MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine was interviewed by Spin Magazine recently about his 10 most prized possessions. He selected a wierd and wonderful selection of items from a crossbow to a miniature horse – check out the video interview below and click here to read the full piece on Spin’s website.

Keep up to date with all things MEGADETH and find out how to pick up a copy of the band’s new album, TH1RT3EN, by pointing your mouse in this direction.

MEGADETH guitarist Chris Broderick and bassist David Ellefson held a series of six guitar clinics across the US this autumn, and the events were sponsored by Jackson Guitars. On the clinic tour they demonstrated their equipment and techniques, answered questions from fans and signed autographs. Footage from the clinic held on the 18th of October at The Music Zoo in Roslyn, NY has popped up online and you can now watch that video below:

Corey Beaulieu from TRIVIUM was interviewed by alternative hottie, Danielle Darkko, while the group was on tour in North America with DREAM THEATER and in the clip below, he talks about the tour with DREAM THEATER and being in the presence of guitar greats such as John Petrucci as well as the writing process for the TRIVIUM‘s latest album In Waves. He also mentions his father’s TRIVIUM tattoo – cool pops!

Not had a chance to see REVOKER live yet? Missed them when you did? Determined to spend as much time touring as possible, the never road-weary band are hell bent on getting to as many UK towns as possible in the next couple of months, notching up an impressive 32 confirmed dates to come already.

Already announced for extensive dates with Chimaira in March, the lads will now finish up 2011 with a few shows with friends The Blackout, and kick off the new year with a slew of headline dates. Plenty of rock fans moan that bands never come to play their town…REVOKER are trying to change that!

See REVOKER supporting Welsh compadres THE BLACKOUT at:

Sat Dec 17 – DUBLIN Academy
Sun Dec 18 – BELFAST Mandela Hall
Wed Dec 28 – COVENTRY Kasbah
Thu Dec 29 – OXFORD Academy
Fri Dec 30 – CARDIFF Great Hall

And then headlining at:

Sat Jan 14 – SWANSEA Koopas (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Koopas-Swansea/233887259996016)
Thu Jan 19 – READING The Face Bar (http://thefacebar.moonfruit.com/)
Fri Jan 20 – MILTON KEYNES Craufurd Arms (http://www.thecraufurdarms.com/)
Sat Jan 21 – WATFORD The Railway Club
Thu Jan 26 – BRISTOL The Fleece (http://www.thefleece.co.uk/)
Fri Jan 27 – TRURO B-Side
Sat Jan 28 – SOUTHAMPTON Joiners (http://www.joinerslive.co.uk/)
Thu Feb 2 – ANDOVER The George (http://www.myspace.com/thegeorgevenueuk)
Fri Feb 3 – PLYMOUTH White Rabbit
Sat Feb 4 – TUNBRIDGE WELLS Forum (http://www.twforum.co.uk/)

Before rippin’ up towns with CHIMAIRA at:

Thu 8 Mar – GLASGOW King Tuts
Fri 9 Mar – DUNDEE Fat Sams
Sat 10 Mar – ABERDEEN Tunnels
Sun 11 Mar – NEWCASTLE Academy 2
Mon 12 Mar – YORK The Duchess
Tue 13 Mar – LEEDS Cockpit
Thu 15 Mar – NORTHAMPTON Roadmender
Sat 17 Mar – WOLVERHAMPTON Slade Rooms
Sun 18 Mar – NOTTINGHAM Rescue Rooms
Mon 19 Mar – NORWICH Waterfront
Tue 20 Mar – COLCHESTER Arts Centre
Thu 22 Mar – OXFORD Academy 2
Fri 23 Mar – EXETER Lemon Grove
Sat 24 Mar – CARDIFF Great Hall 2
Sun 25 Mar – SOUTHAMPTON Talking Heads
Mon 26 Mar – MARGATE Westcoast Bar
Tue 27 Mar – LONDON O2 Islington Academy

REVOKER’s debut album ‘Revenge For The Ruthless’ is out now. Watch the video for latest single ‘The Great Pretender’ at: http://www.roadrunnerrecords.co.uk/page/News?news_id=115557… and learn a bit more about their ‘quietest and most sensible’ band member, drummer Jack.

BLACK STONE CHERRY have announced a headline tour in March 2012, which will see the band playing 14 shows over the period of 17 days. Phew!!

