(Image credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for ABA)
Black Sabbath‘s Geezer Butler admits that he’s been having nightmares ahead of the metal legends’ farewell show.
The original Sabbath line-up – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward – will take their final bow onstage on July 5 at Birmingham’s Villa Park, headlining a star-studded bill, featuring a who’s who of hard rock and heavy metal. And in an interview with The Guardian, the bassist admits that he’s already feeling nervous about what is arguably the most talked-about show of the band’s whole career.
“I’m already having palpitations,” Butler reveals. “In fact, I had a nightmare last night. I dreamed everything went wrong on stage and we all turned to dust. It’s important that we leave a great impression, since it’s the final time that people will experience us live. So it has to be great on the night.”
The Back To The Beginning show, which will see Osbourne, Iommi, Butler and Ward share a stage for the first time since 2005, was announced in February. Speaking with The Guardian, Ozzy says that the fact that the gig is at the home of Butler’s beloved Aston Villa may have helped bring Butler on board, following his claim in 2023 that the bassist hadn’t been in touch with him for years, leading Osbourne to label Butler a “fucking arsehole”.
The one-day Back To The Beginning event will also feature Ozzy’s final solo performance and a supporting cast that includes Metallica, Tool, Guns N’ Roses,. Slayer, Alice In Chains, Mastodon and more, as well as appearances from Billy Corgan, Fred Durst, Jonathan Davis, Wolfgang Van Halen, Papa V Perpetua, Sammy Hagar, Zakk Wylde, Jake E Lee and more. Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine) is acting as the event’s musical director.
“We have a very, very simple goal,” Morello said earlier this year, “and that’s to make this the greatest day in the history of heavy metal. And to that end, you’ve probably seen the listed setlist. And let me tell you, there’s some huge superstars who are gonna be surprises on that day too. So, the idea is to really acknowledge the importance of that band in a way that the whole world will forever know.”
“If it wasn’t for those four guys, man, we might still be wandering around in the dark,” Metallica’s Kirk Hammett said earlier this year. “But the fact that they created a genre – not only created it, but then developed it and then turned it into a few different things over the course of their career – is completely awe-inspiring to me and my peers musically. I mean, how do you thank someone like that?”
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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.
Greek band Gordian recorded their debut album more than 50 years ago and it didn’t see the light of day until 2017. And now, as if to prove that age isn’t a barrier to anything, ever, they’ve won our most recent 2025 Tracks Of The Week competition with an all-star rerecording of one of those songs.
They didn’t have it all their own way, though, beating out serial TOTW contestants When Rivers Meet by less than a half of one per cent, one of the narrowest margins of victory ever, while Whiskey Myers sidled home in third.
This week, we’ve eight more monsters of rock to listen to. We hope you enjoy them.
More than 30 years on from their debut, Skunk Anansie sound as vital as ever on Animal, a slick, cinematic, near-industrial banger with a chorus so huge it’s probably housed in an aircraft hangar when they’re not on the road. “So delighted for this track to finally be released as it was a fan fave during the tour and went down a storm!” says Skin, whose voice continues to sail and soar where others falter and fail. “Hope you all like it too.”
Another band with a triple-decade career behind them, Swiss rockers Gotthard have released Burning Bridges, a stirring piece of piano-led melodic rock that conjures up the genre’s glory days. Stereo Crush, the song’s parent album, is the band’s 17th Swiss chart-topper, which probably makes them the most successful Swiss since tennis champ Roger Federer. The album’s alpine appeal extends to Austria, where it reached number 7.
GOTTHARD – Burning Bridges (Official Music Video) – YouTube
From the mountains of Central Europe to the Dallas/Fort Worth precinct of Texas, as Awaiting Abigail unleash a video for Falling Under, a 2024 single that combines ingredients like Alice In Chains, Evanescence and Ghost and mixes them all together into a tasty sonic stew. Singer Abigail Hill has a voice from the Lzzy Hale school of hard rock thunder, but the band are no slouches and the production is pleasingly crunchy.
Awaiting Abigail – Falling Under (Official Music Video) – YouTube
Fishbone – Last Call In America feat. George Clinton
Did we mention that Fishbone are back? Well, Fishbone are back. The fabled funksters will release Stockholm Syndrome next month, their first studio album since 2006’s Still Stuck In Your Throat album,and Last Call In America is the second single to be plucked from its no-doubt furious grooves. As you might expect, it’s an avowedly political affair, focusing on the United States’ perilous state of disunity, but at least they can call on George Clinton to make it all sound like the greatest party of modern times.
FISHBONE LAST CALL IN AMERICA Featuring George Clinton – YouTube
Faith-driven rockers Wytch Hazel have embarked on the latest leg of their long journey to the top by releasing Woven, a song from upcoming album V: Lamentations (out in July), and very good it is too. There are elements of early Iron Maiden and Thin Lizzy in those twin guitars, and bits of UFO too, and the whole thing has a pleasingly old-fashioned production sheen in an age when most bands seem to be working from the same slick modern template.
Beth Blade And The Beautiful Disasters – Never Let Go
UK rockers Beth Blade & The Beautiful Disasters release a new album in September, and in the meantime, here’s Never Let Go, a delightfully upbeat rocker that benefits from having a bit in the middle that sounds a bit like Boston. “It’s a scary world, so right now so we felt like we all deserved a little light-heartedness,” says Beth, who goes on to say that Never Let Go makes her think of “sunshine and open roads, living in the moment, falling in love, staying up all night and singing until you’re hoarse, reminiscing on the times you’ve shared with your people.” And so say all of us.
Mammoth – The End
Wolfgang Van Halen continues to walk a deliciously clever line, paying respect to his father’s old band on one hand while ploughing his own distinctive furrow on the other. The End has a great beginning, kicking off with a finger-tapping solo worthy of EVH, before it gathers momentum with something that sounds like Rush’s Spirit Of Radio and climaxes with the kind of stadium-friendly modern rock Mammoth specialise in. The horror-themed video that includes Valerie Bertinelli throwing punches at zombies is a bonus.
