Friday’s Rock News

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TOADIES TEXAS PECAN COFFEE!

(FROM WWW.THETOADIES.COM)

Toadies Texas Pecan coffee is available at Kirtland Records online store.

 

Nirvana Last Ever Show

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WATCH FOOTAGE OF NIRVANA’S LAST EVER SHOW

On March 1 1994, Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear played live with Nirvana for the very last time.

In Kerrang! issue 475 on January 1, 1994 we made a raft of predictions about the year ahead in rock and metal. Amongst the seemingly endless hordes of exciting new releases scheduled for the following 12 months, we still found ourselves most excited about Nirvana’s planned visit to the UK in April, set to be the Seattle superstars’ first live shows on our shores since their legendary appearance at Reading Festival in 1992. Little did we know then that when the band were warming up for that leg of the tour with some dates in mainland Europe, a show in Munich, Germany on March 1 would be the last time anyone anywhere would see them.

Looking back through the issues of Kerrang! in the weeks and months leading up to Kurt Cobain’s tragic passing in April makes for chilling reading. At the end of January, Nirvana were confirmed as headliners for that summer’sLollapalooza Festival. Of the UK shows they had lined up ahead of that performance, the band were scheduled to play in Manchester G-Mex (March 27), Glasgow SECC (28), Aston Villa Leisure Centre (30 and 31), Cardiff International Arena (April 1) and four nights at Brixton Academy in London (April 3, 4, 5 and 6). Those last two shows in the capital were added after the initial dates sold-out in under two hours, as the band rode a wave of momentum off the back of their mammoth success with third album, In Utero, which had entered the UK album charts at No.1.

Writing about the band’s show in Le Zenith, Paris on February 14 (supported by The Buzzcocks!) K! writer Chris Watts described a “safe and conventional performance” by the headliners and bemoaned a collective who looked worryingly “bored and tame”, the first signs that all was not well in the camp.

Two weeks later, Nirvana would perform onstage together for the last time. The show took place at Terminal Einz, a 3,050-capacity hanger in Munich, Germany. Opening the gig with a charmingly ramshackle cover of The Cars’ 1978 hit My Best Friend’s Girl, followed swiftly by raucous versions of Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, Drain You and Breed.

It didn’t all go to plan, however. As the band played Come As You Are, the venue’s power cut out, prompting bassist Krist Novoselic to quip, “We’re not playing the Munich Enormodome tonight. Because our careers are on the wane. We’re on the way out. Grunge is dead. Nirvana’s over. …Our next record’s going to be a hip-hop record!”

The final track of the 23-song set was a wrenching run-through of Heart-Shaped Box, in which it’s clear that Kurt was pushing through the pain barrier to finish the show – a result of his recent bronchitis and laryngitis issues. The last words uttered onstage were a simple, ‘Well, thank you.’

Kurt’s struggles with heroin addiction were well documented and exacerbated by his ongoing health problems, leading to doctor’s orders to cancel the remainder of the band’s European tour. Three days later in Rome while convalescing from his ailments, the frontman slipped into an overdose-induced coma. In a little over a month, on April 5 Kurt Cobain’s body was discovered at his home in Lake Washington Boulevard, the star believed to have died by suicide three days before at the age of 27.

Nirvana’s setlist from their final show

My Best Friend’s Girl (The Cars cover – Moving In Stereo by The Cars was sung by Krist and Kurt as an outro)
Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
Drain You
Breed
Serve The Servants
Come As You Are (aborted due to power failure and played again)
Dumb
In Bloom
About A Girl
Lithium
Pennyroyal Tea School
Polly (Acoustic)
Very Ape
Lounge Act
Rape Me
Territorial Pissings

Encore

The Man Who Sold The World (David Bowie cover)
All Apologies
On A Plain
Blew
Heart-Shaped Box

ATHANASIA Feat. Former FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH Guitarist CALEB BINGHAM: ‘Nightmare Sound’ Video

ATHANASIA Feat. Former FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH Guitarist CALEB BINGHAM: 'Nightmare Sound' Video

Los Angeles-based metal trio ATHANASIA — featuring former members of FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH, SEBASTIAN BACH and MURDERDOLLS — will release a full-length album,“The Order Of The Silver Compass”, on March 15 via Seeing Red Records and Rock of Angels Records.

