Professional opera singer and vocal coach Elizabeth Zharoff, who also hosts the YouTube channel, The Charismatic Voice, continues to explore the world of rock and metal. Join her as she listens to and gives a vocal analysis of the JOurney classic, “Faithfully”.
Elizabeth: “Why was I so sheltered? I swore up and down that I had heard a majority of Journey’s catalogue, but truth be told… I barely seem to know any of their songs – and Steve Perry’s voice is just infectious. So what do we do when I’m craving more? We listen to more!”
Elizabeth has previously shared vocal analyses of Metallica, Dream Theater, Rush, Heart, Tenacious D, Sabaton, Motörhead, Ayreon, Faith No More, Black Sabbath, Arch Enemy, Epica, Deep Purple, Myles Kennedy, Scorpions, Heart, Blind Guardian, Devin Townsend, AC/DC, Triumph, Whitesnake, Queen, KISS, Guns N’ Roses, Opeth, The Cult, Powerwolf, Toto, Van Halen and ZZ Top.
Professor Of Rock recently shared the new video below, along with the following message:
“Coming up next, one of the greatest living guitarists, Journey’s Neal Schon, tells the story of two of the ’80s most famous solos: One he played the hell out of, but it was cut from the song ‘Who’s Crying Now’ when it was climbing the charts to the Top 5. But angry fans called radio stations and complained so they put it back in. And another song, ‘Faithfully’, was so inspiring that one of the greatest guitar players and geniuses of the ’80s, Prince, actually called Journey because he had written one of his greatest songs, ‘Purple Rain’, but he was afraid he might’ve subconsciously ripped off the guitar part and asked them if they would listen to it and see. Journey graciously said it was similar, but a whole new song. We have Neal Schon with us to tell the story of these two amazing songs next on Professor of Rock.”
German high-speed power metallers, Sculforge, have released their new single, “Towers” – and no, it’s not just any old single release. Singer and guitarist Polly T. Wood sums it up:
“This song is a collection of superlatives! It’s our fastest and shortest track ever. But that’s not all because we’ve got an extra gimmick to take even more of your precious time. Our guitarist Fabz, normally lazier than a rock, has taught himself how to program a video game. This means that not only do you get a classic Sculforge DIY video, but you also get to play the very first Sculforge video game. Cheers, legends!”
Get ready to have your ears blown off and master a few levels. You can get into the mayhem at here. Check out the “Towers” video below.
Sculforge recently announced a few live dates for Germany. Their schedule is as follows:
March 15 – R’n’P – Wiesloch, Germany
April 10 – Café Central – Weinheim, Germany 13 – Live Club – Berlin, Germany
Tickets are available here. More shows will be announced soon.
After a small line-up change, Sculforge retirned late last year with a new single and video entitled “The Journey”. The track is available as a digital single on all download and streaming platforms, and at the same time in the form of a brand new video clip, which can be viewed below.
Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick has reflected on the one night he played guitar for Ozzy Osbourne.
Skolnick, 56, briefly replaced Zakk Wylde as the guitarist in Osbourne’s solo band in June 1995, but was dismissed from the lineup less than a month later. During his tenure he played one show with the Black Sabbath singer, which took place at Rock City in Nottingham.
Reflecting on his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Osbourne stint in the new issue of Metal Hammer, Skolnick says, “I don’t know why their separation happened, but I guess Zakk was doing other stuff and there was this search for a new Ozzy Osbourne guitarist.”
(Image credit: Future (Photo: Jake Owens))
He continues, “I was just honoured to be in the running because I’d heard about some pretty well-known players that never got past the audition phase. I actually got to the point of doing a show and Ozzy hired me – he said he wanted me to do the gig.
“It was an unannounced show at Nottingham Rock City and it was great.”
Skolnick adds that him not hanging about in Osbourne’s band was likely a “management decision”, but isn’t bitter about it.
“It was a great motivation at a time when I didn’t really know what to do next,” he says. “That was when I enrolled in the university called The New School in New York, and studied with these greats like [jazz musicians] Cecil McBee and Reggie Workman.”
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In a 2016 Loudwire interview, Skolnick spoke about the Osbourne concert, revealing that it was repeatedly cancelled and rescheduled at the last minute.