Canadian rockers Helix are best known for the 1984 single Rock You, a thudding monster of a tune so packed with magnificent rock cliches it’s surprising Twisted Sister didn’t get there first. Now Brian Vollmer & Co. have rerecorded it for their Helix 50 – Best Of collection, ably assisted by Bon Jovi man Phil X plus Todd Kerns and Brent Fitz, both members of Slash’s Conspirators. It’s as deliciously dumb as it ever was, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. Everybody sing! “Gimme an R (R!), O (O!), C (C!), K (K!) / Whatcha got? (Rock!) / And whatcha gonna do? (Rock you!)“. Simply triumphant.
It’s very rare for a band to strike gold with their initial lineup. Most groups, no matter how talented they are, go through personnel changes before landing on the one that clicks.
While any kind of lineup change carries the potential for new and different chemistry, replacing a lead singer is perhaps the biggest shakeup possible. After all, the frontman is the central figure in almost every act, charged with connecting with the fans both in concert and on records.
Rock history is littered with stories of new vocalists whose arrival helped catapult their band to stardom – like Bruce Dickinson joining Iron Maiden, or Simon Le Bon’s addition to Duran Duran. But for every one of these tales, there are the singers who came before them, most of whom now sit as footnotes in their previous band’s history.
Some of these early singers quit voluntarily, while others were forced out due to artistic or personal differences. Dave Evans, original singer of AC/DC, had a different reason for leaving: money.
“We had a hit record and we were doing so many shows – sometimes we were doing three shows a day – and I was not getting paid,” the rocker recalled. “I had to pay rent back at my apartment in Sydney, I was paying off a car, working my ass off and not getting any money.”
Below, we’ve highlighted 10 Singers Who Left Bands Before They Got Famous. Our focus was mainly on the vocalists who were immediately replaced by frontmen who elevated the act to the upper echelon of rock stardom. Think of these as the guys who came before THE GUYS.
On July 5, Ozzy Osbourne, Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward will reunite one last time, part of a star-studded event in Birmingham, England, celebrating the band’s legacy. Excitement surrounding the concert – which will also feature performances by Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Steven Tyler, Metallica, Billy Corgan, Tom Morello and many others – continues to grow. Still, in a recent conversation with The Guardian, Iommi revealed that it took some serious convincing to get him on board.
“I’m the one that said, ‘I don’t know if we should do it’, because we did a farewell tour and I didn’t want to get into that thing like all the other bands are doing, saying it’s the last tour and then reappearing again,” the guitarist explained.
Iommi went on to reveal what brought him around to the idea. “I’ve been convinced, because we’re doing it for a reason… No one’s getting paid or anything.” Instead, Black Sabbath’s final show – officially dubbed Back to the Beginning – will raise money for Parkinson’s and children’s charities.
Tony Iommi ‘In the Dark’ on How Ozzy Osbourne Will Perform
Back to the Beginning will be especially challenging for Osbourne, who has been plagued by health issues for several years. Iommi conceded he’s not sure how his bandmate, who has faced Parkinson’s disease and multiple spinal surgeries, will handle the rigors of performing.
“I think Ozzy might be on some kind of throne,” the guitarist noted, “but I’m in the dark as much as anybody else.”
Elsewhere, bassist Butler admitted he’s already stressing about the gig.
“I’m already having palpitations,” he confessed. “In fact, I had a nightmare last night. I dreamed everything went wrong on stage and we all turned to dust. It’s important that we leave a great impression, since it’s the final time that people will experience us live. So it has to be great on the night.”
Black Sabbath Live Albums Ranked Worst to Best
Together, they paint a portrait of a band that lived hard, worked hard and played hard.
As Pink Floyd prepared for their first tour after a bitter split with Roger Waters, they got some help from an unexpected source: the U.S. Army.
The British progressive rock legends had long been known for pushing technology to its limits. Once again, as they were in the planning stages for the tour for 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, they sought to up their game significantly. “Pink Floyd’s always about doing the next best thing,” music industry veteran Paul Rappaport detailed in a recent interview on the UCR Podcast that you can listen to below. “In the beginning, everybody had lasers. They were green lasers. Then Pink Floyd realized they could get red lasers. Other people copy you, so now you need something else. Marc Brickman, their lighting designer, finds out that there’s a gold laser, but it’s dangerous and the only people that have it is the U.S. Army.”
“He goes to have a meeting with the Army and says, ‘We’re Pink Floyd, we heard about these gold lasers.’ They replied, ‘Oh yes, we have the gold lasers, they’re very dangerous though. These are not your typical lasers. You could hurt people with them, they’re weapons,'” he continues. “They told [Brickman], ‘We’ll rent you these lasers, but you need to take a U.S. Army representative with you to every show. He has to doublecheck all of the mirrors, all of the points where they’re going to be shot — otherwise, it’s going to be dangerous [and] we’re responsible.’
“This is stuff that only Pink Floyd gets into, these guys are in a rare air, trust me,” Rappaport explains. “[Brickman] says, ‘Fine, we’ll make that deal.’ He’s got to call [Pink Floyd manager Steve] O’Rourke and go, ‘Guess what? Open your pocketbook!’ So they got the gold lasers. But then, the Army guy says to Brickman, ‘Listen, we’re experimenting with negative ions, in the air. You guys play stadiums, if you want, we can do this thing for you where over the stadium, we suck out all of ions in a fast pace and it will make a giant explosion. Do you want that?’ Brickman’s knees are knocking and he goes, ‘Well, that sounds a little bit dangerous for the fans. Maybe I’ll just take the dangerous gold lasers and leave the next big dangerous thing to you guys.'”
Watch Pink Floyd Perform ‘Us and Them’ in 1988
How Pink Floyd Paid for the ‘Momentary Lapse’ Tour
By the time Pink Floyd was ready to hit the road with the tour for A Momentary Lapse of Reason, which began officially on September 9, 1987, they’d crafted a truly groundbreaking experience for the fans who would see it. Naturally, as the collaboration with the U.S. Army foreshadowed, it would be an expensive outing. As drummer Nick Mason details in his memoir, Inside Out a Personal History of Pink Floyd, though corporate tour sponsorships were becoming more common, there were no interested takers standing at the door. So that left Mason and David Gilmour on the hook to finance the upfront costs of the outing (reportedly $55 million dollars).