Enhanced Early Entry Packages for the band’s upcoming dates in 2012 are now available – invest

Max Cavalera has spoken at length to Metal Hammer in their brand-new issue! Max discusses some of the themes and concepts of the new Soulfly album, as well as give some exclusive song titles and updates on the special guests set to appear! Click this link to order your copy of the magazine.

Bassist Mike Kroeger is the rock-solid foundation of NICKELBACK. Whether he’s setting up a supple groove on a song like “If Today Was Your Last Day” or putting the hammer down on an explosive hard rock track like the band’s latest single, “Bottoms Up”, his support for brother and frontman Chad Kroeger and lead guitarist Ryan Peake, not to mention his ability to sync up with drummer Daniel Adair, is crucial to the band’s sound.

Roadrunner US got Mike on the phone to talk about the group’s songwriting methods, their anthemic new hit “When We Stand Together”, what fans can expect from the upcoming tour and more.

Your last record, Dark Horse, was produced by Mutt Lange, who is a somewhat notorious perfectionist. The new album, Here and Now, is self-produced; was that a reaction to working with him?

Oh, no, it wasn’t a reaction. Actually, we had been looking for Mutt for a long time before we got to take him in the studio and work with us. He’s a hard guy to find, as it turns out, so it was kinda tough to get him. But then we did the thing with him, and it was an awesome experience. We learned a lot from him. We also learned that a lot of the stuff we had kinda lifted from listening to his records—it was like book and assignment work, and then we finally got to apply the practical work. So doing a record with him was just sort of a reaffirmation of what we thought we knew about him. You know, for the most part. There’s obviously still some mysterious crap this guy pulls off that we still don’t know what it is. But that was a tremendous experience and a very steep learning curve, working with someone with that much game time under his belt, you know? The guy has just been around. So it was great. But then when it came time to do the new record, we didn’t have the conversation and say “Hey, let’s not use Mutt, let’s make sure we don’t do that again.” It was more like, let’s just do it the way we did it before. Because for the most part, with the exception of a couple of early records, we’ve done everything ourselves. We’ve done three records by ourselves [Silver Side Up, The Long Road and All the Right Reasons], and it just kinda felt like we should go back to basics again. So we did that, and it went pretty good, actually. We had what I would consider the most stress-free recording environment to date.

What’s your creative process generally? Do you guys walk into the studio with nothing, do people bring songs in, how does it work?

Chad’s always got something going, and so sometimes he comes in with a verse and chorus, or an intro idea, or a vocal idea. Sometimes he’s got everything. He also occasionally will get together with his songwriting pals in Nashville and they’ll sit down and knock out a couple of hits for Faith Hill or whatever, and he’ll squirrel one back occasionally, which is what the case is with “Lullaby.” He wrote that with those guys, and the writing was essentially done. There were some teeny, tiny little tweaks that we made to it, but for the most part it was completed and we just had to play it. Which was awesome, because “Lullaby” is one of my favorite songs on the record. So it comes in all different kinds of ways. Sometimes it’s just “Hey, I’ve got this riff,” and then you put drums on the riff and [Chad] sits down and does his voodoo thing and comes up with a vocal melody and some lyrics, and then we’re off to the races. And after that, more voodoo ensues, and we have a chorus and a chorus melody, we write a bridge, and off we go. But it all primarily starts with Chad.

There are 11 songs on the record; how many did you record that didn’t make it?

We are never gonna get caught with a vault full of songs. We go in with the express attitude of writing and recording as many songs as we need to fulfill our contractual obligation, and that’s where we stop. The very idea of bonus tracks or whatever you call ’em, B-sides, is kind of offensive to an artist, to think they’re getting asked to put throwaway songs on—you’re kind of condemning these songs as filler from the get-go, and we’re not really into that. We want to record everything with a like amount of emphasis, a like amount of effort, and if it doesn’t make the cut to be recorded by Nickelback, we don’t record it.

When you’re making a new record, do you ever revisit stuff that you were thinking about during the previous record and didn’t use?

All the time. All the time. Sometimes a riff that we try and try and try to make it happen, or a part we try and try and try to make happen, it just can’t be. Sometimes it’s two records later, sometimes it’s three records later, but it’ll inevitably always come up. They’re always recorded as rough demos, so they’re out there all the time, swimming around, and when we get ready to sit down and make a record, we’ll go through all of ’em, and some of ’em are very, very old. And sometimes they may work, and sometimes it’s just not their time to be put in. So we put ’em on the shelf and bring some better ideas in.

