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap)

If the Dirty Deeds tracks on this list prove anything, it’s that rocking has always been an end in itself for AC/DC. “There’s Gonna Be Some Rockin'” is a rollicking 12-bar blues jam that would proudly deliver on its promise: “There’s gonna be some rockin’ at the show tonight.“

2. “Night Prowler” (Highway to Hell, 1979)

“Night Prowler” became a source of controversy for AC/DC in the mid-’80s when serial killer and sex offender Richard Ramirez, nicknamed the “Night Stalker,” said he was a huge fan of the band, leading to accusations of satanism and censorship campaigns against the group. The associations were absurd then and they’re absurd now, but “Night Prowler” will always be an ominously captivating rocker. If Paul McCartney can still play “Helter Skelter” live, there’s no reason AC/DC can’t reclaim this gem.

1. “Let Me Put My Love Into You” (Back in Black, 1980)

AC/DC doesn’t write ballads. Perhaps the closest they’ve ever gotten is “Let Me Put My Love Into You,” the sinister and wonderfully unsubtle Back in Black rocker. It’s an impressive display of dynamics from a band that typically operates at one speed only (max), and it’s the only Back in Black song they’ve never played live. With the album’s 45th anniversary approaching, what better time to check the box?

One of Iron Maiden‘s most popular hit songs is one that Adrian Smith originally didn’t even want to introduce to Steve Harris, assuming the bassist and founder wouldn’t like it.

That song is “Wasted Years” off 1986’s Somewhere in Time, which Maiden just finished celebrating on The Future Past Tour and its split focus on that record and the band’s latest, Senjutsu. It also wound up being the last song Nicko McBrain played with Iron Maiden, as the 72-year-old drummer officially retired on Saturday (Dec. 7) in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

In a new interview with MusicRadar, Smith recalls the unique circumstances that led to the guitarist solely authoring three of the album’s eight songs.

The Writing Process for Somewhere in Time

Singer Bruce Dickinson was famously absent from the songwriting process, burnt out from the 13-month gauntlet of a world tour supporting 1984’s Powerslave. His idea, at the time, was for Maiden to head in a different musical direction and had introduced acoustic songs he had written for the Powerslave successor.

“That tour took a lot out of Bruce. It took a lot out of everybody. Bruce had gotten really into fencing. He used to go off and do these tournaments. And when he brought in these songs he’d written, it was all acoustic stuff. Some of it was good, but I guess it wasn’t what everyone else wanted to do,” Smith notes.

The guitarist recalls the band residing in New Jersey during the winter, idling in a hotel and spending the days “just drinking.”

Smith underwent a root canal procedure during this time and, during a taxi ride back to the hotel while it was raining, “the riff for ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ just came into my head.” He quickly got to work once he returned to the hotel.

“We were also trying new ideas with that album,” he explains, “I always wanted to make an album that sounded really produced – as opposed to kind of live with a little bit of little bit of fairy dust on it.”

Somewhere in Time famously found Iron Maiden experimenting with guitar synthesizers, which also served as the catalyst for another one of Smith’s standouts on the record — “Wasted Years.”

The song, which was released as the album’s lead single, has been performed live over 700 times and, according to setlist.fm, is Iron Maiden’s 14th most-played song live.

“I got this Roland guitar synth out of the box from Japan,” Smith recalls, “and when I switched it on it started making this crazy noise and I just played along to it. It was like a rhythmic thing. So it gave me a song straight away.”

The guitarist says that his four-track demo of the song “sounded a little bit like U2” and, for that reason, he didn’t even plan on showing it to Harris for consideration on the album.

“But he heard me playing it in a rehearsal, and he said, ‘That’s good. We should do that,'” Smith explains. “Steve’s funny like that. You might think he wouldn’t go for it, but he was like, ‘Let’s try it!’ And because Bruce wasn’t around, I just dashed off the words as well.”

He reasserts, “But if Steve hadn’t heard it by accident, I would never have played it to him.”

Watch Iron Maiden Perform ‘Wasted Years’

This past Friday saw vicious death metal unit, Neckbreakker, release their debut album, Within The Viscera, via Nuclear Blast Records. To celebrate the release, the band have revealed a lyric video for latest single, “Absorption”, a cut-throat assault of razor wire riffs and thunderous, explosive drums.