Luckily, Mason had an ace with four tires in his back pocket in the form of his 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. He’d bought the car in the late ’70s for 38 thousand pounds, which would be about 50 thousand dollars these days. In recent years, the automobile (which remains part of his collection) now sits at a value of more than 40 million dollars. Calling it “a prized possession” and an “old family friend,” the Ferrari came in handy. “Because the car market had recently gone berserk, with this model at the top of the madness — one car reputedly sold at the time for $14 million — I had little trouble in financing my half of the tour costs,” he wrote.
While they were able to execute the idea of the different colored lasers — including the gold one — as Mason remembered, there were other brainstorms that were binned before the band hit the road — or in one case, abandoned as the trek was in progress. “Icarus, an airborne figure, sprang forth in ‘Learning to Fly‘ and flittered across the stage,” he recalled. “[It] never quite worked, looking like oversized washing on a line. The most ambitious idea, a flying saucer that could be operated via radio control to hover over the venue — offering a supernatural display of lights and effects never before seen — eventually was nothing more than a fantasy that was unrealistic on many levels. “To carry sufficient power for the proposed lighting rig would have been about the same size, cost and approximately as safe as the Graf Zeppelin,” he lamented.
Still, what they were able to pull off was quite impressive. When the tour for A Momentary Lapse of Reason ended in the summer of 1989, it had grossed more than 135 million. With seven legs and nearly 200 shows, the band performed its first concerts in the Soviet Union, Norway, Spain and New Zealand. They also returned to Australia and Japan for the first time since 1972. Their gamble to find out whether there could be a Pink Floyd without Roger Waters paid off and the experience of what he witnessed is something that is still amazing to Rappaport. “When you work with these guys, they take you to places…I wound up doing things with Pink Floyd that in a million years, I never thought I’d be doing.”
Watch Pink Floyd Perform ‘Learning to Fly’ in 1988
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.
Before Heilung, God Of War, and the endless onslaught of Viking TV shows, Wardruna were the force reviving Nordic traditions for the modern age. Headed by Einar Selvik, the band adapt ancient themes and instruments for contemporary times, relaying lessons from history and championing nature.
With new album Birna emerging from the ethereal mists, Einar tells Hammer what he’s learned during a career that’s included soundtracking mainstream franchises and collaborating with the Norwegian government.
ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER
“I presume that growing up in Osterøy is a big part of why I love nature and Norse history. It was a postcard Norwegian landscape, a picturesque place. But also, when you grow up in that kind of environment, it’s just something that’s naturally there. It’s not something you reflect much upon until you have the absence of nature. You’re never as close to home as you are when you’re far from it, touring the world.”
TRY TO DEVELOP A BROAD MUSICAL PALATE
“I grew up with siblings who were very much into metal, so that’s something I’ve had in me since I could walk, or perhaps before. But I had this exposure to other musical genres as well, like classical and traditional [Nordic] music. I enjoyed it all, and I can clearly see now how it influenced my vision for Wardruna.”
BLACK METAL’S CHURCH BURNINGS WERE HORRIBLE YET IMPORTANT
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“I was aware of what Norwegian black metal did in the early 90s… everyone in Norway was. I think the ‘Satanic’ part was a media-created thing. It was more a resistance towards the state church and that kind of oppression.
It’s hard to defend a lot of the stuff that happened in that period but, in retrospect, it moved some boundaries that needed to be moved, in terms of artistic and religious freedom. I think that was beneficial for more than just the people in the black metal scene.”
KNOW WHEN TO QUIT
“I started to think about Wardruna when I was 16 or 17. After playing a lot in the metal scene since my early teens, I was kind of done with it. I needed to do something more in line with my personal passions. That need became stronger and stronger until, in the early 2000s, I started materialising this vision I’d had for years.”
METAL HAS ITS LIMITS
“When I’ve said something, I don’t like to repeat myself. The need to speak in that way with metal sort of passed. I suck when there isn’t any energy supporting what I’m doing. That’s what I was feeling with metal. It became a professional thing, a bit mechanical. It wasn’t personal anymore, and it didn’t feel right.”
TEAMWORK REALLY DOES MAKE THE DREAM WORK
“Gaahl and I resonated very well and became very close friends. I think it was because of our shared passion for esoteric traditions, for history, for nature. We had a lot of common ground, and it’s also just a chemistry thing.
He was an important part of that period where I was shaping what became Wardruna. He was a consultant – a person I could throw my ideas and thoughts at. He was quite a central figure in the beginning.”
HUMANS ARE A PART OF NATURE, NOT IN CONTROL OF IT
“I’m tired of the fetishism of human centrality. We’re not the centre of the universe, and that is something I’m not a big fan of from Christianity. I’m very much opposed to this human ‘we are above the animals and the rulers of nature’ kind of thought.”
THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ATTITUDES AND BELIEFS
“Animism can be many, many things. For me, it’s not a belief system at all. I can’t stand dogmas, and I’m not a big fan of putting labels on what I believe and don’t believe, but animism is what comes closest to how I live my life. It’s the idea that nature is sacred and that everything has life in it. Everyone agrees that trees have life, of course, but I view them as beings, as fellow earthlings. I would say it’s more of an attitude than a belief system.”
TECHNOLOGY ISN’T EVIL, BUT IT NEEDS TO BE UNDERSTOOD
“I think, in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to look back on what’s happening now with a lot of head-shaking. Technology developed a little bit too fast for us. Now, the hard facts are coming out, even though we’ve known for a long time that staying in front of screens isn’t good for us, isn’t good for our children. I’m very happy that I experienced something else growing up. I have kids myself and they say, on some levels, they wish they had the same things we had growing up. But I think things will change. They have to.”
NORSE HISTORY IS MORE THAN JUST VIKINGS…
“A lot of people think I’m into the Viking Age and that Wardruna is connected to the Viking Age, which it’s not. I never use that word. I think it misrepresents Norse history. You’re defining a whole culture using a word that describes what a small amount of people did for a very short amount of time.”
…AND VIKINGS AREN’T THAT INTERESTING TO ME
“The reason why the Viking Age doesn’t fascinate me that much is that it was a time of great change. It was the time where the deities that were connected to the earth became traded with ones that you could bring onto your warships. It was more about ego. It was more about war and expansion. It was a giant migration period where people were losing their ways. It was about money, power, trade. A very non-wholesome thing.”
