Author: wamdines

After two big rounds of voting, just eight elite ’80s classic rock albums are left to vie for your votes in round three of our March Madness bracket.

You’ve only got three days to vote for the best ’80s album in this round. You can see the results of last week’s voting below, then decide who gets to move on to the final four.

Round Two Results:

AC/DC’s Back in Black defeated Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required with 84% of the vote. (In round one Back in Black defeated Talking Heads’ Remain in Light 86% to 14%.)

Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz defeated Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet with 56% of the vote. (In round one Osbourne defeated David Bowie’s Let’s Dance 68% to 32%.)

U2’s The Joshua Tree defeated Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A.with 54% of the vote. (In round one Bono and company defeated Iron Maiden’s Powerslave 59% to 41%.)

The Police’s Synchronicity defeated Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever with 53% of the vote. (Last week Sting and his buddies thrashed Genesis’ Invisible Touch 73% to 27%.)

Guns N’ Roses Appetite for Destruction defeated Prince’s Purple Rain with 58% of the vote. (Last week GNR squashed Rush’s Permanent Waves 62% to 38%.)

Journey’s Escape defeated ZZ Top’s Eliminator in our closest race yet, 51% to 49%. (Last week Steve Perry and his former bandmates bested Peter Gabriel’s So 64% to 36%.)

Def Leppard’s Hysteria defeated Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms with 65% of the vote. (In round one they beat Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell 72% to 28%.)

Van Halen’s 1984 defeated Metallica’s Master of Puppets with 64% of the vote. (Last week David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen tattooed the Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You 79% to 21%.)

There are three rounds remaining in Ultimate Classic Rock’s Best ’80s Album tournament:

• Round Three: March 28-30
• Final Four: March 31-April 3
• Championship: April 4-7

You can cast your votes below for the Best ’80s album in four third round head-to-head match-ups – one in each region. You can vote once per hour now through March 30 at 11:59PM ET.

The winners of each round will be revealed the day after votes close and a new round of voting will begin that same day.

Adrian Borromeo, UCR

Adrian Borromeo, UCR

Adrian Borromeo, UCR

Adrian Borromeo, UCR

Top 100 ’80s Rock Albums

UCR takes a chronological look at the 100 best rock albums of the ’80s.

Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso and Michael Gallucci

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This year’s Pelagic Festival, the annual event highlighting the best of Pelagic Records’ post-rock and prog metal bands, will this year be partnered by both Prog and Metal Hammer magazines.

The two-day festival takes place at Muziekgieterij in Maastricht, The Netherlands on August 23 and 24, and this year is headlined by Norwegian prog metaller Ihsahn, Irish post-rockers and US post-rockers This Will Destroy You.

The festival highlights the breadth of diversity of the genres, from Swedish group Gösta Berlings Saga dark, krautrock influence, the tranquil, instrumental sounds of Hungarian ensemble TÖRZS and the engaging post-metal of Belgium’s Psychonaut.

This year’s event will also feature some unique live sets. French instrumental rock pioneers Bruit ≤ will perform their groundbreaking debut album The Machine Is Burning…, alongside their forthcoming release The Age Of Ephemerality, both in their entirety, live for the first time ever, while Pan-American post-rock collective you, infinite will debut their new self-titled album in an exclusive live performance,

“Pelagic Fest 2025 will continue right where last year’s anniversary edition left off: it’s promising to be a killer weekend loaded to the brim with exceptional music from exceptional artists,” enthuses Pelagic label head and The Ocean guitarist Robin Stapps. “I’m happy that we managed to avoid repetitions — NO band on this bill played last year already — whilst still remaining (almost) entirely within the Pelagic roster. Yes, that does include Ihsahn, who delivered a stunning reinterpretation of Lustmord’s Dark Awakening as part of our pandemic Lustmord tribute album, The Others… and God Is An Astronaut’s All Is Violent, All Is Bright was the third album we ever released.”

Tickets are on sale now.

Following their U.K. and European tour this summer, the reunited Sex Pistols, without singer Johnny Rotten, will play North American dates.

The new shows – featuring original band members Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock with singer Frank Carter – will begin in mid-September and run for four weeks. It marks the Sex Pistols’ first U.S. shows since 2003.

The legendary punk band reunited last year with singer Carter, who leads the English band Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes. Rotten, aka John Lydon, has refused to join any of his former bandmates in recent Sex Pistols projects, which included a 2022 TV series.

READ MORE: Who Are the ‘Big 4’ of Punk Rock?