On the release of their debut album, the band comment: “We are extremely proud to finally release our debut album Within The Viscera. A lot of time and hard work has been put in to this record, both by us and our team, and to say we’re proud is an understatement. Alongside the album we’re stoked to share the lyric video for the track ‘Absorption’.”

Order and save Within The Viscera here.

Within The Viscera tracklisting:

“Horizon Of Spikes”
“Putrefied Body Fluid”
“Shackled To A Corpse”
“Nephilim”
“Purgatory Rites”
“Unholy Inquisition”
“Absorption”
“SILO”
“Face Splitting Madness”

“Face Splitting Madness” video:

“Shackled To A Corpse” video:

“Horizon Of Spikes” video:

Neckbreakker is:

Christoffer Kofoed – Vocals
Joakim Kaspersen – Guitar
Johan Lundvig – Guitar
Sebastian Knoblauch – Bass
Anton ‘Hajn’ Bregendorf – Drums

(Photo – Malene Vinge Jakobsen)

December 9, 2024, 11 hours ago

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Professor Of Rock has released the video below, along with the following introduction…

“Coming up, it’s the untamed story of the Southern rock anthem ‘Midnight Rider’, which was born in a farmhouse outside of Macon, Georgia. The artist The Allman Brothers’ Gregg Allman penned most of it in under an hour, but when he hit a wall with the crucial third verse, inspiration ceased. Refusing to let the moment slip away, Gregg did the unthinkable. In the dead of night, with nowhere open and his creative fire blazing, he called on the band’s trusty roadie. Together, they actually broke into a recording studio to capture the magic before it faded. Breaking and entering might be a crime, but in this case, it was a necessary step in the fulfillment of his destiny. One that was part of a journey packed with triumph and heartbreak to create one of the greatest rock songs ever. It all unfolds next on Professor Of Rock.”

Former Megadeth guitarist, Kiko Loureiro, has announced a string of Brazilian tour dates in support of his new album, Theory Of Mind. Joining Loureiro for the “Theory Of The Mind Tour 2025” is special guest, former Megadeth axeman, Marty Friedman.

Says Kiko: “Big news, Brazil! I’m hitting the road with my amazing friend and guitar legend, Marty Friedman as a special guest! The Theory Of Mind tour is going to be something you’ve never seen before.”

Brazil tour dates:

May
30 – Recife/PE – Clube Internacional
31 – Fortaleza/CE – Armazém

June
1 – Belém/PA – Music Park
4 – Belo Horizonte/MG – Mister Rock
6 – Rio de Janeiro/RJ – Sacadura 154
7 – São Paulo/SP – Tokio Marine Hall
8 – Curitiba/PR – Ópera de Arame

Theory Of Mind features Kiko Loureiro (guitars and keyboards), Felipe Andreoli (bass), Bruno Valverde (drums) and Maria Ilmoniemi (keyboards). Go to this location to purchase.

Tracklist:

“Borderliner”
“Out Of Nothing”
“Mind Rise”
“Talking Dreams”
“Blindfolded”
“Point Of No Return”
“Raveled”
“Lost In Seconds”
“The Other Side Of Fear”
“The Barefoot Queen”
“Finitude”

“Talking Dreams”:

“Mind Rise”:

“Point Of No Return” video:

Aerosmith bassist, Tom Hamilton, and his new band, Close Enemies, have announced a string of US tour dates in January.

In Close Enemies, Tom is joined by legendary Babys drummer Tony Brock, touring veterans Peter Stroud (Sheryl Crow band) and Trace Foster on guitar, and Chasen Hampton on vocals.

Says the band: “Hey everyone, here are a few dates we can post as of today. There are more to come. Looking forward to seeing all of you there.”

Tour dates:

January
8 – Philadelphia, PA – City Winery
9 – New York, NY – City Winery
10 – Boston, MA – City Winery
14 – Manchester, NH – The Rex Theatre
23 – Pawling, NY – Daryl’s House

Close Enemies made their live debut on Friday, October 11, at Eastside Bowl, The ’58 in Nashville, TN. Some video from the show can be viewed below:

The iconic Norwegian artist, Mortiis, has signed a multi-album deal with Prophecy Productions. His upcoming new studio album will be released via the label in 2025.