“The TV show Vikings, like many other films and TV shows of that era, is entertainment. It’s not meant to please people like me, so watching things like that is quite painful, because of all the inaccuracies and simplification. Although the show mended some stereotypes, it created quite a few new ones. When I got involved in it [making the soundtrack for season two], it was a good opportunity to contribute to tipping the scale. Perhaps I could add things that were actually authentic.”
VIDEOGAMES CAN TEACH YOU THINGS
“Assassin’s Creed is a mix of fantasy and historical accuracy as well. What tipped the scale for me to be part of that project was having meetings with them, hearing their vision of what my part would be in that soundtrack. They wanted to give voice to something that I feel is always lacking. Whenever there is a TV show or a movie about the Viking Age, the oral tradition of the skalds [Scandinavian poets who wrote about kings and heroes] is never present, and the Assassin’s Creed team, that’s basically what they wanted.”
HAVING VIKINGS IN THE MAINSTREAM IS BOTH GOOD AND BAD
“All these Viking films and shows and games, they come with positives and negatives. Of course, there will be a lot of bullshit that has nothing to do with the tradition. There will be a lot of people jumping on the hype train, trying to make money. But I think there are positives because, after World War II and the Nazi misuse of ancient Nordic imagery, it was problematic. One of the positives is this new wave of healthy interest and pride in our culture. It’s been a huge part in reclaiming our history.”
FREE SPEECH MATTERS
“My initial reaction to being asked to do Skuggsjá [a musical piece commissioned by Norway’s government, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution] was, ‘I’m not sure.’ I said yes, but only if I could criticise the Constitution.
It has parts that, in my opinion, are quite problematic, especially the religious part. It’s really cool that the reaction was, ‘You should criticise the Constitution!’ Writing that piece in the name of freedom of speech is something I’m proud of.”
WARDRUNA ISN’T A ‘HISTORY’ PROJECT
“In Wardruna, we use something old to create something new. That’s the focus. We use instruments from the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the migration period, the Viking Age and mediaeval times in a modern soundscape. It’s always been about giving voice to parts of history that still carry relevance. Learning from our past, rather than copying it.”
“We had no commercial ambitions. This introverted Norwegian attitude is what enabled us to create something that no one else had done”: How Emperor made black metal masterpiece In The Nightside Eclipse and changed metal forever
(Image credit: Press)
Emperor’s 1994 full-length debut In The Nightside Eclipse was far from the first black metal album, but few had the same impact. In 2019, frontman Ihsahn and producer Eirik ‘Pytten’ Hundvin looked back on an album that blew the scene wide open.
The internet seems to think In The Nightside Eclipse came out on February 21, 1994, yet anyone who was there at the time will recall the agonising delays that pushed Emperor’s hotly anticipated debut LP back throughout that year. The record wasn’t unleashed until mid-December ’94 – 17 months after it was recorded, “under the seventh full moon anno 1993” (as specified in the liner notes) – at the end of a breathtakingly fertile year for the newly ascendant force of Norwegian black metal.
Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Burzum’s Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger, debuts from Gorgoroth and Dimmu Borgir, and the first two albums by Enslaved and Satyricon all emerged in the time it took for Nightside to get its act together. After setting the underground on fire with the Wrath Of The Tyrant demo in 1992 and an eponymous EP in ’93, the still-teenaged Emperor – guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Ihsahn, guitarist Samoth, bassist Tchort and drummer Faust – had a lot of ground to make up, and a hell of a lot to live up to.
The album’s producer, Eirik ‘Pytten’ Hundvin – already Norwegian BM’s go- to sound man after helming recordings by Immortal, Burzum and Mayhem at Grieghallen Studios in Bergen – checked his original notes to help us pin down the reasons for Nightside’s colossal delay. “I have been through my files from the production and can confirm that mixing was complicated,” Pytten declares. “We had a 16-track analogue multitrack, and linked to it by [timecode-reading device] SMPTE was an Atari computer with linked midi keyboards and sound modules, probably also an 8-track digital recorder. This is a very time-consuming set-up to work. In addition was everyone’s high expectations of the final result, and accordingly some remixes of the songs were adding time.”
(Image credit: Press)
Ihsahn remembers remixing The Majesty Of The Night Sky “17 times before we were satisfied”, and as Pytten points out, it was a laborious commute for the young band; Grieghallen lies more than 200 miles west of Emperor’s home town Notodden, in Norway’s Telemark region. Pytten confirms the final day of mastering as August 9, 1994, adding, “Approximately two weeks later all finances were settled. If my notes and memory is accurate, this is a highly acceptable time for settling an invoice!”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 323 (May 2019) (Image credit: Future)
Aside from painstaking studio niggles, there was another, more unorthodox reason for Nightside’s delay. Shortly after recording it, three- quarters of Emperor were imprisoned for a variety of crimes: Faust for murder, Samoth for arson and Tchort for assault.
This quartet of misanthropic souls were positioned at the dark heart of an alarming new phenomenon: the Norwegian black metal ‘Inner Circle’, a loose association of like-minded musicians whose turbulent antisocial oneupmanship quickly spiralled out of control. In the time between Nightside’s recording and release, Mayhem guitarist Euronymous had been murdered and Burzum’s Count Grishnackh imprisoned for the crime, and Norwegian black metal had grown from a freakishly cult regional micro-scene to a thriving movement of international infamy.
Yet under all this pressure, Nightside became arguably the crowning achievement of its era – a dizzying, haunting, tempestuous masterwork pushing boundaries of composition, melody and atmosphere to make it arguably the most far-reaching artefact from Norse BM’s early years. The band never had any doubt of their debut’s potency: “It will be a monument in black metal history,” Samoth promised in March ’94 to excellently titled Finnish zine Pure Fucking Hell.
