So we’ve hit that time of week again where you’re either still plodding away at work or just getting home from school. Either way, it’s a drag and chances are, you’re probably bored shitless.

That’s where we come in.

Here’s five finds from the Internet (thanks, YouTube) to brighten up your day.

Dave Grohl gettin’ slizzard in Holland

Is there anything Dave Grohl can’t do? If you answered, ‘develop a sitcom’, then you’d be all kinds of wrong, as word on the street is that the ex-Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman is teaming up with comedian and ex-Simpsons writer Dana Gould to develop a new comedy series for the cable network FX. While you’re holding out for that, here’s a clip of Dave back in his Nirvana days “gettin’ slizzard” in Holland, because drinking alcohol is totally what you do in Holland.

Epic Stage Fall Fail

So this guy exists. You know anything with the word ‘fail’ in the title is going to be good. Say what you will about Fred Durst, but he’s certainly had an impact on lonely white-guy rappers. Dare you guys to mimic this crowd at Soundwave when he and the Bizkit take to our stages this month.

Limp Bizkit Live at the 2001 Big Day Out – “Break Stuff”

Okay, now we’ve got Fred Durst on the brain. Everyone’s favourite nu-metallers are coming here and we’re just a little too keen. Let’s all watch this clip and pretend it’s 2001 again. Here’s hoping they sell red caps at the merch tent. Seriously.

Enter Shikari – Arguing With Thermometers

Here’s the most recent vid from the guys you can blame for the bunch of bands pushing and shoving to get on the electronicore bandwagon. Key difference? These Brits make it work. Check out Rou’s take on Ron Burgandy and, accept nothing short of complete reversal. Dig deep! \m/

Falling in Reverse – I’m Not a Vampire

Mothers better lock your doors and hide your daughters. Much to the delight of the female staff here at BLUNT, Ronnie Radke is apparently single. To make you feel a little better about the fact that he and his killer new band, Falling in Reverse, didn’t make the Soundwave bill, here’s the vid for “I’m Not a Vampire” featuring bimbos, rehab and of course, a shirtless Ronnie. Enjoy.

That’s all for this week! Next week, more cats.

Jahred Gomes of (həd) p.e. talks conspiracy theories and... making contact with aliens?

Having chatted to the (həd) p.e. frontman Jahred Gomes for a good half an hour, it’s no wonder that talk quickly turned from what the singer has been working on lately to the 2012 doomsday prediction and whether or not there’s life on other planets. By Emily Swanson.

What have you been up to today?
Today I’m just in the studio cleaning up and going through my music as I’m getting ready to put out a five-song reggae demo album that’s just available online, so I’m trying to get that ready to go. It’s just a solo thing with me doing vocals over some reggae loops and stuff. It’s really demo stuff for this reggae band I’m starting. I’m also getting ready because (həd) p.e. is gonna start doing a new album, so I’m getting all that situated in my brain.

When you first started the band, what were you hoping to get out of music? Did you want to be a big success?
I have to say I wasn’t really hoping for that. I’m really a late bloomer, so in those years right before I did my first record deal, I wasn’t very focused on too much of anything, you know, except for getting high and stuff like that. My brain at that level wasn’t focused on goals or anything, but I’ll tell you what, when the band left the corporate world and entered the indie world, that was when things started to get focused in for me, which was odd because that was when I started to study esoteric subjects like secret societies and shadow governments – don’t even get me started – it was a coincidence that when I started studying those things, I myself as an individual started to get clear and focused on my own life and it shows in the music really. The lyrics for sure are just a reflection of my life and what I’m into at the time when I’m recording any given album. Anybody who’s followed me, like in the ’90s, it was more kind of silly party music with some social commentary, but then now, there’s a purpose behind it and there’s a message there.

I actually read that you’ve been touted as: “the voice for a movement that empowers youth” and you’re “revealing the seedy unberbelly of our current political global climate.” Has it ever been daunting having that level of influence over people?
Well no, because I don’t analyse that part of it. The influence over people, that doesn’t occupy my thought process for more than just a flash of a nanosecond. I’m more just sticking to my guns and doing what I think is important for me to do as a human being on the planet at this moment, more than I’m thinking about influencing others. But then again, I am putting out my message with the hope that people will be empowered, if you wanna call that influencing others, that’s all fine too. It’s all for the positive though. As long as I’m always doing things for the betterment of humanity and mother earth, then I know I can’t go wrong as far as my ethics are concerned. A lot of bands are really great that have come out of the corporate scene, like System of a Down, Rage Against The Machine, Neil Young, Bob Marley, these are important bands that made it through the corporate world and did well, but for me, my experience there was lame because they wanted me to write singles and this and that and I lost sight of who I was as an artist and maybe I never knew who I was at that point, but now that I’ve found who I am as an artist, if rock radio happens to love one of our songs, that is so great and a blessing for us, but I guess I don’t have the talent for writing songs that rock radio’s gonna love. I’ll leave that to bands like Nickelback.