“I heard that we’re doing this unannounced show,” he remembers, “then I heard, ‘We’re not doing the show now because he’s got a sore throat. Oh, we’re doing the show again!’ And it was on and it was off and it was on and it was off.”
He also elaborated about why he didn’t continue with Osbourne after that night, implying it was because of The Prince Of Darkness’ wife/manager Sharon.
“There was one person who didn’t congratulate me [after the gig],” he added. “A lot of hints had been dropped – things like, ‘Maybe you could lower the guitar,’ or, ‘Maybe you could stand like this.’ I realised, ‘Oh, I think she wants me to be Zakk Wylde.’”
Skolnick’s Ozzy membership was during his time away from Testament, whom he left in 1992 but rejoined in 2005. The thrashers are expected to release their next album at some point this year.
“Like a cross between ABBA, swervedriver and Kraftwerk,” is how Mogwai guitarist Stuart Braithwaite considers the sound of the band’s new single, Fanzine Made Of Flesh, which the band have just shared a new video for.
“Fanzine Made Of Flesh was written in Brooklyn when I was staying at Alex Kapranos’s house in autumn 2023,” Braithwaite explains. “In my head it sounds like a cross between ABBA, swervedriver and Kraftwerk though that might be ludicrous. It originally has a straight vocal but we ended up vocoding it on the last day of recording. It’s pretty different and I’m really happy with how it turned out.”
Fanzine Made Of Flesh is taken from Mogwai’s upcoming new studio album, The Bad Fire, which will be released through Rock Action on January 24 (and through Temporary Residence Ltd. for North/South America).
The new album, the follow-up to 2021’s chart-topping Love Conquers All, was recorded in Lanarkshire, with Grammy Award-winning producer John Congleton, is named after a Scottish colloquialism for Hell, referring to the band’s personal lives at the time of recording.
“We’ve dealt with a lot of loss and in Barry’s case a serious family illness with one his daughters,” the band reveal. “Getting back together to write and record this record felt like a refuge and with John Congleton we feel that we’ve made something special. We often hear from people that our music has helped them get through hard times in their lives and for once I think it applies to us as well.”
Mogwai are set to embark on a world tour in support of the record throughout 2025.
The Bad Fire is available to pre-order and pre-save now in various formats, including vinyl box set, CD box set, black LP, clear vinyl LP, CD and cassette.
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(Image credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Power Trip)
Rock For People has added a fifth day to its 2025 edition, which will be headlined by Guns ’N’ Roses.
In addition, the Czech Republic rock festival – set to take place from June 11 to 15 at Park 360, Hradec Králové – has added Friday headliner the Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter, plus more than 40 other names. They include Biffy Clyro, Kneecap, Eagles Of Death Metal, Refused, Lorna Shore, The Ghost Inside, Sylosis and Urne.
The added names join previously announced headliners Avenged Sevenfold, Slipknot and Linkin Park. Also populating the bill are In Flames, Poppy, Awolnation and Motionless In White, among many others.
Festival founder Michal Thomes comments: “I dare say the lineup we’ve managed to put together for this year’s show is truly exceptional. The bar for the festival is once again being raised and we are seeing a huge demand for tickets that we have never seen before.
“We are enlarging the venue, moving the Fat Lady main stage further away, while strengthening the infrastructure of Park 360 and other services to maintain the comfort that visitors are used to. Despite this, six months before the event, 90% of the capacity of full-festival tickets is sold out already.”
Guns ’N’ Roses will play Rock For People as part of their enormous Europe and Middle East tour in the summer. The 50-plus-concert run will start with their first-ever performance in Saudi Arabia on May 23 and finish at German festival Wacken Open Air on July 31. See the full list of dates below.
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The Sex Pistols reunited, with Frank Carter replacing original frontman Johnny Rotten, last year. What was originally planned to be a handful of shows to benefit West London venue Bush Hall has exploded by public demand into a fully fledged touring comeback.
This year, Rock For People took place from June 12 to 15 and was headlined by The Prodigy, The offspring, Bring me The Horizon and Yungblud.