This was a busy time for the guitarist; as well as Emperor, Samoth’s six- string bolstered releases by Arcturus, Satyricon and Gorgoroth, in addition to session bass-work for Burzum. “It’s Samoth who had all the connections, and I tagged along!” admits Ihsahn, recalling the incestuous nature of the Norwegian scene in these early days. “At the time extreme metal was dominated by Swedish and American bands, so maybe since we all hung out a lot, going to shows, a Norwegian identity was created. It fit better with our surroundings. In The Nightside Eclipse was very much influenced by descriptions of stuff that look very much like our Telemark nature.”
(Image credit: Press)
The LP’s dramatic evocation of place was signposted by its gatefold sleeve, Kristian ‘Necrolord’ Wåhlin’s moonlit panorama opening to reveal a glorious 24-inch photograph of a mountainous wooded fjord. MTV went to Ihsahn’s home for an interview in ’94, the black-clad youth filmed stalking around conifers, gazing pensively at waterfalls and ruminating on “the winds, the rains… the wastelands, the emptiness, the silence…” Far more than Satan, the unifying essence and motivational impetus of Nightside is the mysterious, rugged landscape of Emperor’s homeland – albeit populated by some deeply unnatural beings.
“We had a strong need for expression, so it was easy to channel that into fantasy-like images and larger-than-life sounds,” recalls Ihsahn. “We were just as inspired by soundtracks that went along with big fantasy movies. We started out with some epicness on the first Emperor EP, but it became very obvious that we wanted to do something that was just out of this world.”
Assisting in that regard was Pytten’s Nightside production, an oppressive cacophony of barbed guitars, blitzkrieg drums and triumphing synth flourishes, heaving with apocalyptic sound effects. Production polarised opinion from day one, some feeling alienated by the harsh, wayward blizzard of sound, others powerfully immersed in its cryptic embrace.
“Aahh, this is a tricky question,” remarks Pytten, when asked how his assessment of the finished product has changed over the years. “With such long times working on the production, so many hours in the studio, so many replays of the songs, so many tries to get the music right, I can go on… I have to admit my first feeling was relief! But the way I see the album after the fatigue left me is that I have never thought, ‘Oh if I only had done so and so instead…’ I think, whatever words are put on the production, this is a captured sound that has a lasting quality. I am quite proud of what we all achieved.”
Ihsahn’s own assessment is even more touching and heartfelt. “I think it’s the purity of it,” ponders the frontman, considering why Emperor’s debut has survived so timelessly. “We had no commercial ambitions; there were none to have. It sounds romantic, but all this music was made purely with artistic motivations, this total, introverted, Norwegian ‘keep it to ourselves’ attitude is what enabled us to create something that no one else had done.
“I always look back at albums and think, ‘Ah, I could have changed that’, but then you go beyond that, it becomes so old that you just appreciate it for being a representation of where you were at that point. And this wasn’t just 25 years ago, it’s almost like another life, being basically a kid. I look back and I think, ‘What an immense privilege, to be able to so deeply get to dedicate so much time and attention to this thing called music that I love so much.’ That whole time formed the basis of me being able to do this for 25 years. What a stroke of luck! It’s almost paradoxical to be so thankful for black metal, given the evilness of it all…”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 323, May 2019
Chris has been writing about heavy metal since 2000, specialising in true/cult/epic/power/trad/NWOBHM and doom metal at now-defunct extreme music magazine Terrorizer. Since joining the Metal Hammer famileh in 2010 he developed a parallel career in kids’ TV, winning a Writer’s Guild of Great Britain Award for BBC1 series Little Howard’s Big Question as well as writing episodes of Danger Mouse, Horrible Histories, Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed and The Furchester Hotel. His hobbies include drumming (slowly), exploring ancient woodland and watching ancient sitcoms.
Quirky prog metal trio Primus have shared their first new music for three years.
The quirky and surrealist Little Lord Fentanyl introduces new drummer John Hoffman and features a guest appearance. form Tool/A Perfect Circle/Puscifer vocalist Maynard James Keenan, and is the band’s first new music since 2022’s Conspiranoid EP.
“This fiery, cheerful, octopus-like drummer from Shreveport, Louisiana has breathed a very potent breath of freshness into this band we all call Primus,” said bassist and singer Les Claypool of the new incumbent. “Come see why this amazing fellow was able to rise above over 6,100 applicants to win the Interstellar Drum Derby and become the latest, and possibly the greatest, drummer to sit on the Primus drum throne.”
Primus are set to head out on the Sessanta Tour along with both A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, celebrating Keenan’s recent 61st birthday, before they head off on their Onward & Upward summer headline tour in America.
(Image credit: Press)
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“We were drug addicts dabbling in music, rather than musicians dabbling in drugs”: The unhinged story of Aerosmith’s Draw The Line, the album that sent them crashing off the rails
(Image credit: Ron Pownall/Getty Images))
As 1977 rolled in, Aerosmith were flying high. In January, the band’s latest single Walk This Way, belatedly extracted from 1975 album Toys In The Attic, hit No.10 in the US. And in February, when they toured in Japan for the first time, they experienced a level of hysteria akin to Beatlemania.
There was no rock band on Earth bigger than Led Zeppelin, but Aerosmith were rising fast. As their producer Jack Douglas said: “Kiss was their only competition, at least among American rock bands.”
And yet, in the early summer of ’77, when Douglas started work on Aerosmith’s fifth album, Draw The Line, the problems within the group were plain to see. Hard drugs had taken a hold on the band’s two leading figures, singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry. As the latter would put it: “The Beatles recorded The White Album, right? Well, Draw The Line was our Blackout Album.”
It was an album created out of chaos, and it marked a turning point in the life of America’s greatest rock’n’roll band. In its wake came two years of insanity – near-fatal car crashes, on-stage meltdowns, drug mania and fights between their wives and girlfriends, culminating in the shock exit of Joe Perry in 1979. And strangest of all, it was during these wild years, when the band was at its most dysfunctional, that some of Aerosmith’s greatest music was made.
The scene for the recording of Draw The Line was the Cenacle, a vast mansion set in 100 acres in a remote part of New York State near the village of Armonk. In 1977 the owner of the Cenacle was a psychiatrist who planned to turn the old place into a residential home for troubled adolescents. “Instead,” joked Aerosmith’s bassist Tom Hamilton, “he got us.”