A 2024 one-off reunion of the three original members with Carter became a full tour, currently making its way across Europe. The band is playing the Pistols’ only album, 1977 classic Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols, in its entirety and other songs.

Lydon has called the shows “karaoke,” noting, “When I first heard that the Sex Pistols were touring this year without me it pissed me off. It annoyed me. I just thought, ‘They’re absolutely going to kill all that was good with the Pistols by eliminating the point and the purpose of it all.'”

Where Are Sex Pistols Playing in 2025?

The North American dates launch on Sept. 16 in Dallas at the Longhorn Ballroom, the location of an infamous Sex Pistols show in 1978. From there, the tour will hit cities such as Philadelphia, Toronto, Cleveland and San Fracisco before concluding with an Oct. 16 performance at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Paladium.

More dates are planned to be added to the schedule later. You can see the current run of dates below.

Artist and other presales will be available from April 1 – 3. You can find more information on the band’s website.

Sex Pistols 2025 North American Tour
Sept. 16 – Longhorn Ballroom – Dallas, TX
Sept. 23 – 9:30 Club – Washington, DC
Sept. 26 – Fillmore – Philadelphia, PA
Sept. 27 – TBD – Brooklyn, NY
Sept. 30 – Mtelus – Montreal, QC
Oct. 1 – History – Toronto, ON
Oct. 3 – Agora Theatre – Cleveland, OH
Oct. 4 – Fillmore – Detroit, MI
Oct. 7 – Fillmore – Minneapolis, MN
Oct. 10 – Mission Ballroom – Denver, CO
Oct. 13 – Showbox SoDo – Seattle, WA
Oct. 15 – Warfield – San Francisco, CA
Oct. 16 – Hollywood Palladium – Los Angeles, CA

Stalwart drummer Nick Mason doesn’t have many regrets about his time with Pink Floyd. But one has been brought to mind by a pending return to theaters for Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.

The original movie included scenes where Pink Floyd was still at work on 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon. Yet a concert film about that career-making diamond-certified chart-topper didn’t follow. In fact, Pink Floyd wouldn’t release a live version of Dark Side of the Moon until 1995’s Pulse, long after Roger Waters departed.

“If one could play the whole thing back all over again, we probably should have taken longer, we should have spent more time playing Dark Side live and not worried about going back into the studio to make Wish You Were Here,” Mason tells Rolling Stone. “We actually spent quite a long time in the studio having not a great time when we could have just actually drawn things out a bit longer, done more live work and filmed it.”

READ MORE: Top 10 Pink Floyd ’80s Songs

Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii had a unique premise, with the band performing alone in the excavated remains of a Roman amphitheater. Unfortunately, it wasn’t profitable – and that may have fed into Pink Floyd’s long-time reluctance to make another concert film.

“I think we didn’t realize what a good idea it was to film things,” Mason says. “Maybe it’s because the movie didn’t make any money for us, but it’s a great shame that we didn’t spend a bit longer and do the equivalent with Dark Side of the Moon.”

Watch Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’ at Pompeii

Why Selling Pink Floyd’s Catalog Was a Good Thing

Mason has since returned to Pompeii, performing a couple of years ago at the Grand Theater with his Pink Floyd offshoot band, Saucerful of Secrets. Last year included a 35-show tour highlighted by their stop at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

He doesn’t expect the same kind of robust schedule in 2025. “We actually don’t know what’s next,” Mason admits. “We probably did a bit too much last year. Everyone was exhausted. We’d certainly like to do some more things. It’s just a matter of finding the right things.”

The re-release of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii is the first large-scale project since Sony bought their back catalog for some $400 million. The movie has been restored from the original 35mm prints, remastered in 4K, remixed by Steven Wilson and retitled Pink Floyd at Pompeii: MCMLXXII.

Mason is pleased with the deal so far. “I think I’m still feeling that the catalog sale was a good idea,” he says. “I think Sony will actually look after it better than we would. We’d spend too much time arguing.”

Pink Floyd Album Art: The Stories Behind 19 Trippy LP Covers

Typically created by designers associated with London-based Hipgnosis, the images work on a parallel track to frame the band’s impish humor, wild imagination, sharp commentary and flair for the absurd.

Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso

You Think You Know Pink Floyd?

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Yes is recording their third album in less than five years, keyboardist Geoff Downes confirms. Before this recent creative outburst, they’d only released three studio projects since 2000.

“We’ve been working on an album for the past six months,” Downes tells Classic Rock. Bandmate “Steve [Howe] is at the helm and I think it will be out later in the year.”