(Image credit: Press)
Guns ’N’ Roses 2025 tour dates:
May 23: Riyadh Kingdom Arena, Saudi Arabia May 27: Abu Dhabi Etihad Arena, UAE May 30: Shekvetili Parka, Georgia^ Jun 02: Istanbul Tüpraş Stadyumu, Turkey^ Jun 06: Coimbra Estádio Cidade de Coimbra, Portugal^ Jun 09: Barcelona Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, Spain Jun 12: Florence Firenze Rocks, Italy*^ Jun 15: Hradec Kralove Rock For People, Czech Republic*^ Jun 18: Dusseldorf Merkur Spiel-Arena, Germany^ Jun 20: Munich Allianz Arena, Germany^ Jun 23: Birmingham Villa Park, UK Jun 26: London Wembley Stadium, UK Jun 29: Aarhus Eskelunden, Denmark+ Jul 02: Trondheim Granåsen Ski Centre, Norway+ Jul 04: Stockholm Strawberry Aren, Sweden+ Jul 07: Tampere Ratina Stadium, Finland+ Jul 10: Kaunas Darius and Girėnas Stadium, Lithuania+ Jul 12: Warsaw PGE Nardowy, Poland+ Jul 15: Budapest Puskás Aréna, Hungary+ Jul 18: Belgrade Ušće Park, Serbia+ Jul 21: Sofia Vasil Levski Stadium, Bulgaria+ Jul 24: Vienna Ernst Happel Stadion, Austria# Jul 28: Luxembourg Open Air, Luxembourg# Jul 31: Wacken Festival, Germany*
* = Festival appearance + = with Public Enemy ^ = with Rival Sons # = with Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter
Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.
(Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images | Aaron Rapoport/Corbis via Getty Images)
On March 25, 1979, Bruce Springsteen went to the Fast Lane nightclub in Ashbury Park, New Jersey to see his friend Patti Smith play. One year earlier, Smith had scored her first Billboard chart hit single with Because The Night, a song originally written by Springsteen during his studio sessions for his Darkness on the Edge of Town album, and passed along to the punk poetess by Jimmy Iovine, who was working on both Darkness… and Smith’s Easter album. The Fast Lane show actually inspired Springsteen to write another punk rock song, not for Smith, but for the Ramones, who were also on the bill that March 1979 evening.
“I saw the band, I had a lot of fun, talked to them backstage, and I said, Maybe I’ll write a song for the Ramones,” Springsteen recalled in a December interview with Howard Stern. “I went home, middle of the night, took about 20 minutes, it was done.”
As was customary, Springsteen played the song for his manager Jon Landau soon after writing it. Landau had observed that a number of Springsteen’s more direct, poppier songs had become hits for other artists – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band had scored a US number one single covering Springsteen’s Blinded By The Light, while The Pointer Sisters reached number 2 on the Billboard chart covering Fire – and upon hearing Hungry Heart, he told Springsteen “Keep it for yourself.”
Springsteen heeded the advice, and after recording the song for his 1980 album The River, it was chosen as the record’s first single. Released without an accompanying video, the song reached number 5 on the Billboard chart, giving the New Jersey singer/songwriter his first mainstream hit.
“That’s good management, dammit,” Springsteen told Stern. “This thing was our first actual hit. We became a ‘date night’ band suddenly, where women started to come to the shows… Jackson Browne had all the good looking girls, the guys came to see us… some homoerotic undercurrent in our music, that was all there was to it [laughs].”
Ramones would never score a Top 40 hit single in America.
Watch Springsteen’s full interview with Howard Stern below.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on the Howard Stern Show (FULL INTERVIEW) – YouTube
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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.
System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian has responded to claims that Glenn Close once drummed for the nu metal icons.
Onstage at the Golden Globes this weekend, the legendary actress presented the award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. Host Nikki Glaser jokingly introduced her, in addition to her status as a three-time Golden Globe winner and decades-spanning box office draw, as a “former drummer for System Of A Down”.
Yesterday (January 6), Malakian ‘confirmed’ Glaser’s comment in an Instagram post.
“Bet you didn’t know!!!! Bet you didn’t know!!!!!” he wrote. “Somewhere between our first drummer [Andy Khachaturian] and John [Dolmayan], Glenn Close was tearing shit up on the drums for us!!!!!”