This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock Presents Aerosmith (Image credit: Future)
By the time the band members arrived in June, Jack Douglas and his team had set up a mobile recording studio on the ground floor, with heavy cables running from room to room. For added natural ambience, Joey Kramer’s drums were recorded in the chapel, and Joe Perry’s rig was installed in a walk-in fireplace. The difficulty for Douglas was in getting the band into a working routine. As Perry later admitted, “We were drug addicts dabbling in music, rather than musicians dabbling in drugs.” Their hazardous recreational habits also extended to racing their sports cars, Ferraris and Porsches, on the surrounding country lanes, and messing around with firearms, Perry having recently added to his private arsenal a semiautomatic Thompson machine gun.
The days and nights passed in a blur. “We were out there at the Cenacle,” said Tyler, whose erratic mood swings were dictated by whatever he was on – snorting fat lines of cocaine one moment, then gulping downers, in particular the sedative-hypnotic Tuinal. During one dusk-till-dawn bender, he and Kramer set out at 5am to shoot beer cans with .22 rifles, only for Tyler to pass out with the gun in his hands before a shot was fired. Perry, meanwhile, was using heroin, breakfasting on White Russian cocktails, and wandering around the place “glassy-eyed”, as Douglas recalled.
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Aerosmith in 1977: (from left) Joe Perry, Steven Tyler, Brad Whitford, Joey Kramer, Tom Hamilton (Image credit: Ron Pownall/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
With Tyler and Perry zonked, shut away in their second-floor rooms for days at a time, the band was, in Hamilton’s words, “split in two”. Most evenings, it was just the trio of Hamilton, Kramer and guitarist Brad Whitford working on tracks. Tyler, holed up in his room, was struggling to write lyrics, and on the rare occasions when Perry did show, he was barely able to string a few notes together – in Douglas’ estimation, “totally wrecked”. Perry never denied it. By this stage, he said, “Steven and I had stopped giving a fuck.”
After six weeks at the Cenacle, with the album still unfinished and tour dates looming, the band headed home to Boston. But in the condition these guys were in, minds frazzled, two of them were lucky to make it back alive. Kramer reckoned he was doing over 130mph in his Ferrari when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a guardrail. He was hospitalized with a head injury but quickly discharged with seven stitches. The $19,000 Ferrari was a write-off. Perry was also driving at high speed when he lost control of his Corvette and hit an unmarked police car. He emerged unscathed, and as he later noted, with some amusement, the cop kindly took him to a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts.
Others might have seen this as a wake-up call, but not Perry. At home during a brief period of downtime, he got loaded on opium, rolled into a ball and swallowed whole, drank vintage wine like it was water, and rode his luck time and again in what he described as “a series of car accidents”. The madness continued unabated on tour, for which the road crew packed a chainsaw for Perry to dismantle hotel furniture.
What was officially named The Aerosmith Express Tour – but known among the band’s long-suffering crew as The Lick The Boots That Kick You Tour – ran from June to October, beginning and ending in the US, with European dates in between. Throughout this period, Jack Douglas was kept busy: taping shows for a live album and, during breaks in the tour, conducting the final sessions for Draw The Line at The Record Plant studios in New York City, where Tyler applied what little discipline he had to finishing his lyrics and vocals.
In Europe in August, a performance at the Lorelei Festival in Germany was cut short when Tyler collapsed after just three songs, but at the Reading Festival, the band turned it on, winning over a rain-soaked audience mired in mud. And it was during their time in the UK that Perry recorded his solos for the new album’s title track at AIR Studio in London, owned by The Beatles’ producer George Martin. On that occasion, Perry played with genuine conviction as his new friend, Queen guitarist Brian May, watched on.
Aerosmith – Draw The Line (Live Texxas Jam ’78) – YouTube
In October, back on home turf, there was another close call during a show at the Philadelphia Spectrum. With 17,000 fans in rowdy mood, an M-80 firecracker was thrown on stage, the deafening explosion leaving Tyler with a burned cornea and Perry with a burst artery in his right hand. As Whitford said: “Steven could have been blinded.” Later that month, as Tyler and Perry added the finishing touches to Draw The Line at The Record Plant, they had even more reason to count their blessings. On October 20, a plane carrying Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed near Gillsburg, Mississippi, killing six of the occupants, including singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines. This plane, a Convair CV-240, had been offered for Aerosmith’s use earlier that year, but had been declared unsafe by the band’s head of flight operations.
What happened to Lynyrd Skynyrd had a profound effect on the members of Aerosmith. As Joe Perry said: “It was a terrible tragedy, and we just considered ourselves incredibly lucky. To be that close to it, and knowing those guys, it was really a blow.” But in the immediate aftermath, just a few days after the disaster, Aerosmith hit the road again, and while the shows were selling out, the flagship single for the new album, its title track, bombed. “It didn’t make the Top 40,” Tyler said. “And this was supposed to be a huge album for us, a big follow-up to our best work.”
A turbulent year for the band ended with the album’s release on December 9. And just as Tyler knew how much was riding on it, so did Jack Douglas. As he explained: “It took us six months and half a million dollars to make that record.”
Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler onstage in 1978 (Image credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images)
Demand for a new Aerosmith album was sky-high, and Draw The Line took off like a rocket. The bottom line was what mattered to Columbia Records, and according to Douglas, this was “the fastest selling record the label ever had”. But by January 1978, the album had peaked at Number 11 in the US – a major disappointment after the previous record, Rocks, had reached Number Three. And in Rolling Stone magazine, a review of Draw The Line was as stinging as it was perceptive: “Chaotic to the point of malfunction, with an impenetrably dense sound adding to the confusion… This album shows the band in a state of shock.”
Going for the jugular, that review pinned Draw The Line as “a truly horrendous record”. The truth of it was not quite so simple. Certainly, this album was no match for what came before, the twin peaks of Toys In The Attic and Rocks. But there was a powerful intensity, a cocaine-induced mania, in the title track and the Perry-sung Bright Light Fright, the latter inspired, so Perry claimed, by the “energy” of the Sex Pistols – evidence, albeit slight, that some outside influence could permeate his fazed consciousness. There was depth in Kings And Queens, a weird and heavy trip in which Tyler sang of ancient European history, guillotines and Vikings – Walk This Way this was not.