What’s been inspiring you in the world to write lately? Are there things happening at the moment that you’re really passionate about?
Oh yeah, you know what? I’m never at a loss. I’m never trying to rehash the same subjects, although there’s common threads through the albums, but I’m not one of these people either that gets stuck in a rut, like I’m never afraid to change my mind, and the albums reflect that as well. Right now, there’s no more victim mentality, as in ‘Oh no, the government sucks, look what they’re doing to ruin my life’, it’s more of an empowerment mentality of how we’re just running our own lives. That’s what’s getting me going right now. I see a very positive future for the planet, so I’m still in that spirit warrior mentality of using my music to uplift the youth and get them feeling empowered and obviously for those who haven’t lifted the vale I still wanna plant those seeds for those kids who are waiting to hear the right words in order to have something fire off in their brains that makes them start reading and researching.

You’re heading to Australia soon, and it’s pretty much becoming a yearly pilgrimage for you guys. For those that haven’t actually experienced (həd) p.e. live, what can they expect from your shows?
The greatest thing about the (həd) p.e. shows are the people that go, because, you know, if we were just playing there in an empty place, it would just suck. The people that go have this cool vibration and the place just explodes because the Australian people that go to (həd) p.e. shows are just ready to go. Even though it’s high energy, it’s not that aggravated, it’s a positive, intense energy. We’re gonna do a new album in 2012 and then we’re not gonna do one for a while because there’s just so much material, but we’re just gonna try and switch it up at the shows because there’s just so much that never gets played.

Speaking of 2012, do you have any superstitions about the Mayan calendar and the world supposedly ending at the tail end of this year?
You know, I study all of that, and there’s no ‘world ending’. The Mayans themselves never said that, I don’t know who came up with that, maybe some hollywood guy, but the Mayans themselves, they never said that. People think there aren’t any Mayan people left, well there’s thousands of Mayans left and many of the elders who still hold the wisdom are still around. It’s the end of an age, but that just means the beginning of another age. As far as doomsday forecasts, I don’t have any. What there is, is wondering whether the changes that are coming will happen quickly or gradually and I wouldn’t bet on either one. I’m more into changes happening gradually ‘cos that’s what I see in nature, like the seasons changing gradually, night slowly turning into day. I’m not one to think that all of a sudden the poles will suddenly shift and catastrophes will happen, I’m the, ‘it’s already happening and been happening for a 100 years’ type of guy, and I feel it’ll continue to happen for another hundred years. I do know that the world’s getting better and I do know in my heart that we’re heading for a Golden Age, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take for everyone to really see it. Just like I know that we’re coming to a point where we’re gonna start interacting with people from other civilisations on other planets, I know that’s gonna happen, but I don’t know if it’s gonna happen in five or ten years.

There’s gotta be other intelligent life out there. With the universe so big, there can’t not be.
Even if you think about it philosophically, you come to that very same conclusion that there can’t not be, and then if you take it a step further and do any research at all, it’s just everywhere slapping you in the face that there’s been interaction between this planet and other types of entities from other planets. For someone who wants to study this, it’s right there for you. I’m waiting for the public exchange between this planet and another one, it’s undeniable.

You’ve been doing so much over the past two decades, but what would you say you’re most proud of in your career?
You know what, I’m really just proud of finding myself in the early part of this century and I’m really proud of doing the indie thing and putting out positive messages and just getting this small group of like-minded people who enjoy the message behind (həd) p.e. I’m proud of doing something for the positive, not just being successful at music like so many people are, but using music as a platform for putting out positive messages. It’s nice to feel like you’re doing the very thing you were born to do.

(həd) p.e. are in the country this week! You can catch one of their shows with Jeffrey Nothing (Mushroomhead) and Recoil V.O.R at the following dates and venues:

Wednesday Feb 1st – Amplifier, Perth*
Thursday Feb 2nd – The HiFi, Brisbane
Friday Feb 3rd – Manning Bar, Sydney
Saturday Feb 4th – Prince Bandroom, Melbourne

* Recoil not appearing

When the going gets tough, the tough up and move to just down the road from Disneyland, or at least the same can be said for The Red Paintings frontman, Trash McSweeney. When you’re chatting to the vocalist of the avant-garde five-piece, no topic is off limits. McSweeney fires off at the flailing Australian music industry, talks about how the production of the band’s long-awaited LP, The Revolution is Never Coming is bigger than Ben Hur and how you can even expect to see astronaut-suit-wearing Geisha featured on the album’s cover. By Emily Swanson.

You’ve been touring abroad for a while, are you guys looking forward to coming back to Australia?
Yeah, I wasn’t gonna come back for a while as the record’s actually coming out in America before Australia, but there was a lot of talk of us coming back last year, but it didn’t end up happening as there’s a lot of things happening in the US because I live in Los Angeles, which is extremely fun when you’ve got Disneyland down the road. Basically, we put a post on our Facebook saying that if over a thousand people liked it, we’d come back over the summer and I personally didn’t think it was gonna happen, but we got over a thousand likes and we were obligated to do it. It worked out pretty well as we’ve got a new music video to release, so we’re excited to come back. It’ll be great.

I was gonna ask about that, about how you posted it on Facebook. You’ve actually earned quite a following from your social networking sites. Was that a conscious decision? Or did it just sort of pan out that way.
Not really, the Internet is obviously the revolution of the 21st century, it’s just the way people communicate and socialise, which can be a negative, but I think we’ve gotten most of our fans through touring with bands like the Dresden Dolls and we did a tour with Saul Williams and whatnot, but that’s where we’ve gotten the biggest fan base. Word of mouth. Somebody sees a band and they really like them, they become obsessed with them and try and support them, so then they tell their friends and before you know it their friends are coming to your gigs. We do what we can. We run a lot of competitions and give the fans things and try to be as creative as possible.