Malakian’s post also contained video footage of Close’s introduction. Watch below.
System Of A Down released their Rick Rubin-produced debut album in 1998, shortly after Dolmayan replaced Close behind the kit. Its follow-up, 2001’s Toxicity, topped the US Billboard 200 charts and went on to be certified six-time Platinum by the Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA).
The band went on hiatus in 2006, one year after releasing their Mezmerize and Hypnotize albums, and came back in 2011. They put out double A-side single Genocidal Humanoidz and Protect The Land in 2020, but have otherwise been a live-only band since returning.
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“I would say if System ever decided to make a record, it would be a fresh start in a brand new way, in a beautiful new direction,” he said.
Tankian also teased that the band have a few unreleased “hidden gems” in their vault.
As for Close, she’s set to appear in two Netflix productions in 2025: action comedy Back In Action, which stars Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx and comes out on January 17, and Knives Out sequel Wake Up Dead Man.
A dispute between Kiss and a fired wig roadie was settled out of court, after the presiding judge had warned the band it would be a “serious risk” if it proceeded.
But a clerk of court confirmed to Rolling Stone yesterday (Jan. 6) that the procedure had been called off, to be replaced by a hearing in March to confirm the unreleased details of the settlement.
Mathews had filed a six-point complaint, stating that he’d been forced to work in close proximity with Gene Simmons during COVID exposure rules.
He also claimed he’d been fired after manager Doc McGhee decided he’d leaked information to the press regarding the band’s health security measures. Those measures were the subject of speculation after another crewman, Fran Stueber, died of Covid mid-tour in 2021. Mathews had denied he was one of those who’d spoken to reporters.
Judge Told Kiss Fired Roadie Could Win ‘Big Pot of Money’
At the preliminary hearing, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Armen Tamzarian had said: “If this goes to trial, it would not surprise me if Mr. Mathews got nothing. It would not surprise me if he made a big pot of money.”
He continued: “This is the kind of case any rational person would settle. There’s a big risk this could swing dramatically one way or the other.”
The judge added that if Mathews managed to win, “there are deep, deep pockets there, and there could be a big result.” He told lawyers on both sides: “You’re both overconfident in your positions.”
Kiss Solo Albums Ranked Worst to Best
Counting down solo albums released by various members of Kiss.
The childhood home of Malcolm and Angus Young, where they laid plans to form AC/DC in 1973, was demolished last month by a company which said it hadn’t known the location’s history.
The brothers and their family moved into 4 Burleigh Street in Burwood, Sydney, in 1965. Its cultural importance meant it was added to the New South Wales National Trust’s Register of Historic Houses in 2013 – although the register has no legal status and doesn’t offer any protection.
Burwood Square Pty Ltd bulldozed the building at some point in December as part of a multi-million dollar residential development, resulting in a furious backlash from fans.
“[P]ossibly the most iconic residence in the entire country has been demolished,” the operator of nearby music store Utopia Records said on Instagram. “One of my very favorite things to do was take visiting mates and musicians from around the world to this spot for the ultimate AC/DC photo op.”
The post continued: “One house out of an entire continent of houses couldn’t be protected as an Australian Rock Museum or a tourist destination for the gazillion Acca fans worldwide? Graceland keeps Memphis alive … this spot could have kept money coming into Burwood for decades to come.
“No one from the Local Council, State or Federal Governments stepped in? Even the bloke in charge that is apparently some huge Aussie rock fan?”
The company’s general manager, Leon Kmita, vowed to make amends by building a bar or cafe in the location, using material salvaged from the rubble of the Youngs’ house.
Developers ‘Shocked’ to Realize They’d Demolished AC/DC House
“We regret that the previous long-term owner did not share this vital part of the property’s background with us,” Kmita said in a statement. “Learning about this connection after our plans were already underway has shocked us. We are genuinely sorry for this oversight.”
Adding that the entire team were experiencing “heartfelt regret,” he continued: “We now recognize how deeply this location resonates with the AC/DC community and fans worldwide.
“While we cannot change the past, we are dedicated to celebrating this significant part of their story. To the global fanbase of AC/DC, please know that we hear you, appreciate your deep admiration for this legendary band, and are devoted to making this right.”