The official Matt Zane-directed music video for the song “Nightmare Sound” can be seen below.

One might not expect the former members of such bands to be playing extreme metal, butATHANASIA is more than your average power trio. Questioning the moral fabric of man amidst complex narratives tackling power, corruption and greed, the band’s unique amalgamation of melodic metal is enough to satisfy the desires of casual listeners and extreme metal fans alike.

Recorded and produced by Bingham at Nightmare Sound, “The Order Of The Silver Compass” embodies all things heavy, dark and stylish. The album’s eight tracks were mixed byChris Collier (PRONG, FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, METAL CHURCH) at Mission:Black Studiosand mastered by Joe Bozzi (MASTODON, L.A. GUNS) at Bernie Grundman Mastering, whileJorden Haley (DÅÅTH, DEICIDE, MINDLESS SELF INDULGENCE) handled the cover art and design.

ATHANASIA was founded in California by guitarist Caleb Bingham under the band’s original name ASCENSION. As a result of passing the band’s early demos around L.A.’s Sunset Strip, the young guitarist landed a gig with newly formed FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH in 2005. Upon being released from the group in 2007, Bingham continued to write under the nameASCENSION, recording several more unreleased demos (and one EP) at the behest of veteranRoadrunner Records A&R Monte Conner. Largely due to the label’s merger with WMG, negotiations broke down and the band was once again shelved while Bingham played with Swedish death metal act ZONARIA from 2010 to 2014. After parting ways with ZONARIA due to a leg injury sustained while playing with the group, Bingham decided to put all his efforts back into what he worked so hard to create.

Joined by bassist Brandon Miller and veteran drummer Jason West (MURDERDOLLS,WEDNESDAY 13, SEBASTIAN BACH), Bingham resurrected the project under a new moniker,ATHANASIA, diligently recording its first full-length release over the span of several years.

“I’m very proud to announce that after years of literal blood, sweat, tears and countless hours of hard work, ATHANASIA‘s debut LP, ‘The Order Of The Silver Compass’, is finally about to see the light of day,” says Bingham. “Blast it in the car and you’ll notice your gas pedal hitting the floor in a matter of seconds!”

ATHANASIA is:

Caleb Bingham – guitar, vocals
Brandon Miller – bass, vocals
Jason West – drums

“The Order Of The Silver Compass” track listing:

01. Read Between The Lines
02. Spoils Of War
03. The Order Of The Silver Compass
04. Cyclops Lord (My Will Is Done)
05. The Bohemian
06. Mechanized Assault
07. Nightmare Sound
08. White Horse

AWOLNATION has new wind in its ‘Sail’

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Aaron Bruno doesn’t care if all you want to do is talk about his band’s 2012 breakout hit “Sail.” The frontman for AWOLNATION doesn’t care much for comparisons, but he’ll gladly take them. And he doesn’t even care about genres. All he really wants to do is make his music.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Bruno soaked up all the music he could, attending concerts featuring the good, the bad and the weird. He was there for all of it.

The influence of that mix can be heard in AWOLNATION’s discography, which has leaned on electronic-instrumentation rock and splashes of hip-hop beats.

For its most recent album, “Here Come the Runts,” AWOLNATION opted for a more organic approach and traditional instrumentation with guitar, bass and drums.

Ahead of the band’s appearance at Saturday’s Bud Light Roast at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, Bruno discussed the band’s new sound, his mega hit “Sail” and why he doesn’t mind being ripped off.

 

Q: “Here Comes the Runts” kind of feels like it’s split into two chapters, was that intentional?

A: I suppose, with any record, at least with what I grew up listening to, there was a side A and a side B, thematically, in a lot of ways, and emotionally. It’s safe to say after “A Little Luck and a Couple of Dogs,” it’s kind of the second half of the film.