With up and moving to LA, do you think it’s kind of a sign that the Australian music industry is struggling if even our own acts have to relocate to the US to really make things happen?
The US is definitely struggling itself, it’s just that there are different things to struggle with. I think for a band like The Red Paintings, it’s very creative and more left of centre; we were doing quite well with the underground scene, but we were never going to get to the place that I wanted the band to get to, so I made the decision to move to Los Angeles. What can I say about the Australian music industry. I guess the ARIAS said it all. Julia Gillard having to go out and give Kylie Minogue her award… I think it was a publicity stunt that was really kind of lame to be honest. I think you should stick to your politics. What I think is interesting and what I’ve come to realise more and more as I’m in this industry game, and I do call the music industry a game ‘cos it really is, is that it’s all about business. And when you’re bringing politics into it, Australia only really has the ARIAS and only really has Triple J when it comes to more alternative bands I guess, and now they’re bringing politics and business together and putting it all on the same platform and that’s really scary. It ultimately means that the one commodity, money, controls it all and that’s another reason why I wanted to get out of there. There’s just a bigger platform in the US for a band like us than there is in Australia and it’s probably better for us to keep the fans excited and come back once a year and be releasing new music and new videos and still keep doing exciting things and making sure that we still remember that we’re from Australia, well I definitely am. Seeing the Occupy Rallies and how negative things are, you’ve gotta be as positive as possible. I guess be aggressive in your music and try and create change through ideas and messages, but try and give hope as well. People want to be inspired and if you inspire people, they can do amazing things.

You sound quite inspired yourself. With the music industry being the way it is, what made you want to take the gamble and pursue being in a band?
I like turning negatives into positives, I find that a huge challenge, and I knew creating a band like The Red Paintings was going to be a real challenge and sometimes I wish I didn’t create it ‘cos it’s been pretty hard, I mean I work full time on this band, I haven’t stopped doing it. I started the band because I truly believe in art and music being a unit and I could see colours in music at a young age and so I started creating an idea, a project called The Red Paintings that was based on art and music and people painting and collaborating and the band being a form of therapy and helping people. The other thing to note is that we debate a lot of animal rights stuff, so we have people talking at our shows and discussing what we’re doing to animals on the planet and whether we should be eating them and why people eat them, and there’s a lot of fans that have created a community through The Red Paintings and have vegan/vegetarian communities where they’re helping each other with their diets and sending recipes and it’s a really cool thing that the band’s been able to create. It’s probably been over a thousand people that have gone vegetarian/vegan because of the band’s discussion, which I think is really good. It’s not about being religiously like a Jehovah’s Witness and brainwashing people, it’s just having a little think about what’s happening outside of your own space and realising there’s a lot more than meets the eye. What’s the point of just getting up there and playing music and taking money home and then buying a house? I’m not doing this to buy a house so to speak, I don’t live like that. Whatever money we make goes back into the band to do bigger and more educational stage shows or art performances through music. That’s The Red Paintings.

I actually read that the idea for starting the band, it all kind of came after you had quite a violent seizure about ten years ago now… What actually happened there?
In a nutshell, I was in a supermarket and I went into the meat section. I saw the minced meat and it started going really wobbly, and I was like, ‘Am I hallucinating? I haven’t done LSD or anything’ and then all of a sudden my eyes went to the back of my head and I can vividly remember that while I was in the seizure, it felt like I was falling really quickly down a tunnel and then I remember waking up in an ambulance. I think light came through and I woke up and the paramedics were asking me my name and my address and I couldn’t remember anything, so I had amnesia for at least half an hour, which is really odd. And the best way I can explain it, it was like there were bits of a puzzle, let’s say there were numbers, and they were really blurry but they were spacing around in my head and I could just make out what they were and they were getting more and more into focus and getting closer and closer to my eyes inside my head and I remember realising that my memory was coming back. I remember whilst that was happening, I was hearing music and I was starting to see it as colour. It was like someone had a paintbrush and they were painting the front of my brain. It was really bright and really obvious to me, and it just kind of clicked. I can now literally feel and see music notation as colour. I remember I came out of the hospital and my mum picked me up after a day or two and I remember just going up to my room, shutting my door, and I started doing all of these pictures all over my room and then I started looking at actual artworks. At the time, I was obsessed with Brett Whiteley and another artist called Mark Ryden, and I just started to look at their artworks and the brush strokes and the shades of green, and I started to find compositions and chord structures on guitar and violin that related to what I was seeing in my head. It’s really how the whole band and the whole idea started forming.

You’re releasing your long awaited LP, ‘The Revolution is Never Coming’, quite soon. You’ve spent five years working on it, so it’s been a long time coming. Is it safe to assume that you’re a bit of a perfectionist then?
[Laughs] I wouldn’t say I’m a perfectionist as I probably got 90% of what I wanted, but I guess what I can say is that The Red Paintings have never released an album. Here’s a band that’s been around for a decade working really hard and touring overseas and Australia, and we never gave our fans a thirteen track or a twelve track record. I feel like with our previous EPs I never really got to the level that I wanted to get to in production because we were either always getting rushed or we never had money. We’ve never really had record label money; no one’s ever really pumped the band cash, so to speak. And so I had this quest where I wanted to make the biggest most epic record of the songs that I’ve been thinking about my entire life right up ‘til today sort of thing.

