Today, RevolverMag.com presents the premiere of Five Finger Death Punch’s new lyric video for “Lift Me Up” (featuring Rob Halford of Judas Priest). Be sure to tell us what you think in the comments!
“Lift Me Up” (featuring Rob Halford of Judas Priest) is currently the No. 1 rock single at iTunes USA and Canada. You can download it at iTunes right here.
5FDP’s Ivan Moody says: “First and foremost, just to work alongside an icon like Rob Halford, THE Metal God, was absolutely surreal. The song itself was originally written about overcoming everyday obstacles and less than perfect situations. Most of us weren’t born with a silver spoon in our mouth, but if life dealt you all the wrong cards, you still have to play. The song’s intent is to inspire; if you play that hand right you might just come out on top anyway.”
Five Finger Death Punch will release their fourth and fifth studio albums in two installments, with The Wrong Side of Heaven and The Righteous Side of Hell, Volume 1 hitting stores July 23 and Volume 2 scheduled for release in the fall.
For more about Five Finger Death Punch, visit their official website and Facebook page.
Click HERE to watch Metallica performing Judas Priest’s “Rapid Fire” with Rob Halford at the 2013 Revolver Golden Gods Awards!
To watch all the 2013 performances and awards, click here or go to GoldenGodsAwards.com.
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Today marks eight years since Pantera and Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell was killed onstage. Here, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford talks candidly about meeting Dimebag, working with him, and how he took the news when he heard about the shooting. A portion of the interview ran in Revolver’s “Fallen Heroes” issue, which is available for purchase right here.
REVOLVER When did you first meet Dimebag Darrell?
ROB HALFORD Priest was in Canada rehearsing for the Painkiller tour. I was doing an interview from the hotel room and I turned the telly on to
And I told Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing specifically after that, “I’ve seen this band. They’re absolutely fucking amazing and they are going to be huge. They are going to be huge!” And I said, “We should try to get him on the tour.” So, to cut a long story short, we brought them with us on the Priest Painkiller tour of Europe and nobody had a clue who they were. They had no distribution as far as I understood in Europe. So they went out blind, in front of Germans and French and whatever. I used to watch every show, and the first reaction fans gave them was, Who the hell is this? And it was like, Oh my fucking God, what’s going on in front of my eyes? They would just win an audience over in 30, 40 minutes. From playing fresh, new music that nobody had heard before. The communication was instant with that band. So there it was. So by the time we’d done the European tour, and they went back to the States, Cowboys was shooting up the charts. And that was it, they were off and running. They were just launched into the stratosphere on that first release.
You mentioned his British Steel shirt. He used to wear a razorblade necklace in honor of your album. Did he ever tell you about that?
Yeah, and he had it tattooed on his leg as well. He loved that record. It meant everything to him. It was one that he said was very inspiring to him as a guitar player and as a musician in general. That’s great, isn’t it?
Shortly after you toured with them, you worked with him on the song “Light Comes Out of Black,” for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack. How did that come together?
I was away from Priest. Sony were working on the soundtrack. They wanted Sony artists and asked me to write a song. I hadn’t written as a solo writer for years and years and years. But it’s one of those things where you don’t know what you can do until you put your nose to the grindstone. So I wrote “Light Comes Out of Black,” and I was stuck. And I got Dime’s number, and I called him up and I said, “Here’s the deal.” And he goes, “Let’s do it. Just get in the plane and come down to Dallas.” So that’s what I did the next day, went to the studio, laid the track down in a very short space of time. Phil wandered by, said “Oh, how’s it going, ‘metal god’?” So I told him and he said, “You got a spot for me?” I said, “Pfft, here’s the mic.” So Phil joins me on the back end of the song. And it turned out really god. It’s amazing to think that that’s a Pantera song really. It is Pantera with me on lead vocals, and Phil obviously doing the outro sections. But it’s a Pantera song really.
Did you play guitar on a demo and send it to him originally?
Yeah, I put my very primitive…I just don’t have the mental capacity to do what guitar players do.
What was exceptional about working with Dime?
