Alien Ant Farm’s original line-up–Dryden Mitchell (lead vocals), Mike Cosgrove (drums), Terry Corso (guitar), Tye Zamora (bass)–will start to work on their fourth album in November and is looking to release it Spring 2012 on Executive Music Group label via Fontana/Universal. It’ll be their first release since 2006′s Up in the Attic, which spawned the hit single “Forgive And Forget,” and the first record with the original lineup since 2003.
“We are pretty excited for the year to come,” declares guitarist Terry Corso. “We just came off of a three-month tour in the U.S. that made us realize that with the original lineup back together, we have fire and hunger again. That being said, we can hardly wait to hit the studio and start putting a new record together. We’ve been writing on and off for the past year and have a really good pile of new material. Basically the goal is to write another pile. With a fresh new collection, we hope to get our core fans excited, as well as turn some brand new listeners on to the Alien Ant Farm sound and show the world we have a lot more to offer than the average rock band.”
This week they’re traveling to the U.K. to participate in the “Michael Forever Tribute” on October 8 along with Black Eyed Peas, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aquilera, Ne-Yo, Smokey Robinson, and others. The band will be performing two Michael Jackson songs, including their smash hit No. 1 single, a remake of “Smooth Criminal.”
“Being a part of the Michael Jackson tribute is an incredible honor for Alien Ant Farm,” proclaims singer Dryden Mitchell. “I love the idea that we will be the only rock band there. Michael just won’t stop providing huge platforms for us to get noticed! My first concert was Michael Jackson on his Victory Tour at Dodger Stadium when I was 10 years old. Fast forward to all that he has done for my life. Simply amazing when I take a step back and try to take it all in. I love the man! Incredible to say the least.”
Alien Ant Farm recently wrapped up their 60-date U.S. “ANTicipation Tour,” which had the band performing in front of capacity crowds at every stop. It was their first headlining tour—on their own new bus–since the fatal 2002 bus crash that killed the band’s driver and left singer Dryden Mitchell with a broken vertebrae. Lots more touring is already on tap for 2012. As Dryden proclaims, “In 2012, if them pesky Mayans are wrong…a bus load of touring to support a brand new stellar record. Naked hugs for all who come out.”
The Southern California band started their music career in 2001 with ANThology, which was released on Papa Roach’s New Noize imprint on DreamWorks Records. Thanks to the No. 1 single, “Smooth Criminal,” the album reached double-Platinum status. 2003’s truANT, produced by Stone Temple Pilots’ Dean and Robert DeLeo, cracked the Top 25 and “Glow” hit No. 1 on charts outside the U.S. despite the imminent folding of its record label. The band has toured all over the world with Linkin Park, Metallica, 311, and Papa Roach, and has sold over 3.5 million records worldwide.
More details about the new album and forthcoming tour plans will be announced in the coming months. Of what to expect, Mitchell says, “In 2012, if them pesky Mayans are wrong…a bus load of touring to support a brand new stellar record. Naked hugs for all who come out.”
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Rob Zombie guitarist John 5 has recorded a cover of the Michael Jackson classic “Beat It” for his upcoming solo album God Told Me To. The former Marilyn Manson axman’s instrumental version of the 1982 hit, that originally featured Eddie Van Halen, was released as as single earlier this week. After you’ve listened to a sample of it, here, come back and tell us what you think in our comments section.
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In our never-ending quest to provide you with the best music available, we present the Revolver Bootleg Series. Every month we’ll feature new, rare, and often exclusive music.
This installment comes from industrial duo ohGr, who feature Skinny Puppy’s vocalist Nivek Ogre. They release unDeveloped (Metropolis), their fourth studio album, on May 10, but they share one song off the album, “Crash,” here. Ogre fills us in below.
REVOLVER What’s “Crash” about?
OHGR “Crash” gives feeling to the continued disconnect between sustainability and that unflinching need to define oneself through possessions, whether devoured, inhabited in, or continually coveted. How many angels, dancing on a pin’s head, popping various economic bubbles while pricking the skin of Michael Jackson, will be needed to allow the prince sleep? This star struggles with insomnia lost the plot. He was living on his own headlined fumes, now bankrupt, in a self-made world now barely livable. A masthead tied to an economic ghost ship created when many of life’s larger mechanisms began withdrawing, wasting away.
“Crash” is about the very idea of death panels. this abstract form of the inhumane mind bending of people, asserting socialized medicine somehow meant death panels. This horrendous portrait of doctors maliciously holding back treatments from any poor uneducated fool that allows for regulation of one of the most dirty of hippocratic industries. The blue healer in wolf’s clothing? Wouldn’t it be a truer statement that not having socialized medicine for the poor is the purest, most poignant, definition of death panels?
Michael Jackson, who I am sure had seen more corruption of wealth than most, seemed the body politic for a slipping point to which symbolized the beginning of the “Crash.” Who then holds the gun?
Which part did you come up with first?
The idea for the song did not spring from any mechanized nod to verse, bridge, chorus. The motivator in any piece of music comes from the roots of “What do you have to say?” and “How are you going to say it?” Everything else, more or less, falls into place.
ohGr tend to write from the point of supporting the vocal. This does not have to be the starting point however and, as in this case, “Crash” seemed to evolve in a linear mode based on the concept inspired by the emergency call and the healthcare debate at the time. And of course the “blanket!”
Was this an easy song to write?
The whole album was fairly easy to write. There are, as with the first three songs on the album, those rare moments of creativity seemingly flowing with an ease that gives one pause to the gratuitous moment. A tapping into the rich conscious source that exists just outside the 4G broadband driven cellular low wave world we exist in. It’s in those moments that, for me, there is a connection to the very act of trapping, as if in amber through recording, a moment in time. It’s very special.
What sort of feedback have you gotten on this song so far?
As I write this it’s still over two weeks to release so it’s a bit premature to ask for the ejaculation ratings. I like it. ohGr likes it. We no longer possess it. unDeveloped is in the eye of the beholder to feed the back on. Enjoy the trip down.
Photo: Dan Santoni
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