What was the recording process like?
Well, I planned it all out on paper, I spent six months pre-producing it, and then I got an engineer and started raising funds for the record. In the end we raised about $160,000, just with bands donating $40 and some bands donating a bit more. We also allowed the fans to come into the studio as well, so we had a 45-piece orchestra, the Brisbane Philharmonic, and what we realised was that a lot of people are attracted to The Red Paintings because of the string section, and you’ve got string players out there who are really intrigued by the band, so we brought them on board so that people who had donated money could come in and actually play on the outside of the orchestra. We’d already done the score, so there was a 260-page score, so they just had to sit there and play it and we conducted them. In the end, it’s the best record I’ve ever made and it was a huge adventure and I don’t think that too many bands, especially in Australia, will work with a 45-piece string section. We ended up with 180 tracks and then we had to try and mix it. When you’re working with engineers like I was in Australia, who never ever make records this big, they don’t know how to compress things properly and all of this amazing colour that’s coming out of the instruments is getting neglected, so after six months I had this record in my hands and I was like, ‘Dude, this is not the production of Muse or Radiohead or these amazing bands that I love and it needs to be that good’. Red Paintings fans can’t wait this long and then get this record and go ‘Oh, the production kinda sucks’. I put the record in my back pocket so to speak and I took a plane to Canada and LA and started having meetings and five years later, I had to remix it eight times to get it right and but I finished it a few months ago I probably had my first big sleep and started dreaming again for the first time in five years. It’s really taken a massive gap out of my life. I gave everything to this record and I’ve lost friends from it and had family problems, I will never own a house in my life just through finances through the record and all the problems we’ve had, but I did it. I stuck to my guns. I said that I would create this record, I said it would be huge and I said it would have everything that I promised it would have and I’ve finally done it.

What actually is the message of the record? I know it’s titled The Revolution is Never Coming; what are you trying to convey with this album?
That’s probably the idea, that people would question it and kind of go, there’s revolutions all the time, or is there? I won’t go into it too much because I think when the record comes out, I’ll let people listen to all of the songs and then they can kind of come up with their own conclusion as to whether that title’s right for it, but in a nutshell, it’s a massive contradiction, because I believe there is going to be a revolution and I think there’s gonna be one last revolution for all humanity and it’s gonna change everything. It’s hard to describe, but the album cover really sums up everything as well. I can tell you that it involves Japanese geishas in astronaut suits. With preparing for the tour, we’ve been working so hard to get the new songs to sound as big as they do on the record, and so I’ve had to bring in two drummers, so we have the American drummer and the Australian drummer, and two drum kits playing this tour. I’ve never done that before. We have ten-fifteen minute songs that are like epic journeys, and to be able to have two drum kits and to be able to play off each one, it just really creates such a different vibe. It’s very exciting for me. It actually brings the songs back to life, because if you think about it, we’ve been working on these songs for five years and I’ve been hearing my voice over and over again and having to remix it, sometimes I can’t stand myself. I just want to rip my vocal chords out and put new vocal chords in. I’m just so over hearing it, but I’ve been able to reinvent everything and make it really exciting even for myself, which is a real challenge at times.

When you’re playing these longer songs live, is it particularly taxing or draining to do that in a live setting?
It’s emotional, and I’m a pretty strong character. I’ve been doing this for a while and when we tour we’ll do three or four weeks and play every night, so you kind of get yourself emotionally and mentally prepared before you go on tour. I can tell you on three big tours that we’ve done, I collapsed basically at each of the last shows. I didn’t realise that I’d been holding myself up and I’ve been put in hospital twice. I’ve had four seizures whilst touring and doing stuff for this band, so I think I do, I think I get emotionally distraught and I put so much into it, that my body holds out for me going, ‘Alright, you’ve got another gig, keep going’ and then at the end, my body just shuts down and myself and the band won’t talk for maybe four weeks until I come to again and then we start back up again. If you come to a Red Paintings show you’ll see that we just give everything. Most bands do, everybody’s trying to give the best that they can, but this band is a little more unique in the sense that you’ve got these painters and these people doing things in real time and reflecting their energies and creating this kind of diary with paint. I think it’s really awesome. I love it so much.

I read that music labels in both the US and the UK, they’re showing a lot of interest in the LP, but you seem quite determined to release it independently. Is there any specific reason behind taking this route?
There is, because I have my own ideas on how music should be marketed and I don’t wanna go down the norm and do it how everybody else is doing it, because I see a record lasting maybe two to four weeks on radio and then it’s gone. People have such a short attention span. I want to be able to control every aspect of this record and everything that it does, so until the record label sits down with me, and they give me a win-win situation, and they understand everything that I wanna do visually and agree with it and we do it, then I’ll just do everything on my own.

If you haven’t already, you can catch The Red Paintings art and music extravaganza at a venue near you:

The Black Paintings Tour

Wed Jan 11th – Factory Theatre, Sydney
Thu Jan 12th – Tuggeranong Alliance, Canberra (AA)
Fri Jan 13th – The HiFi, Melbourne
Sat Jan 14th – Fowlers Live, Adelaide (AA)
Thu Jan 19th – The Bakery, Perth
Fri Jan 20th – Railway Express, Darwin

In the midst of Christmas feasts and a few sneaky New Year’s beverages, the new issue of BLUNT went on sale! Check out part one of our Summer Festival Guide with Parkway Drive, Frenzal Rhomb, The Getaway Plan, The Amity Affliction and other show-stoppers gracing the stages of this year’s Big Day Out. Stay tuned for the next issue where we hit you up with part two of our guide featuring the not-so-friendly faces of the bands on the 2012 Soundwave lineup.