Mortiis comments: “After many years of existing on the fringes of the music industry, doing things my way and on my own, I am excited to be teaming up with Prophecy Productions, a label of creativity and vision”, the Norwegian mastermind writes. “I think my upcoming album will have a good home there.”

In the beginning there was black metal. The artist Håvard Ellefsen known as the musical entity Mortiis started out as a bass player in and during the formation of Emperor in 1991 and 1992. He is credited on the Wrath Of The Tyrant demo/album (1992), the”Emperor EP (1993), and the 1994 7″ EP “As The Shadows Rise”.

After parting ways with the Norwegian black metal pioneers, Mortiis embarked on a solo career, the so called ‘Era I’, that lasted from 1993 until 1999. In this highly creative period, the Norwegian released six full-length albums (including the The Song Of A Long Forgotten Ghost demo and Crypt Of The Wizard). His music during this phase was entirely composed on synthesizers. The resulting sound was described by Mortiis as ‘dark dungeon music’ and has been named as a fundamental influence on the later dungeon synth genre. On The Stargate (1999), the last album of this era, a wider range of instruments was implemented as well as additional vocals from Sarah Jezebel Deva.

In the next decade, Mortiis evolved into a band that marked the beginning of the short-lived ‘Era II’, which only consists of the rather electropop oriented 2001-album The Smell Of Rain. When The Grudge came out in 2004, the album had a hard impact of the scene and started ‘Era III’. The Norwegian and his band had turned to heavy industrial rock and as a result made many new friends. A host of musician friends gathered on the remix album Some Kind Of Heroin (2007) that included contributions by and collaborations with The Kovenant, Velvet Acid Christ, and Girls Under Glass among many others.

‘Era III’ ended with Mortiis releasing Perfectly Defect as a free internet download album in 2010 due to a serious disenchantment with the music industry. This was followed by a factual hiatus between 2011 and 2015, although it was never officially announced. In 2016, the next full-length The Great Deceiver surprised global followers of the band that had long hoped for a new release. Although the style of the previous phase is largely continued, it is named ‘Era 0’. On the gargantuan remix album The Great Corrupter, Mortiis again teamed up with a host of exciting artists including musicians from Godflesh, Frontline Assembly, Die Krupps, Merzbow, and Apoptygma Berzek among a multitude of others.

What comes around, goes around and the now experienced and matured musician decided to return to the music of ‘Era 1’ as the 2020 album Spirit Of Rebellion was born out of a revisiting of the 1994″Ånden som gjorde opprør. In 2023, Mortiis released a reworked version of the quintessential album Født til å herske.

During most of his career Mortiis has performed with a mask and face prosthetic that turned his stage persona into an otherworldly being. Over the year, his looks have changed and evolved. For a time during ‘Era 0′, his live concept even abandoned the wearing of the iconic mask. Mortiis’ stage entity has often been compared with a troll – a creature of Nordic folklore, which it was never intended to be according to the artist.

So where will Mortiis go from here? As an artist, the Norwegian has offered a wide stylistic range of sounds and never proofed to be predictable and has resisted any attempt to be pigeon-holed. A glimpse onto some of the many collaborations on this album might provide some hints: Among many others, the upcoming full-length features Thorsten Quaeschning (Tangerine Dream), Christopher Amott (Black Earth, formerly Arch Enemy), and Matthew Setzer (Skinny Puppy). Well, everybody just will have to wait and see, until his forthcoming new album is going to be revealed in 2025.

(Photo – Mariusz Kobaru Kowal)

Known for a distinctive amalgam of classic rock, power-pop, pomp and glam, Cats In Space are touring their latest album Time Machine, the band’s first for Cherry Red. With Willie Dowling, the instrumentalist and singer known for his exploits with The Grip, The Wildhearts, Honeycrack, Jackdaw 4 and many more, as special guest, we thought a chinwag between Cats leader Greg Hart and Dowling might be fun. We were right

You two had scarcely met before this tour, now here you are fans of one another’s music.

Greg Hart: I had the idea when Willie started posting his brilliant new songs. They’re like Cats In Space, only with several hundred extra chords added. There’s definitely a Jellyfish connection between us.

Willie Dowling: For me it’s especially nice because I’ve never been invited onto a tour. It always involved paying an enormous amount of money for the privilege.

Willie, what specifically do you like about Cats In Space?