His interpretation of the song. His phrasing, the feel was unique. Let’s face it. You look at rock and roll. You’ve got Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, you’ve got Eddie Van Halen. I’m just going through a list off the top of my head, you obviously got Dimebag. Obviously, Glenn , Adrian Smith and Dave Murray, all of these significant lead heavy-metal, hard-rock guitar players. And Dimebag…I’m mentioning them now because they’re very influential. All of those guitar players have been very influential to not only music but specifically to other guitar players around the world. And there’s no doubt that Dimebag’s impression was just monumental. If you took Dimebag out of the equation, metal would sound totally different right now, without a doubt it would, definitely.
What was the last time you talked to Dime?
I’m pretty certain it was Aladdin in Las Vegas on the Halford Resurrection tour with Iron Maiden. It might have happened maybe once, twice after that.
Where were you when you heard Dime had died?
I was in my house in Phoenix. I think somebody texted me or somebody called me, and my legs went from underneath me. I just hit the deck. This can’t be real. I put the TV on, and it was actually on CNN. I just sat there in disbelief. And then I balled like a baby, like you should do. I just cried my eyes out. And you just don’t know what to do. You’re full of confusion, you’re full of anger, you want to fucking smash things to pieces. You want to play the music; you want to call Phil. All of these things are going on in your head. And obviously, Pat was singing for Damageplan at the time. I wanted to call Pat. Do you call, do you not call? What the fuck’s going on? Just a bazillion things are going around your head at the same time. But it was just terrible. It’s just seems inconceivable. I don’t think, now, that’s never happened to anybody else, has it? I mean, we lost people through self-induced things, like booze and drugs. We’ve lost people like Ronnie with the kinds of illnesses. But to be fucking brutally murdered is just insane. Absolutely insane. John Lennon is the only other person, isn’t it? They’re both in good company, as far as what they mean and how they’ve lived on in our lives. How Dimebag will always live on. That’s the only bit of solace you’ve got. It’s that the work that they made will live forever. That’s the blessing.
Dimebag photos by Lorinda Sullivan
]]>Speaking to The Quietus, Halford commented, “Well, it’s very naughty of [futureusgalleryGAP]. They shouldn’t have done that and we’re investigating that right now because that’s intellectual-property rights. We were never asked, neither was our label. Having said that, pushing the legal side of it to one side, it’s brilliant, isn’t it? To think that something 30-odd years later is still striking enough to be a fashion moment.”
Let’s also take this moment to recognize the photographers, credited below each photo, who risk life and lens to go in the pit and capture the mayhem as it happens. For those about to shoot, we salute you!
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Metallica have released a four-song EP, titled Beyond Magnetic, today. The four previously unreleased tracks were recorded during sessions for their 2008 Death Magnetic album, but didn’t make the cut at the time. The EP will be available exclusively on iTunes for one week only.
“During the Death Magnetic album sessions in 2007 and 2008, we originally recorded 14 songs,” said the band in a statement. “When it came time to pick the songs for the final album, we decided on 10 songs that you’ve all come to know over the last three years. Some of you may have heard bits and pieces of those other songs on ‘Mission Metallica’ (remember ‘Mission Metallica’?!) or heard rumors about them during the recording process, and wondered, What ever happened to those other four songs???.
“We kept them in the vault and decided to pull them just for this special celebration, so here are the four leftover tracks from the Death Magnetic sessions. They are ROUGH mixes, unfinished to their original degree of mixing from March ’08. These four songs were released as gift to our closest fans, the members of our Fan Club, to enjoy. Now they’re being made available to you.”
The thrash legends played one of the tracks each night during their 30th anniversary celebration concerts at the Fillmore in San Francisco last week. The band were joined for the performances by a host of special guests, including former members Dave Mustaine and Jason Newsted, Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford, Jerry Cantrell, Glenn Danzig, and Kid Rock. The shows closed with drummer Lars Ulrich telling fans to anticipate news in mid-January, 2012, about something special happening next June.
Beyond Magnetic Track List:
1. “Hate Train”
2. “Just A Bullet Away”
3. “Hell And Back”
4. “Rebel Of Babylon”
If there’s one thing more exciting than seeing your favorite bands live, it’s seeing your favorite bands playing live together at the same time. Although the hard-rock and metal history books include more than a few eye-popping collaborations over the genres’ four-decade histories, 2011 boasts some of the most exciting. Below is a list of what got the Revolver editors’ jaws dropping this year. Let us know what jams you think were the best in the comments section.