Filling the pages of Blunt this month we’ve got:

- Tonight Alive show America how the pop punk kids do it Down Under.
- Fireworks: See what mischief the US lads got up to in Japan with BLUNT’s editor along for the ride.
- Enter Shikari show us that they aren’t here to make friends.
- Nightwish are back with another slab of grandiose noise.
- Lamb Of God unveil their next exercise in auditory terror.
- Summer Festival Guide: Get a load of BLUNT’s must-sees for this year’s Big Day Out.

Plus Break Even, Heroes For Hire, Animals As Leaders, Northlane, Toxic Avenger, Mike Patton, a live poster of Fooey’s frontman Dave Grohl and all the usual BLUNT good bits!

Hit up your newsagents to get your hands on these wicked posters and more:

• Death
• Classic ’90s Soundgarden
• Slipknot legendary Iowa 10th Anniversary poster
• Henry Rollins
• Cradle Of Filth
• Children Of Bodom
• Cavelera Conspiracy

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What better way to reward all of your support during 2011 than a request-heavy issue? We tallied up the votes and we were stoked to see such interest in Aussie up-and-comers The Bride, Dangerous!, I Exist, and Northlane – who had so many votes they scored a double poster!

Plus these juicy posters and more:

• Man Overboard
• Silverstein
• Sleeping With Sirens
• New look Gallows
• Classic Foo Fighters
• The Devil Wears Prada
• You Me At Six

Texan post-rock four-piece Explosions in the Sky have been churning out ear-shattering instrumentals for the past twelve years, packing all the brunt of three guitarists and none of the ego of a vocalist. Their “cathartic mini-symphonies” have proved for impassioned live shows – intensity in ten cities – and they’re bringing it all to Australia’s East Coast kicking off this Thursday in Melbourne. BLUNT’s Emily Swanson chatted to guitarist and part-time bassist Michael James to get the scoop on what keeps the band going after twelve years, why they’d never consider a lineup change and what it’s like to score a film.

What have you been up to today?
We just got home from a three week trip. We’ve been in Europe on tour, so I just got home yesterday and I have been doing absolutely nothing. Just laundry, unpacking and kind of settling into my home. It’s been really nice.

Just as a bit of background info, you play guitar and bass for Explosions in the Sky. How did the four of you come to form the band?
Well, three of us are from a town in west Texas called Midland, where we all went to high school and kind of had friends that sort of new each other and around when I was probably 18 or so, I met Munaf [Rayani] and Mark [Smith] and we started playing in a band. Each of us then moved away from Midland for various reasons and then all kind of accidentally reconvened in Austin. Once we were all here, we started playing together again and we were looking for a drummer and Chris [Hrasky], who’s our drummer, he came from Chicago to go to graduate school down here in Texas and ended up not really liking it, so he dropped up and put up a flyer at a record store that said, “Wanted: sad, triumphant rock band” and we saw it and we thought it was a great flyer, so we gave him a call and started playing and that was twelve years ago.

It’s actually quite impressive; you’re twelve years in and you’ve still got all of your original members. Most other bands would have gone through three or four lineup changes by now.
[Laughs] Yeah, we all decided a long time ago that this was the band and that we couldn’t ever replace members or anything like that and as it’s gone on and been so long, at this point there’s no way we could replace a member. We’re so musically comfortable with each other that if any one person were to leave the band, the band would definitely be over.

Being together that long as a band and after six albums, how do you stop the fire from burning out? Do you still have that same passion you had when you first started?
Oh absolutely. Music is something that, for the four of us, we’ve always done. All of us have been playing in bands since we were in high school and it’s our whole lives it’s just one of those things that comforts all of us, and when you do something that long and you love it as much as we love it, I don’t think it ever really goes away. Sometimes it’s more exciting than others for sure, but we take those exciting periods and we channel them as best we can to try and write an album.

A lot of your earlier songs – even now – are up around the eight or nine minute mark, with one being thirteen minutes in length. Is it particularly taxing playing these songs live?
I don’t think so. I mean, the songs are pretty dynamic and they breathe a lot, so there’ll be parts that are very quiet and tranquil, and parts that are very upbeat or very loud, so it’s almost as though we’re playing a couple of different songs within one eight or ten minute period. I don’t think it would be a lot easier if the songs were shorter, we’d just have to play a lot more of them.

Your songs seem a lot deeper and as though there’s been more thought put into them than just your generic rock song. Where do you guys draw inspiration from for the music that you write?
It’s funny, in terms of musical inspiration, it’s kind of all over the place. All of us grew up listening to somewhat different things; Munaf is really into hip hop and R’n'B and old soul music, and Mark was much more into avant-garde, weird guitar stuff. Chris was into metal and I was into punk rock, so musically we sort of bring a lot of different perspectives, but in terms of inspiration, we can find it really anywhere. The beauty of life is that there’s so many things to be inspired by, just your friends and family, travelling and seeing the world, we take that kind of inspiration from every part of our lives and then, in terms of where the sound came from or the music came from, I don’t really know. I can’t point to one inspiration point. We take all those things from our lives and try to make songs out of it and this is what they sound like.