“When We Stand Together” isn’t the first song you guys have written with socially conscious lyrics, but it’s still not the kind of song people necessarily identify with Nickelback. So tell me a little about how that song came together.

Well, you know, it’s kind of a weird sort of situation. We were sitting down in a business meeting with our management and we were in a different room in Chad’s house, away from the studio, talking. And there was a situation somewhere near where we’re from, in Alberta, in Canada. Basically, two-thirds of a town burned down. And all these people lost their homes, there was no place to buy anything, they’re really remote, and basically they were in real trouble. It was the end of the town as anybody knew it. Everybody’s job literally went up in smoke. So the community and the surrounding area came together, then the province got on board, and then the nation got on board, and they started accepting donations from all over the place, just to get help. And we were talking at that point about doing something with them, and I think it kinda started some gears turning in Chad’s head about trying to help people out and do things for the good of a lot of people, and he just kinda decided that the meeting for him was over, so he jumped up and said, “I gotta get back to work in the studio, you guys can hash out the rest of the details,” ’cause it was just tedium, the sort of thing where we know what he’s going to say anyway. So he went back to the studio, and we came over there an hour later and basically the verse and chorus of “When We Stand Together” was written, and there was a demo done. It was really crazy. And it all came out of that sort of spirit of philanthropy, and trying to do what’s right to help people.

What’s interesting also is the sound of the song. You guys have sold millions of records and have a really devoted fan base, and I’m wondering if there’s a sense in the back of your heads that you have to give people what they want, that you can’t get too experimental or play around the way, say, Coldplay changes their sound from album to album.

Right. And yeah, I think there is some—I have an appreciation of that logic, in that you’ve gotten these people by doing what you do, so don’t go and change everything. Because when you do that, it’s risky. It’s a risky proposition, that you may alienate all your fans for a little while, until they listen to the record a few times and then they get it and come on board. That’s a risk we’re not really interested in taking on a broad level. We’ll reach outside of the box occasionally, and try some things that maybe we haven’t tried before. There’s a few of those on this record, for sure. But there’s also the standard things that we need to play, the straight-up rock songs about fairly light subject matter. We know that’s what people are looking for. Our people are looking for. And that’s what we wanna give ’em.

So how many Here and Now songs are going immediately into the live set, and are there older songs you’ve retired that fans still want to hear?

Jeez, we’ve retired a whole bunch of songs that the fans still want to hear, and that sucks, but we’re getting to the point now where we’ll be well into the curfew if we play ’em all. So we gotta cut ’em. We’re gonna put in “When We Stand Together” and “Bottoms Up” immediately; “This Means War” will be going in shortly as well, hopefully right off the bat, in my opinion, but we’ll see how that goes. What’s getting retired, jeez, I don’t know. We haven’t even talked about it—we know what we’re gonna play, but we don’t know what we’re gonna kick out yet. It’s gonna suck to have to do that.

NICKELBACK‘s new album ‘When We Stand Together’ was released yesterday and you can pick up a copy by clicking this link.

TRIVIUM will soon be heading out to the UK for the Defenders Of The Faith III tour and in anticipation of their arrival, Metal Hammer are running TRIVIUM Tuesday and Thursday, whereby they will be revealing an exclusive track-by-track guide for TRIVIUM‘s awesome new album ‘In Waves’, courtesy of Corey and Paolo from the band. Point your mouse in this direction to watch part 2 of TRIVIUM’s track by track on Metal Hammer’s website.

And in case you missed it, TRIVIUM feature in Metal Hammer’s special edition out this month – find out more and pick up a copy by clicking this link.

You may have spotted the recent story about a group of people in Detroit starting a petition to have NICKELBACK replaced to perform during the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving game….WELL, the band have hit back with their response, which we htink you guys will enjoy. Check out the video on ‘Funny Or Die’ to see what the band had to say about the petition and why everyone in Detroit apparently hates them – CLICK HERE to watch the video.

Click here to pick up a copy of the band’s new album, ‘Here and Now’.

WITHIN TEMPTATION have spoken to Metal Hammer about their plans for 2012, including their huge upcoming movie project! To find out what Sharon had to say about one of the most eagerly-anticipated releases of 2012, order the new issue now by clicking here.