The Big Four
Although Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax jammed together for the first time last year, it was in 2011 they made it their calling card. Beginning with their performance of Diamond Head’s “Am I Evil?” in April to their jams in Europe (which also featured members of Diamond Head, Exodus, and Sepultura), to their U.S. final performance of Motörhead’s “Overkill” in New York City, these bands have made history at each performance.
The Metal Masters
The night before the Big Four concert in New York City, members of Megadeth and Anthrax along with drummer Mike Portnoy gathered to give instrument tips to fans and musicians a like. What the audience didn’t expect was the closing jam, which featured Anthrax’s Scott Ian, Frank Bello, and Charlie Benante, Megadeth’s David Ellefson, Mike Portnoy, and special guests Kerry King of Slayer and…Phil Anselmo of Pantera and Down fame, who sang “Fucking Hostile” and “A New Level.”
Temple of the Dog
For Pearl Jam’s 20th Anniversary concert, Chris Cornell joined the band for a four-song set of the songs he recorded with the nascent band under the name Temple of the Dog in 2011.
The Revolver Golden Gods Awards
We may be tooting our own horns here, but even we were floored by the collaborations of Avenged Sevenfold with Vinnie Paul on Pantera’s “Mouth for War” and Duff McKagan on GN’R’s “It’s So Easy,” as well as Duff, Corey Taylor, and Steve Jones’ take on Judas Priest’s “Electric Eye,” Volbeat’s take on Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Wanna Be With You,” and Asking Alexandria and Sebastian Bach’s electrifying take on “Youth Gone Wild.”
Guns N’ Roses and Zakk Wylde’s “Whole Lotta Rosie”
At a recent Indiana gig, Guns N’ Roses invited Black Label Society frontman Zakk Wylde to join them on guitar for an electrifying rendition of AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Love.”
Mötley Crüe with Cee-Lo
Cee-Lo Green the Soul Machine, who had a massive hit last year with “Fuck You,” joined the Sunset Strip’s Kings of “Fuck You”—Mötley Crüe—at an L.A. gig in June for a rendition of his hit and the Crüe’s “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away).”
Drop in the Bucket Charity Event
At the Drop in the Bucket Charity Event, Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor played a set highlighted by all of his famous friends. Together they played some of hard rock and metal’s greatest hits. Two highlights were Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”—performed by Taylor, Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro, Rob Zombie guitarist John 5, and Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo—and AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”—played by Taylor, Anthrax’s Scott Ian, John 5, and Rob Zombie bassist Piggy D and drummer Ginger Fish. For more from that night, click here.
Metallica 30th Anniversary
Nobody has ever thrown an anniversary party quite like Metallica’s 30th Anniversary shows, which wrapped up on December 10 in San Francisco. Over the course of four nights, they played with artists who influenced them, their peers, and past members of the band. These include everyone from Diamond Head to Mercyful Fate, Marianne Faithfull to Rob Halford, Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell to Kid Rock, and, most impressive, original guitarists Dave Mustaine and Lloyd Grant alongside original bassist Ron McGovney for the first song the band ever recorded, “Hit the Lights.”
For the finale of Metallica’s four-night 30th Anniversary concert extravaganza on Saturday night at San Francisco’s the Fillmore, the legendary thrash band reunited onstage with the musicians of its earliest lineups for a rendition of the song “Hit the Lights.” Guitarist Dave Mustaine, who’s made his name with Megadeth in this years since his departure from Metallica, joined Metallica with original bassist Ron McGovney and guitarist Lloyd Grant, who played on the first recording of the song as it appeared on the Metal Massacre compilation in 1982. You can see fan-filmed video of the performance below.
Over the course of the shows, which were held for members of the band’s fan club, Metallica paid tribute to their now-deceased bassist Cliff Burton and joined up with musicians whom they have played with over the years, including Jason Newsted, Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler, Kid Rock, Lou Reed, Marianne Faithfull, Glenn Danzig, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell, and present and former members of Mercyful Fate, Diamond Head, Armored Saint, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Down, Faith No More, the Anti-Nowhere League, Death Angel, Apocalyptica, Saxon, and more. The band filmed each of the shows, so look for a release of these shows in some form in the future.
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