I actually read that your second album somehow ended up being linked to the 9/11 attacks. How did you, and how do you, respond to that sort of thing?
There’s certainly no way it was linked to the attacks. It came out like two weeks beforehand and the artwork of the album was just kind of creepy because it had an airplane on it and it said, “This Plane Will Crash Tomorrow”, and that was the sort of feel of the album, it was very warlike artwork, so people were just freaked out by the message that was in the album and the timing of that and the 9/11 attacks.

Even a couple months after the album’s release, you were detained in an Amsterdam airport… Were the two linked?
That was just because, on the album artwork, there’s the message that says “This Plane Will Crash Tomorrow”, which at the time, was just sort of in reference to our lives. We felt like we were sort of careening and that we had to take every day, and enjoy every day, because this whole plane could crash tomorrow, but that was written on Munaf’s guitar just as people write things on their guitars, so the airport saw that and pulled me aside because the guitar was checked in under my name. Luckily I just explained it to them and they were totally understanding about it.

You guys are actually one of the few successful bands that don’t have a lead singer. Do you feel as though you have more freedom being in an instrumental band? Or can it be limiting at times.
I don’t really find it limiting, but at the same time I think we have as much freedom as any musician or creative artist. You’re free to do exactly what you want and for us, we feel like we can do that without a vocalist, so I don’t think it’s limiting. We’re able to communicate with just music, and the things that can be communicated with music are infinite; limitless. You can talk about things with the abstract language of music that are very difficult to talk about with the written word or speaking or anything like that. So in a way, I guess it is kind of freeing that you’re not constrained by language as we understand it. Music can be much more abstract and in a way, it can be much more direct.

How would you then describe the dynamic of the band when you’re writing your material and being in the studio? Does one of you take the reins? Or do you all pitch ideas.
Oh yes, it’s very collaborative. There’s not one person that calls the shots or writes all the music or anything, it has to be a collaboration. That’s the way we like it. It can be very frustrating because sometimes it’s hard to get four people with very different opinions to agree on anything, but whenever it does work, those are the times when we feel like we’re at our best, so those are the songs that make it on the album. I think it’s a really good sort of filtering process. If all four of us like it, then it’s probably pretty good. It’s the best way that we know how to do it. I don’t think any of us would be nearly as satisfied if we were playing just something that somebody else wrote, or telling people what to play. The collaborative effort is really what we love about the band.

Your last release Take Care, Take Care, Take Care came out in April. Have you had the chance to begin working on new material over the year?
No, we haven’t. We’ve just been on tour so much since the record came out and we’re just not the kind of band that can write music on tour. We really have to be home and be able to focus one hundred percent on writing, so we haven’t at all.

In 2004, you actually wrote most of the soundtrack for Friday Night Lights. How did you approach that compared to when you’re writing your own studio albums?
Well, it’s entirely different. With the studio album, we’re writing songs that, even though they’re instrumental, you want them to be engaging and sort of challenging and you can’t just put it on and not think about it, it demands attention, but with a movie soundtrack or movie score, it has to be the complete opposite. It can’t demand your attention, it’s just there to sort of heighten the emotional impact of a scene and if you notice it, then it’s bad soundtrack music. It’s really not supposed to jump out at all. So that was a huge difference and it actually took a little bit of an adjustment period because we’d say, “Oh this should be more interesting”, or “This part should be more complex” or something, but at the end of the day, you have to do what serves the images that you’re playing over the best. So it’s a very different process.

Do you think writing for a film soundtrack is something that you’d want to do again?
We’re definitely interested in it, though it would have to be something we could really get excited about. It’d be hard to just do a movie that we didn’t really like or where we didn’t respect the artistic intention, so if the right thing were to come along, we’d love to.

You’re making your way down here in December, and while you have been here before, what can your Aussie fans expect from your live shows this time around?
Our shows are kind of the way that most people know about our band. We’ve been touring for about eleven years and every single time we play, we try to give absolutely everything that we have to the performance. That’s the kind of show that we like to see. We like to see people really leave it all on the stage and play with their hearts, so that’s what we try to do whenever we perform live as well.

Touring so extensively over the past decade, has it ever been hard to find a balance between being on the road and being with your family and friends at home?
I feel like we’re kind of trying to strike that balance now. In the past, we’ve toured what is fairly standard for a band, but is actually just way too much for any kind of a normal life. If you’re gone for six months out of the year, even when you’re home, a lot of it is recovering from all that travel. One of the guys has a couple of kids now, and a few of us are married, and we decided it was very important to strike that balance, so this time we’re not doing six or eight week tours at a time, we’ll do two and a half weeks and then come home for a little while and three weeks and come home for a month. I feel like we’re kind of striking that balance now and it can be difficult because opportunities will come up that you really want to take advantage of, but we don’t want to drive ourselves crazy touring too much.

Luckily, they’ve taken the opportunity to come to Australia for shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne this week.

Explosions In The Sky Tour Dates

Thursday December 8th – Forum Theatre, Melbourne

Sunday December 11th – The Metro, Sydney

Tuesday December 13th – The Hi Fi, Brisbane

By Emily Swanson.