It was initially unclear if Yes would return to the studio following 2014’s Heaven and Earth, the last Yes album released before the death of stalwart bassist Chris Squire in 2015. Then Howe produced two new LPs in quick succession, 2021’s The Quest and 2023’s Mirror in the Sky. Both were Top 30 U.K. hits.

READ MORE: Ranking Every Yes Song

Long-time drummer Alan White also died in 2022, but they’ve kept up a regular touring schedule with Squire’s hand-picked replacement bassist Billy Sherwood and veteran second drummer Jay Schellen. The new albums arrived amid sweeping anniversary reissues of 1971’s Fragile and 1994’s Talk. A similar package focusing on 1972’s Close to the Edge was issued earlier this month.

Listen to Asia’s ‘Only Time Will Tell’

Geoff Downes Responds to Criticism of New Asia Tour

In between, Downes has relaunched Asia, a band once fronted by the late John Wetton that also featured Howe on guitar. He and surviving drummer Carl Palmer have both apparently declined to take part, leaving Downes as the only remaining original member. The reworked lineup headlined U.S. dates last summer and returns to the road in April to play entire-album shows in the U.K.

“For me, the last thing I wanted was to put Asia music into a locker and say I’ll never do that again,” Downes argues, “and now we’ve got the opportunity to get back out there again and play those first three albums, which were so significant.”

He admits that some fans don’t support the new lineup, describing them as “a type of keyboard warrior who noisily disagrees.” But Downes says he’s pressing on: “Everybody’s got a voice, and some of the comments are quite amusing, but I’m long enough in the tooth to brush off that sort of thing and just keep moving. The haters won’t stop us from doing what we do.”

Meet the New Boss: Rock’s Replacement Singers

Some bands soar to their greatest heights after an original frontman leaves. Others must deal with the past’s towering expectations.

Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso

Revisiting Yes’ First LP Without Chris Squire

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The ’90s were not kind to Skid Row.

The New Jersey rockers started the decade on a high note with their blistering sophomore album, Slave to the Grind, which debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 in 1991. But as grunge supplanted glam metal as the hard rock subgenre du jour, Skid Row took an extended hiatus to wait out the storm. When they reentered the studio in 1994 with Bob Rock (who replaced their previous producer, Michael Wagener) to begin work on Subhuman Race, the musical landscape looked vastly different than it had a few years earlier, and intraband relationships had started to fray.

This personnel shift, internal friction and industry-wide upheaval made a recipe for disaster. When Subhuman Race hit shelves on March 28, 1995, it was a shadow of its multiplatinum predecessors, stalling at No. 35 and failing to go gold. Sebastian Bach left the band on bad terms a year later, and the only thing he and his ex-bandmates have seemed to agree on in the intervening years is that the album sucks.

But what if they’re wrong?

READ MORE: The Heaviest Song by 11 Big Hair Metal Bands

Skid Row’s ‘Subhuman Race’ Is More Than Copycat Grunge

True, Subhuman Race sounds almost nothing like its predecessors. But Skid Row, despite getting lumped in with the hair metal zeitgeist, was never a one-trick pony. Slave to the Grind was a drastic departure from the pop-metal preening of their self-titled debut (which still rocks, mind you), likely inspired by their rubbing elbows with Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. Likewise, Subhuman Race sounds like the work of a band that booked Soundgarden and Pantera as tour openers. Bassist Rachel Bolan and guitarist Dave “The Snake” Sabo were versatile songwriters who stayed cognizant of current musical trends, and Subhuman Race is an inspired take on the ’90s alternative boom.

Even if grunge did have a cohesive sonic identity (which it didn’t), Skid Row doesn’t sound like a copycat grunge band. “My Enemy” opens the album with grinding, down-tuned riffs and a muscular groove-metal stomp. “Firesign” leavens its alt-rock lump with shimmering, psychedelic guitars. The breakneck “Bonehead” betrays Bolan’s punk rock affinities, and the speed-metal title track is a logical extension of “Slave to the Grind.” The band even gets mildly progressive with the stutter-step rhythms of “Face Against My Soul.”

Songs like “Eileen” and “Into Another” admittedly borrow the “loud-quiet-loud” dynamics that Nirvana also lifted from Pixies. Still, even Subhuman Race‘s more derivative tracks remain interesting because of their solid hooks and Bach’s devastating vocals. This is not the same megawatt screamer who hit piercing high notes on “I Remember You” or “Livin’ on a Chain Gang” with stunning clarity. Bach sounds gruffer here, alternating between rage and sorrow, from the raspy screams of “Beat Yourself Blind” to the forlorn crooning on “Breakin’ Down.” His virtuosic performances are tempered with weariness; at age 26, Bach seems resigned that his commercial heyday is already behind him.

