On 29 November 2011, ALTER BRIDGE performed to a sell-out crowd at London’s Wembley Arena. Recalling the most significant event in the band’s eight-year career, guitarist Mark Tremonti spoke to our friends at MusicRadar about the experience. In the exclusive interview he said, “Playing Wembley was a dream we were chasing but it was never something we were sure we could pull off. For us to headline the place and to sell it out… we still can’t believe it.” He went on to describe the actual night: “The first four or five songs of any set are usually pretty nerve-racking; those are the tunes where we’re finding our footing and trying to get comfortable. But Wembley was different. Even with all of the cameras and the fact that we were filming and we couldn’t make any mistakes, it was fun right from the start.”

We think it’s safe to say that anyone at that gig would testify to how awesome it was – the music and stage show combined were killer! Click here to read the full interview and to watch ‘Slip To the Void’ from ALTER BRIDGE’s show at Wembley last year on MusicRadar.

‘World Scum’ is the first video from SOULFLY‘s upcoming album ‘Enslaved‘ and it was premiered on Metal Hammer today. The video was conceptualized by Max Cavalera and video director Thomas Mignone (Mudvayne, SLIPKNOT, Avenged Sevenfold, Morbid Angel) and produced by DOOM Incorporated. Mignone filmed the video in and around Los Angeles and the video depicts various scenes of humanity’s perspectives of some of the world’s significant historical events including the attack on the Russian Czar by nihilists, the mass production of Zyklon B poisons, the Gulag prisons, the assassination of the president and a final showdown between Jesus and the Antichrist. See below for a list of the rest of the crew involved:

Cinematography – Peter Leininger
Special efx makeup – Maggie Hunter
Production design – Hanna Dryland
Digital compositing & post-production – Christopher Neil

Ladies and gents we present to you, ‘World Scum’:

Click here to pre-order your copy of ‘Enslaved’, out on the 12th of March.

Today has brought a whole load of awesome with the unveiling of SOULFLY’s new video for World Scum and now the announcement that KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, SHINEDOWN and OPETH have been confirmed to play Download Festival this year. BOOM! Check out the official poster below:

Click here to get your hand on tickerts for Download 2012.

SLASH, the iconic, Grammy-winning rock guitarist and songwriter, has revealed the cover artwork and album title for his second studio album APOCALYPTIC LOVE. Due out May 21 (in the UK), the new album features Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators and will be released SLASH’s own label DikHayd International and distributed through Roadrunner Records in Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

In the UK, the album will be released on May 21 in exclusive Classic Rock Fan Pack form – providing a unique collectable package containing the studio album with bonus tracks alongside a specially created magazine with unseen behind-the-scenes content put together by Classic Rock. The Fan Pack format will also come with free gifts including a pin badge & artwork poster and will be available to buy via more than 2000 retail outlets on newsstands nationally as well as the traditional high street and online music retailer. The Fan Pack is available for pre-order now at www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/slash-fan-pack. Roadrunner Records will simultaneously release the record digitally. The standard physical release of the Slash album will follow through Roadrunner Records on June 18 2012.

SLASH is currently in a Los Angeles studio putting the final touches on APOCALYPTIC LOVE. This week he announced his headlining U.S. tour will begin May 3 in Baltimore. A fan pre-sale is happening now on www.slashonline.com, the regular on-sale starts tomorrow, Friday, February 17. See the full itinerary below which more dates to be added.

APOCALYPTIC LOVE, will follow his 2010 debut album Slash (Also released in Fan Pack format and which has now sold over 100,000 copies in the UK alone) and his November 2011 first-ever live solo album, the two-CD/DVD set Made In Stoke 24/7/11. Notably, the Slash album debuted on the Billboard Top 200 chart at #3 (#1 on the Rock chart, #1 on the Independent chart, and #1 on the Hard Music chart). Digitally, the album also became the #1 overall digital album and hit #1 on iTunes in 13 countries. Internationally, the disc achieved Top 5 chart positions in over a dozen major territories, hitting #1 in both Japan and New Zealand.

On APOCALYPTIC LOVE, SLASH, along with and his bandmates Myles Kennedy (vocals), Brent Fitz (drums) and Todd Kerns (bass)–have teamed with producer Eric Valentine, who also produced the Slash disc. All the songs were written together by SLASH and Kennedy and cameras have been rolling throughout the entire making of the album. Check out exclusive behind-the-scenes footage airing weekly by clicking here.

SLASH is also now conmfirmed for the UK’s Download festival, which takes place on the weekend of the 8th to 10th June 2012. For more information and tickets please go to www.downloadfestival.co.uk.

Check out the artwork for the album below:

Doug Stanhope is set to release his tenth DVD ‘Before Turning the Gun on Himself‘ on Roadrunner Comedy, the sister label to Roadrunner Records, home to bands like Slipknot, Rush and Rob Zombie. The DVD will come with a bonus audio CD plus to coincide with the DVD release, he will also be hitting the road, doing an extensive UK tour throughout March and April. Stanhope’s act offers a potent double dose of the abrasive, brutally honest brand of standup comedy that has established him as a one-of-a-kind phenomenon.

Stanhope’s confrontational rants, whose live show was twice named Best Stand-Up Showof the year by Time Out New York, encompasses caustic social commentary, outlandish first-person narratives, graphic sex and perversion, sometimes within the same sentence. Fuelled by equal amounts of anger, outrage and alcohol, Stanhope rails against western civilisation’s slide into apathy and stupidity, always on the edge of implosion yet fully in control and never afraid to risk alienating his audiences.

In a field crowded with conformists and copycats, Stanhope is a genuinely original comic voice, albeit a gleefully vulgar one. “A visionary douchebag” says The Times. Raw, agitated and unflinching, he holds forth on all manner of major injustices and petty annoyances, excoriating himself as much as any of his other targets. But Stanhope’s venomous bile is matched by his passion and conviction, as well as a fierce intellect that gives his work a level of substance and subtlety that belies his snarling exterior. His comedy is as corrosive as it is hilarious, and his righteous self-immolation is exhilarating and life affirming in its cathartic honesty.

Stanhope completed a 25-date residency in at London’s Leicester Square Theatre in August 2011 to rave reviews and sold out shows. Metro lauded Stanhope with five stars saying, “Searing, relevant and brilliantly funny, there’s good reason why Stanhope is often cited as one of the greatest comedians on the planet… If fearless stand-up is your bag, you’d be a fool to miss him.” The comedian has also been compared to such fearless comic revolutionaries as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison and Bill Hicks. But his work makes it abundantly clear that he’s a complete original.

“Doug Stanhope might be the most important stand up working today” – Ricky Gervais

“If there’s a comedian out there who is as vital as Stanhope I haven’t heard him or her yet” – The Independent

Check out the full list of upcoming UK dates below:

6th March Albert Halls Bolton
7th March Waterside Theatre Aylesbury
8th March The Journal Tyne Theatre Newcastle
9th March