Remote control camera shot of Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater

It seems that there has always been a divide between old skool progressive rock fans (i.e. ‘proggers’) like myself and new devotees to the genre. Progressive rock has morphed into progressive metal and probably the band with the most influence in this area has been the New York-based Dream Theater. A vast number of Dream Theater fans are musicians themselves and as such are in awe of the incredible dexterity each member has in playing their own instrument. I have been fortunate enough to have to traveled with the band during their two Australian tours over the past few years and I have interviewed four of the five members a number of times and have been allowed backstage to take some unique photos that have appeared in their tour programs and fanzines. I can tell you that despite their superstar status as both rock stars and maestros of their individual instruments, they are the most down-to-earth guys you’d ever want to meet.

The roots of progressive rock go back to the late sixties but it might be hard to believe that Dream Theater is in its 26th year and the fourth incarnation of its line up. After a change of vocalist in their fledgling years as well as two keyboard changes along the way, in September last year, drummer and band leader, Mike Portnoy announced his departure from the band. Portnoy was the lynch pin of Dream Theater as he not only helped with the band’s production and song-writing duties, but virtually ran every other aspect of the band’s publicity and feedback to their fans. Each member of this iconic band has done their own side projects but the king of them all has been Portnoy. He has been part of a number of other bands that he formed like Transatlantic, Liquid Tension Expirement and Office of Strategic Influence. He has also ridden the tribute bandwagon with tribute albums to The Beatles (Yellow Matter Custard), The Who (Amazing Journey), Led Zeppelin (Hammer of the Gods), and Rush (Cygnus and the Sea Monsters) to name a few. Portnoy also played with John Petrucci in John Satriani’s pet project G3 (three guitarists). In the lead up to his leaving Dream Theater in 2010, Portnoy played a staggering number of shows all over the world. After three Hail shows at the start of the year he did some 42 Dream Theater gigs, 35 Transatlantic and 72 dates with Avenged Sevenfold – that’s almost every second night from January to November. He also recorded an album with Avenged Sevenfold to cap off his huge year.

When the rest of the Dream Theater crew had finished their tour dates, their sights were set on recording their next album with the usual plan of going into the studio in the following January. The tour-then-record-then-tour cycle had been the norm for Dream Theater for some years, but with Portnoy still on the road with Avenged Sevenfold (and them being announced to tour Australia in early 2011), this was the last thing on Portnoy’s mind, so he asked them if they could take a break. They didn’t want to.

In light of this it was no surprise then, that the band released the following statement on September 8th of last year:

“To all of our loyal fans and friends: It is with profound sadness – regret – we announce that Mike Portnoy, our lifelong drummer and friend, has decided to leave Dream Theater. Mike’s stature in the band has meant the world to all of us professionally, musically, and personally over the years. There is no dispute: Mike has been a major force within this band.

While it is true that Mike is choosing to pursue other ventures and challenges, we can assure you that Dream Theater will continue to move forward with the same intensity – and in the same musical tradition – that you have all helped make so successful, and which is truly gratifying to us.

Fans and friends: File this episode under “Black Clouds and Silver Linings.” As planned, we begin recording our newest album in January 2011, and we’ll follow that with a full-on world tour. “The Spirit Carries On.”

All of us in Dream Theater wholeheartedly wish Mike the best on his musical journey. We have had a long and meaningful career together. It is our true hope that he finds all he is looking for, and that he achieves the happiness he deserves. He will be missed.”

Portnoy playing his monster drum kit during their first tour of Australia

Mike Portnoy released the following statement on his own website:

“I am about to write something I never imagined I’d ever write: After 25 years, I have decided to leave Dream Theater….the band I founded, led and truly loved for a quarter of a century. To many people this will come as a complete shock, and will also likely be misunderstood by some, but please believe me that it is not a hasty decision…it is something I have struggled with for the last year or so….

After having had such amazing experiences playing with Hail, Transatlantic and Avenged Sevenfold this past year, I have sadly come to the conclusion that I have recently had more fun and better personal relations with these other projects than I have for a while now in Dream Theater…

But I’ve come to the conclusion that the DT machine was starting to burn me out…and I really needed a break from the band in order to save my relationship with the other members and keep my DT spirit hungry and inspired. We have been on an endless write/record/tour cycle for almost 20 years now (of which I have overseen EVERY aspect without a break) and while a few months apart from each other here & there over the years has been much needed and helpful, I honestly hoped the band could simply agree with me to taking a bit of a “hiatus” to recharge our batteries and “save me from ourselves”…

Sadly, in discussing this with the guys, they determined they do not share my feelings and have decided to continue without me rather than take a breather…I even offered to do some occasional work throughout 2011 against my initial wishes, but it was not to be…”

To continue reading Portnoy’s official press release, head over here.

Amazingly, this wasn’t the first time that Mike Portnoy had given thought to leaving the band as was revealed in Rich Wilson’s 2007 book, Lifting Shadows. With the decision made, the most important question was “Who could replace him?” Most fans thought that he, of all the members of the band, was irreplaceable. The remaining four band mates decided to invite seven of the world’s best drummers to see who could fill the vacant spot. Amazingly this included an Australian, Virgil Donati, who is considered by many to be the finest double kick drummer in the world. Also invited were Marco Minnemann, Mike Mangini, Derek Roddy, Thomas Lang, Aquiles Priester and Peter Wildoer. I have been lucky enough to see all but the last in action and any one of those would have been up to the task, but in the end, the band shortlisted Marco Minnemann and Mike Mangini. Mangini brought incredible enthusiasm into the auditions, a factor that wasn’t lost on the rest of the band, and in the end his infectious grooves filled the missing link. Mangini had been a highly respected percussionist who had played with the likes of Annihilator, Extreme, and Godsmack to name a few. His day job at the time of his audition was as a faculty member at the Berklee College of Music in Boston – the very place that Dream Theater was formed.