Dowling: I’ll be completely honest, I had never heard of Cats In Space, because I no longer listen to music. But I got them right away. They’re somewhere in the universe of Pilot, ELO and 10cc. Watching them live, those are some of the best vocal harmonies I’ve ever heard.

Are the Cats fans embracing a bit of Willie?

Hart: Oh yeah, they’re really loving it.

Willie’s record The Simpleton is rather wordy.

Dowling: (dismissively) I can’t stop to think about that. It could be argued that my lack of success over the years is why I’m still free to experiment. I’ve no obligation to keep on doing the same thing over and over again.

Long Drop Down confronts many issues, including racism, nationalism and self-serving politicians, but without sounding like a rant.

Dowling: It can stretch the patience, and of course there’s an argument that politics should not be reflected in music. But to those people I say this: [blows a raspberry].

Greg, each of the previous Cats albums has nodded to various rock classics. On the latest album there’s one to The Who’s Baby O’Riley in the title track.

Hart: You should’ve heard the demo, which was even more like Baba O’Riley. But look… I wear my love of The Who on my sleeve, just like I do of Sweet and so many other great bands.

A bonus track on Cats’ Time Machine is cover of a song that some consider to be uncoverable – Music by John Myles.

Dowling: [sounding incredulous] Have they?!

Hart: [laughing] That’s most people’s response. Music is my favourite song of all time, and I always wanted to cover it because we are often compared to John. I think we’ve done a good version. And we might do it live on the December dates.

Dowling: There’s so much to unpack there. I can’t wait to hear it.

With Cats’ previous album Kickstart The Sun, the band took a step up to playing theatres. What must have been something of a gamble at the time now seems vindicated.

Hart: It’s something we had to do in order to survive, and we pulled in so many favours to put on what I call a champagne show for lemonade money. Our tickets cost twenty-eight quid. You can’t even park at the O2 Arena for that.

You both must feel there’s a huge untapped army of potential fans out there. The challenge is reaching them.

Hart: Via the webstore we pick up new converts every day, from Canada, America… Huddersfield. All people who didn’t have a clue who we are.

Dowling: New fans are out there, but connecting with them is like wading through a playing field of mud. The cliché is that it’s too late to give it all up and get a proper job. And I’ll tell you what: there’s more than a grain of truth to it.

The next leg of the Time Machine tour kicks off in Milton Keynes tomorrow (December 11) before heading to Wolverhampton, Newbridge and London. Dates and tickets.

Listenable Records and Monument Of Misanthropy have just joined forces though a multi-album deal.

Austria’s Monument Of Misanthropy was originally founded as a solo project by singer Georg Wilfinger (ex-Miasma) in 2010. In 2012, the project evolved into a studio band with drummer Romain Goulon (ex-Necrophagist) and guitarist Jean-Pierre Battesti, releasing the demo, Bandroom Misanthropy.

The trio then decided to record and self release their debut album, Anger Mismanagement. Due to the level of awareness of the founding members, especially Romain Goulon whose band Necrophagist was on a hiatus at the time and still is, the teasers for the album found their way into the scene media attention and brutal death metal aficionados.

Having honed their frenzy and viciously blasting death metal with great dexterity, surgical precision at numerous occasions during European tours with Belphegor, Vader, Immolation, Suffocation among many others, Monument Of Misanthropy released their third and strongest studio album, Vile Postmortem Irrumatio, in 2024 . The album cover was featured in the third and final edition of the famous Aesthetics Of Sickness III – Dark Morbid Obsessions book trilogy.

Always hungry for new insane musical patterns, Monument Of Misanthropy is now ready to start working on their forthcoming audio slaughter for Listenable. Get ready for a furious dose of implacable madness.

George “Misanthrope” Wilfinger (vocals) comments “We are absolutely thrilled and immensely proud to announce our signing with Listenable Records. Growing up, we all listened to albums bearing the iconic Listenable logo, so becoming part of that legacy and sharing a roster with some of the best metal artists in the world, like Gojira and Aborted among many others, is an honor we deeply appreciate.”

Watch the video for “A Nice Beheading For MoM” below:

Lineup:

George “Misanthrope” Wilfinger – vocals
Joe Gatsch – lead guitars
Julius Kössler – lead guitars
Raphael Hendlmayer – bass
Simon Martinsich – drums