The album’s best track, I Wanna Know Why, proved that Aerosmith could still sound as cool as fuck, even if Tyler and Perry had stopped giving a fuck. And while their version of Milk Cow Blues – a 1930s song credited to American bluesman Kokomo Arnold and famously recorded by Elvis Presley in the 50s – was laid down because they were short on original material, it had a real swing to it, and carried a little poignancy following the death of Elvis on August 16, 1977.
What was lacking in Draw The Line was anything approaching the beauty in songs such as Uncle Salty and You See Me Crying from Toys In The Attic, and the ballad Home Tonight from Rocks. This album, born of excess, was all hard edges. The only lightness of touch was in the illustration on the cover, a portrait of the group by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
As Jack Douglas put it: “Draw The Line is a classic title that says it all, the coke lines, heroin lines, drawing symbolic lines and crossing them all – no matter what.”
By this stage, it was no secret that Aerosmith were into the hard stuff, Tyler and Perry most of all. “The press started referring to Joe and Steven as The Toxic Twins,” Tom Hamilton said. “We started hearing rumours that we were breaking up when word got out how crazy things were.” What was unknown, outside of the band’s inner circle, was the twisted little drama playing out in Tyler and Perry’s personal lives.
Perry and his wife Elyssa were tight with David Johansen, singer for the New York Dolls, and his wife Cyrinda Foxe, a model, actress and protégé of Andy Warhol. Johansen had even co-written the song Sight For Sore Eyes from Draw The Line. When it was discovered that Tyler and Cyrinda were having an affair, Elyssa was mortified. “I felt like an idiot,” she said. “David was good friend.” Her worst fears were confirmed when Cyrinda left Johansen for Tyler, and then revealed that she was pregnant.
With the relationship between singer and guitarist deteriorating, the tension heightened by non-stop drug use, Aerosmith manager David Krebs devised a simple strategy for 1978 in an effort to keep the band together. As he explained it: “We had reached the top, but the band was dying. I wanted to give them time to work out their problems. We came up with these giant events. That’s how they spent most of the year, headlining ten major festivals.”
Aerosmith’s Joe Perry in 1978 (Image credit: Ron Pownall/Corbis via Getty Images)
One such event came on March 18, California Jam II in Ontario, 30 miles from Los Angeles, where an audience of 350,000 saw Aerosmith topping a bill featuring Ted Nugent, Foreigner, Heart and Santana. And it was during this trip to California that this band of Beatles fans got to work with George Martin, the man known as ‘the fifth Beatle’.
Martin was producing the soundtrack album for the movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a musical comedy, loosely based on The Beatles’ most famous work, starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, and created by Robert Stigwood, the manager of the Bee Gees and the brains behind the box-office smashes Saturday Night Fever and Grease. The Sgt. Pepper movie had Beatles songs sung by a diverse cast – the Gibb brothers and Frampton, Alice Cooper and the comedians Frankie Howerd and Steve Martin. And for Aerosmith, there was a cameo role in which they played to type as ‘The Future Villain Band’, performing a rocking version of the Fab Four’s funkiest number, Come Together. The track was recorded with Martin in just two takes, and while the movie and soundtrack album would bomb, Aerosmith would have a Top 30 hit with Come Together in September, the month in which Tyler and Cyrinda were married.
Through that summer, the band played more of those giant events. On July 4, American Independence Day, they top-billed at the Texxas World Music Festival at the 100,000-capacity Dallas Cottonbowl, with Ted Nugent and Heart again as support acts, along with Journey and Eddie Money. They also played a few low-key club shows, billed as Dr. J. Jones And The Interns, which were recorded by Jack Douglas for the live album that was released on October 27. They named it Live! Bootleg, and the titled implied, it was, by design, the antithesis of Peter Frampton’s sweet-sounding mega-hit Frampton Comes Alive!
The true measure of what Aerosmith delivered in Live! Bootleg was summed up by Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash, who was just a kid of thirteen when the album came out. “That was the big one for me,” he said. “Live! Bootleg is one of the most underrated albums of all time, one of the best live rock’n’roll albums ever made. It started the trend for me to go out and discover new bands by buying their live albums, because that way I could get all the best songs and for me the whole live thing was the most exciting thing in the world. The way that Live! Bootleg starts with Back In The Saddle, that whole intro with the crowd going crazy and the flash-pots going off, that whole build-up, made it so exciting to me.”
Live! Bootleg was a triumph, but within a month of its release, with the band back out on tour, a shocking incident in a Chicago hotel pushed Tyler and Perry even closer to breaking point. An argument between Elyssa and Cyrinda, the latter eight months pregnant, escalated into a brawl, in which Elyssa was alleged to have kicked Cyrinda in the stomach. Brad Whitford’s wife Karen witnessed what happened, later recalled it as “a very ugly scene”, and noted, “Things between Steven and Joe went immediately downhill, as you can imagine.”
Fortunately, Cyrinda’s pregnancy was not affected. On December 22, she gave birth to a healthy daughter, whom they named Mia. But for the band, the writing was on the wall.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – Come Together [Aerosmith] (HD) – YouTube
In January 1979, even as Live! Bootleg rose to No.13 on the Billboard chart, Rolling Stone stuck the knife in again. “Aerosmith is a dinosaur among bands, the last of a generation of rock’n’rollers being edged out by more streamlined competition like Boston, Foreigner and Fleetwood Mac,” proclaimed the magazine.
But it wasn’t this new breed of Adult Oriented Rock band that was hurting Aerosmith. Nor was it the advent of punk rock and new wave. The damage was coming from within. Aerosmith was a band self-destructing – with the drugs and the booze, and with the enmity between their women that was effectively a proxy war between the guys themselves. Tyler and Perry had always been the axis on which the band revolved, but in the summer of ’79, that bond was broken.
In the preceding months, the band was still functioning, to a point. They were still doing the big shows – headlining the California Music Festival at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles on April 7, with Nugent again on the undercard, alongside Van Halen and Cheap Trick, and 100,000 tickets sold. In May, work on a new Aerosmith album began. But on July 28, at another marquee event, the World Series Of Rock festival at Cleveland Stadium, the shit hit the fan.