Listen to Skid Row’s ‘Beat Yourself Blind’

If there’s one shortcoming to Subhuman Race, it’s Rock’s brittle, dated production. In contrast to Wagener’s punchy, dynamic production on Skid Row’s first two albums, the drums here sound like tin cans, the guitars are ultra-trebly and there’s a conspicuous lack of low end. It sounds simultaneously expensive and bad — a precursor to the hi-fi trash sound Rock would “perfect” on Metallica’s notoriously dreadful-sounding St. Anger.

Subpar production can’t hide the solid songwriting and superb performances on Subhuman Race, though. It’s easy to see why Skid Row has disavowed the album, considering its commercial failure and its hastening of the classic lineup’s demise. But despite the unsavory circumstances of its creation, it’s well worth — to paraphrase the title track — jumpin’ into the Subhuman Race.

“It’s no secret that onstage, I’m a different person,” James Hetfield said in a 2023 interview. “More shooting from the hip, more embracing the unknown up there. I wish I could do that better in regular life.”

That isn’t to say Hetfield and his Metallica bandmates are always perfect when performing. With decades of touring under their belts, there’s bound to be hiccups here and there.

“We are a live band. You’re gonna see some fricking horrendous mistakes, and it’s going to be unique,” Hetfield continued. “Because there’s nothing really humble about being up in front of 80,000 people, throwing shapes, people singing your lyrics, it’s fricking…it’s an experience that I can’t explain.”

Using data from setlist.fm, we’ve compiled a list of the most and least-played song live from every one of Metallica’s studio albums. There are, of course, some songs the band has never played live, though that could change as Metallica continues their touring career. But so far, here’s how the numbers stack up…

Album: Kill ‘Em All (1983)
Most-played: “Seek & Destroy”
Least-played: “Metal Militia”

Metallica first started playing “Seek & Destroy” in July of 1982, a whole year before it appeared on their debut album, Kill ‘Em All. It basically hasn’t left their set lists since, racking up 1,610 performances over the course of approximately 40 years and multiple tours. Actually, all of the songs from this album have been played live at one point or another — even the least-played among them, “Metal Militia,” has close to 100 plays to its name.

Album: Ride the Lightning (1984)
Most-played: “Creeping Death”
Least-played: “Escape”

Ride the Lightning is another album that has enjoyed the benefits of having every song played live. “Creeping Death” takes the No. 1 slot with 1,637 plays — it’s another staple of Metallica’s live sets. “Musically it was one of those songs that came quickly, and then became its own thing just as quickly,” Lars Ulrich said to Metal Hammer in 2022. Meanwhile, “Escape” has been played exactly once at the Orion Music and More Festival in 2012 where the band played Ride the Lightning from start to finish.

Album: Master of Puppets (1986)
Most-played: “Master of Puppets”
Least-played: “Mastertarium”

The title track to 1986’s Master of Puppets is not only the most-played song from the album, but in all of Metallica’s live career. “Master of Puppets is my favorite album, because we culminated as a band on Master of Puppets. Really!” Kirk Hammett told Revolver in 2017. “Everyone was kind of settled into their roles; everyone was playing well. We knew what we were striving for, we knew what we could do, we knew each other’s playing well, we knew our strengths.” At the bottom end is “Mastertarium” with a total of 29 plays, most of which took place in 2000.

Album: …And Justice for All (1988)
Most-played: “One”
Least-played: “To Live Is to Die”

Props to Metallica for once again playing every song live from …And Justice for All. At the lower end of the spectrum is a track from side four, “To Live Is to Die,” which was played one time at the Fillmore in San Fransisco in 2011. Speaking of that number, the song “One” is the most-played from the album with 1,599 plays. Two of those performances happened at the Grammys, in 1989 and 2014.

Album: Metallica (1991)
Most-played: “Enter Sandman”
Least-played: Tie Between “The Struggle Within” and “Don’t Tread on Me”

Out of all of Metallica’s albums, their 1991 self-titled release is the one that, collectively, is their most-played live. At the top of the list is “Enter Sandman,” the album’s lead-off track and the first song the band wrote for it. “It was about two or three o’clock in the morning. I had just been listening to Louder Than Love, the Soundgarden album,” Hammett recalled in 2017. “I heard that album, I was inspired; I picked up my guitar and out came that riff.” On the lower end is a tie between “The Struggle Within” and “Don’t Tread on Me,” both of which have been played 20 times.