Mike Mangini playing at a drum clinic in Sydney during his 2008 tour

If you want see a demonstration of what Mangini can do then this clip will give you an idea.

The entire process of auditioning and the subsequent recording of their eleventh studio album was done virtually in secret and while a number of the “inner fan club circle” had pointed the finger at Mangini, we had to wait for an official announcement. In April of this year, Mangini said: “I consider this opportunity the absolute pinnacle of my career. Playing with these guys…it’s the mountaintop. This is where I want to be”.

The new album A Dramatic Turn of Events was initially greeted with guarded enthusiasm but once the band started playing on their 2011 tour of America and Europe with Mr. Mangini being seen in the flesh, the guard was let down and his amazing dexterity on the drum kit won over the faithful. Facebook updates from Mangini and John Petrucci saw both repeatedly express their incredible joy of playing together.

Roadrunner Records has released this limited edition boxed set.

The album was released in four versions by Roadrunner Records – digital download, standard CD, Deluxe CD and companion DVD and as a limited edition boxed set. As can be seen here, the limited edition is made up of a double LP set of A Dramatic Turn Of Events (180-Gram vinyl in gatefold jacket), a Dream Theater branded custom turntable slip mat litho print of the album cover and a DVD of The Spirit Carries On – a 60-minute movie documenting Dream Theater’s drummer auditions all presented in a custom box. The limited edition costs US$106 plus nearly $40 in shipping – so for the best part of $150 it took nearly five weeks to get here, which really smarts when you pay that much cartage. Still, the wait was worth it. In addition to the normal version of the CD and DVD, there is another CD that is an instrumental version of the music.

No sooner had I received this package in the post, the band announced that the song “On the Backs of Angles” on their new platter has been short listed for a Grammy Award in the Hard Rock/Metal Performance category. While Mike Mangini has been nominated for Grammies in the past, this was a first for the band and certainly was the exclamation mark for a year of change and uncertainty as they explain below:

“2011 has been quite an amazing year for us. We watched ‘A DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS’—our eleventh studio album—enter the Top Ten in 14 countries around the world including the U.S. And now we land our first-ever Grammy nomination [for the song "On The Backs of Angels" in the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance category]. It’s the icing on the cake—we’re honored and thrilled, no doubt about it. It took us a while to receive this Grammy attention- and we’ve done it on our own terms musically, so it feels particularly sweet. What keeps you going as a musician is the love and support from the fans—they are always there for us on this crazy adventure. So we give them a big shout-out as we celebrate our Grammy nomination. See you all on the road…and let’s all keep dreaming big.”

By Jon Van Daal.

Blunt’s 2011 Yearbook Edition is on sale now with your handpicked band of the year The Amity Affliction on the cover! Along with the battered and bruised cover stars, we feature the results of the Blunt Readers’ Choice Awards and look back on the best and worst bits of 2011 with our 100 albums you had to hear this year and 20 up-and-comers to look forward to in 2012. For your listening pleasure, we’ve also included an I’d Rather Be Moshing CD featuring the likes of The Bride, Strangers and I Am Villain to keep in your player alllll summer long.

Lining the pages of Blunt this month we’ve got:

- Megadeth: The legendary redbearded stepchild of thash is back, and they mean business!
- KoЯn reinvent the nightmare with Skrillex.
- The Amity Affliction: Your band of the year reveal everything about their biggest year yet!
- The Devil Wears Prada unleash their heaviest collection of jams to date.
- You Me At Six and Heroes For Hire battle it out in the pop punk Ashes!
- Check out our list of the 100 albums you had to hear in 2011.
- Blunt get psychic on your arses and list 20 bands that will be killing it in 2012.

Plus Chimaira, The Bride, Misfits, Thrice, Off!, a Dream On, Dreamer poster and all the usual Blunt good bits!

Golly gee willikers, Batman! They’ve done it again. The good folks over at Soundwave have delivered a third killer selection of bands for their annual festival. Come February next year, these twelve acts will be sharing the stage alongside Slipknot, System Of A Down, Limp Bizkit, Marilyn Manson and more! For a full list of who’s already been announced, check out our previous post.
Third Line-up Announcement:
Bush
The Black Dahlia Murder
In Flames
In This Moment
Hyro Da Hero
These Kids Wear Crowns
Holy Grail
Black Tide
Fireworks
Kids In Glass Houses
Conditions
Cherri Bomb
Get on it! Melbourne has completely sold out and Ticketek have sold out of their allocation for Sydney and Brisbane with only limited tickets remaining via Oztix.
Soundwave Dates
Saturday 25th February – RNA Showgrounds – Brisbane – SOLD OUT
Sunday 26th February – Showground – Sydney
Friday 2nd March – Showgrounds – Melbourne – SOLD OUT
Saturday 3rd March – Bonython Park – Adelaide
Monday 5th March – Claremont Showgrounds – Perth