The line-up that day was out of this world: below Aerosmith and, as usual, the Nuge, were Journey, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC and Scorpions. But when Aerosmith got up on stage, it wasn’t pride, the desire to prove they were still top dogs, which had them fired up. It was hatred for each other. Moments before show time, in a backstage trailer, Elyssa Perry had traded insults with Tom Hamilton’s wife Terry, thrown a glass of milk at her, and in the ensuing scuffle, all five members of the band ended up throwing punches. All of that bad energy went into what Elyssa described, mischievously, as “the best show of the tour”. But once it was done, and they were all back in the trailer, Tyler and Perry went right at it. As Tyler recalled: “Joe goes, ‘Maybe I should leave the band.’ I said, ‘Yeah, maybe you fuckin’ should.’ Joe goes, ‘Oh yeah?’ And gets up. And I yell: ‘FUCK YOU, THEN! GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!’ And he left.” Tyler concluded, funnily but somewhat simplistically: “Aerosmith literally broke up over spilt milk.”
Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry at the party for 1978’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie (Image credit: Brad Elterman/FilmMagic)
In the weeks that followed, as rumours of Perry’s exit circulated in the rock press, the rest of the band got back to work on the new album at Media Sound studios in New York, while also auditioning new guitarists. One of the candidates was Michael Schenker, the mercurial German genius who had walked out of two major bands, UFO and Scorpions. It was Schenker’s brusque manner – as Tyler quoted him, “Before I join your band I vant it clear I’m taking over right now!” – which turned them off. Schenker was similarly unimpressed. “Steven,” he said, “was not in a good shape.” In the end, it was a 23 year-old New Yorker, Jimmy Crespo, who replaced Perry.
Schenker’s gut feeling about Tyler was correct. The singer was so deep into drugs while Aerosmith were finishing the album Night In The Ruts that he later described the experience as “like a fuckin’ solar eclipse.” But even with Perry gone, and Tyler so far gone, this album, while jokingly named, turned out to be one of Aerosmith’s very best.
A press release dated October 10, 1979 had put an end to speculation: “Joe Perry and Aerosmith announced today Perry’s plans to depart the group to purse a solo career.” The statement concluded with a barefaced lie: “His departure is described as amicable.” And while the cover for Night In The Ruts featured Perry – in a photo of the band dressed as coal miners, shot in March 1978 – any talk of reconciliation was ended on November 16, the date of the album’s release. That night, with a sense of comic timing, the guitarist’s new group, The Joe Perry Project, played their debut show at Boston College.
Six songs on Night In The Ruts had been co-written by Perry, and five featured his playing: Chiquita, Cheese Cake and Three Mile Smile, all lean-and-mean rockers in the classic Aerosmith tradition; No Surprize, the ballsy opening track, in which Tyler told the story of the band’s salad days; and Bone To Bone (Coney Island White Fish Boy), a frantic number named by Tyler after slang for a used rubber.
But in Perry’s absence, Jimmy Crespo and another guitarist, Richie Supa, gelled pretty much seamlessly with Brad Whitford. And while the album was filled out with three cover versions, they all worked brilliantly: The Yardbirds’ Think About It played at maximum overdrive, the old blues song Reefer Head Woman pulling raw emotion out of Tyler, and Remember (Walking In The Sand), a hit for 60s girl group The Shangri-Las, handled with finger-clicking panache. But in the album’s final track, a beautiful ballad named Mia, there was, as Tyler later admitted, heavy significance. “It was a lullaby I wrote on the piano for my daughter,” he said. “But the tolling bell notes at the end of the song and the end of the album sounded more like the death knell of Aerosmith for people who knew what was going on.”
In January 1980, when Night In The Ruts reached No.14 on the US chart, it seemed that Aerosmith might pull through without Joe Perry. But in the same month, when the band headed out on tour, it was heavy going. Tyler got so drunk before a show in Portland, Maine that he keeled over midway through the set, and had to be carried offstage. And even when the band had a good night, fans were still calling out for Perry, whose debut album with the Project, released in March of that year, was titled, pointedly, Let The Music Do The Talking.
Night In The Ruts was a great record, but for Aerosmith there were hard times ahead. The rot had set in. The decline was inevitable. Steven Tyler was just too proud to admit it, and too messed up to do anything about it.
Aerosmith had it all and blew it, and they had nobody else to blame but themselves. As David Krebs said: “In 1978, Aerosmith represented the living spirit of American rock’n’roll. To see them destroy themselves through immense disregard for anything but self-indulgence was a tragedy.”
Originally published in Classic Rock Presents: Aerosmith
Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO and Q. He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss, and currently works as content editor for Total Guitar. He lives in Bath – of which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!”
Cheap Trick vocalist Robin Zander offered a hint at what to expect from the band’s next studio album – and revealed its possible title.
The follow-up to 2021’s In Another World is currently reaching the end of the production process, cover artist John Johnson revealed in a blog post.
Confirming that the title under discussion is All Washed Up, Zander told Johnson: “I’ll have to send it to you. It’s pretty good. It’s Cheap trick. It sounds like us. It’s got some good, bad and ugly on it, just like our other records.”
Asked if the band were planning to perform any of their new songs at upcoming shows, Zander said: “We won’t be doing that. We’re going to wait…the cover’s not even finished yet, John – you know that.” He added that the group were operating with a new office team, saying: “I love the new management; they’re very cool.”
On its release, record label BMG said of the band’s 20th album: “In Another World sees Cheap Trick doing what they do better than anyone – crafting indelible rock ‘n’ roll with oversized hooks, mischievous lyrics and seemingly inexorable energy.”
Cheap Trick Prepare to Bid Farewell to Japan
The Rockford, Illinois natives are reported to be preparing a farewell tour of Japan later this year. While few details have been made available, the road trip would close a five-decade onstage relationship with the country that helped made the band’s name.
They’d launched three studio albums in the U.S. to little acclaim before 1978’s Cheap Trick at Bodukan – originally intended for a Japan-only release – secured their success in their home country.
Cheap Trick Albums Ranked
Hits and misses from one of rock’s most reliable bands.
![Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Come Together [Aerosmith] (HD) - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/PgUdkvSGYGU/maxresdefault.jpg)