Album: Load (1996)
Most-played: “King Nothing”
Least-played: “Mama Said”

The following four songs from Load have never been played live: “The House Jack Built,” “Cure,” “Thorn Within” and “Ronnie.” With exactly one performance to its name, “Mama Said” is the next least-played — that happened in London in November 1996, the same city and month where Metallica shot a music video for it. “King Nothing,” on the other hand, has racked up a respectable 380 performances starting in 1996, the year Load was released, and stretching up to 2024.

Album: Reload (1997)
Most-played: “Fuel”
Least-played: “Fixxxer”

A year after Load came its younger sibling, 1997’s Reload, notable for its collaboration with Marianne Faithfull on a song called “The Memory Remains.” “Fuel” has become the album’s most-played track with 557 performances, a song that also has the distinction of being Grammy-nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance. (It ultimately lost to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page‘s “Most High.”)

Album: Garage Inc. (1998)
Most-played: “Last Caress” by Misfits
Least-played: “Tuesday’s Gone” by Lynyrd Skynyrd

In 1998, Metallica switched gears so to speak and released an album of covers titled Garage Inc. Of the 11 songs recorded for it, only six of them have been played live. Of those, Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Tuesday’s Gone” is the least-played at five performances. (It should be noted that Metallica got Gary Rossington himself to play on the studio version of the cover.) At the top of the list is Misfits’ “Last Caress” with 830 performances.

Album: St. Anger (2003)
Most-played: “Frantic”
Least-played: “Sweet Amber”

Metallica worked with producer Bob Rock for over a decade, but 2003’s St. Anger saw them working with him for the last time. On this album, Rock himself played bass as Jason Newsted had left the band in 2001. Not counting the four songs from this album Metallica has never played live — “Invisible Kid,” “My World,” “Shoot Me Again” and “Purify” — “Sweet Amber” shakes out as the least-played with just one singular performance in 2004. Meanwhile, “Frantic” got played an awful lot in the years 2003 and 2004, and then disappeared from set lists for a little over 10 years before finally reappearing in 2019 on their WorldWired Tour.

Album: Death Magnetic (2008)
Most-played: “The Day That Never Comes”
Least-played: “Suicide & Redemption”

In 2008, a new producer for Metallica entered the picture in the form of Rick Rubin. All 10 tracks from Death Magnetic have been played live, even the instrumental “Suicide & Redemption,” which appeared on a 2009 set list in Denmark and again at the Fillmore in San Fransisco in 2011. It is the album’s nearly eight-minute lead single, “The Day That Never Comes,” that holds the title of most-played. “It’s a story about human beings who don’t know each other, in a particularly tense situation,” Ulrich once explained to MTV. “It’s really about forgiveness and redemption and understanding what goes on in people’s minds.”

Album: Hardwired…to Self-Destruct (2016)
Most-played: “Moth Into Flame”
Least-played: “Man UNkind”

“ManUNkind,” the least-played track from Hardwired… to Self‐Destruct has only been performed twice, which isn’t much, but it’s still more than the zero performances “Am I Savage?” and “Murder One” have gotten. “Moth Into Flame” has collected a little over 200 plays, one of the most notable being at the 2017 Grammys with Lady Gaga, which you can watch below. “The song was somewhat inspired by the Amy Winehouse documentary, Amy,” Hetfield explained to Guitar World (via ultimate-guitar.com) in 2016. “When I watched it, it really made me sad that a talented person like that fell for the fame part of it. But, to some degree, I see that mentality reflected in everyday life — people obsessively taking selfies and sending them to friends for validation.”

Album: 72 Seasons (2023)
Most-played: “Lux Æterna”
Least-played: “Sleepwalk My Life Away”

In fairness, 72 Seasons has only been in the world for roughly two years, so its forgivable that not every single song from it has been played live yet. Still, it’s been getting good representation in the band’s recent set lists. The least-played is “Sleepwalk My Life Away” (five performances), while the most played is “Lux Æterna” (36). “Every note we play is a statement that appears on this record,” Trujillo said in an interview not long before 72 Seasons was released. “It’s coming from the heart and soul of who we are as individuals and where we were in this whole process, the growth of these songs, and everything. To me, every note that’s played is important on this record, and I believe people are going to feel that.”