 

Q: The last song on the album had a bit of an Electric Light Orchestra sound to it before it really picks up. Were you listening to or being influenced by ELO on this album?

A: It’s really not about what I was listening to at the time, it’s about everything I’ve listened to up to the writing of the songs. But what I was listening to at the time of recording was a lot of country music, ’70s, mid-’90s country music, but that doesn’t necessarily affected how the record ended up sounding.

It’s cool that you mentioned ELO because that’s one of my favorite bands of all time. It has one of, if not my favorite producer of all time, Jeff Lynne. Jeff Lynne and Rick Rubin are the two favorite producers of mine. Whatever I’ve had a love affair with, as far as music goes, that’s going to make its way into every record, one way or another, even if it’s a small percentage, it’s gonna happen. But, yeah, ELO is a great starting point for sure, they’re great. It’s a dream of mine to be mentioned in the same sentence, so thank you.

 

Q: Another band that I’ve heard people compare you to is Nine Inch Nails, is that also an influence on you?

A: No, no, it’s not an influence. I did like NIN and Trent Reznor a lot. I think that was just an easy comparison to make because in the beginning I was combining electronic music and really everything from hip-hop grooves, and no one had really done that recognizably, necessarily, since Trent Reznor. So since people don’t know what else to say, they just started to say that. You know, in the first record, there was some industrial sound and there was some hip-hop beats and some more aggressive singing, so people didn’t know what to say. Journalists didn’t know how to go about it or how to put me in a box, so they said, “Oh, it’s sort of like NIN,” because Trent Reznor also didn’t have any sort of borders around him, he kind of did what he wanted to do. But I’ll take the comparison because I’ve got nothing but respect for NIN.

 

Q: So the song that a lot of people identify with the band is “Sail.” How do you feel that song affected how you go about making music? Did it push you away from that type of sound?

A: I never think about it in those terms, I just try to write the best songs that I can, you know stuff that I like, something that I would want to hear, that I can hang my hat on and be proud of years from now. “Sail” being the record-breaking, influential song that it was, it’s really a miracle and kind of accidental. So I always keep my head down. I’m never trying to write the next “Sail.”

We’ve had several top 5 songs since then, but “Sail” just did so miraculously. I didn’t follow it up by trying to chase that sound, cause that would be impossible to do. It was just such an honest moment in my life, it’s just like a journal entry. It’s very authentic. I still love the song, and I still love playing it. I don’t mind talking about it or anything like that. It’s really helped a lot of people through some pretty hard times in life, so it’s a gift for sure and one of the easiest songs I ever wrote. I’m trying to make the best music I can, but I’m never trying to follow that; it’d be impossible.

I’ll let all the other bands that have ripped me off, I’ll let all of them try to follow it up. I turn on the radio and I hear a lot of songs that sound very similar, whether it’s the chord progression or the cadence. I realize that I was a real big influence on the sound of pop culture and I’ll take it. And why not? When something is that successful, if you put your business hat on, of course people are gonna try to follow that because everybody wants to make money, so the people who have ripped it off, it’s obviously not come from their hearts, like it originally did for me. They’re just trying to make money and they have, in some cases, so it is what it is.

 

Q: How does it feel for you to come down to Houston?

A: Well, I have experience being devastated when the Dodgers lost the World Series to the Astros last year. That was heavy. … But Houston’s always been great, great people all across Texas.

And obviously, a little while ago you guys had a really rough run in with Mother Nature and, really, my heart goes out to people that are still affected by that event. We actually played a show shortly after Harvey and you know, Houston has really strong people and people really seem to be optimistic and positive to rebuild in the aftermath.

As far as music goes, The Geto Boys were one of my favorite groups growing up. So any time we get in to Houston, I usually play some Geto Boys to get in the mood.

carlos.deloera@chron.com

More Information

Bud Light Roast featuring AWOLNATION

With Theory of a Deadman, Blue October, Robert DeLong, Hold on Hollywood

When: 3:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Lake Robbins, The Woodlands

Details: $15-$65; woodlandscenter.org