Author: Editorial Team

In a new chat with Jon Smith from 103.5 The Arrow, Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx laid out what’s coming with the band’s next big run: “The Return Of Carnival Of Sins.” The tour marks 20 years since the original “Carnival Of Sins” era (2005–2006) and lines up with the band’s 45th anniversary. The Live Nation-backed trek hits 33 cities, launches July 17, 2026, in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, at the Pavilion at Star Lake, and brings Extreme and Tesla along as support.

Sixx framed it as a return to one of the band’s biggest production swings, only now, the toys are better.

“Two of our biggest tours were the ‘Dr. Feelgood’ tour and the ‘Carnival Of Sins’ tour 20 years ago. And back then, [we had] probably 20 semi-trucks full of gear — hard goods, as they call ’em — [with] all kinds of stuff. And now, with the advancement of technology, we can just take the fans on a crazy journey. And I just think it’s gonna be the next level. ‘Cause the first one was a lot of people’s favorite tour, so we have a lot to live up to,” he said (via Blabbermouth).

Smith brought up the band’s reputation for escalation, “always upping the level of entertainment when it comes to the shows,”, and Sixx said that pressure is exactly where Mötley Crüe lives.

“It’s always our goal. It really is. It’s what we love doing. There’s a lot of stuff that we leaned into so heavy. Like all the way back in the beginning, the ‘Live Wire’ video where the band lit me on fire, and we’ve just constantly been kind of pushing.”

“And then on the pyro thing and actually working with companies and developing kind of — not our own technology, but a lot of times when you mix different fuels together, they create different colors. So we would put one pyro head into a steel wall, and another one would hit, and it would change… I mean, this stuff was super exciting for us,” he added.

“And then we kind of outgrew the pyro, because you can watch a baseball game, and they have pyro now. So it’s, like, how do we take advantage of new technology? We don’t want you to show up and go, ‘Yeah. It looks just like the last four bands that I saw.’ And so there’s always a lot of pressure on us to do that. And that’s, I think, what really drives us.”

So where does a new Mötley Crüe stage show even start? Sixx said it comes down to a theme first, and the visuals build from there, right down to something as basic as color.

“First and foremost, it’s a theme. And a theme, if you talk Dr. Feelgood, well, when we designed the album cover, it was in the very last moment where we changed it to green. It was a white hospital linoleum wall with the medical symbol on it, and we switched that to green. Well, once that shifted to green, it all of a sudden gave us a complete color palette for what we would actually do with the show. So those are the type of things,” Sixx explained.

“So, obviously, something as colorful as a carnival, our brains are going crazy,” he revealed. “And to see what’s out there, what’s available, and especially with video, you can take people on a journey that you just can’t do with a backdrop and some fire. So it’s exciting.”

And yes, this is still a hits-heavy band talking to a hits-heavy audience. Sixx made it clear he gets why people buy the ticket, while also hinting at deeper cuts that can reshape the whole production.

“Obviously, we know the fans wanna hear the hits. And I hate it when a band goes out and doesn’t play their hits. I remember [David] Bowie doing that, and he was one of my favorite artists. I was, like, I don’t wanna go hear a bunch of C and D tracks off of records that I love. I wanna hear those songs, like ‘Rebel Rebel’, and at that point he was, like, ‘I’m so tired of playing the same songs.’

“We’re not tired of playing those hits, but we are excited about getting into a setlist and diving into some songs that we maybe never played or haven’t played in a long time and shaking it up. And those types of things, if you’re playing a song like ‘On With The Show’ from the first album, that’s gonna dictate a lot of what production looks like. So, for us, it’s this moving creative ball of energy. It’s super exciting,” Sixx continued.

When Smith talked about loving bands that back strong records with real performance, Sixx agreed, and pointed to the old-school mindset that shaped him: bigger-than-life shows, shock, and spectacle, done with intent.

“Me too,” Sixx said. “I just don’t get when people don’t. I grew up in the ’70s when rock stars were superheroes, and the shows were over the top, and everything was about shock and awe. And so, 45 years in this band, or coming up on it, it’d be kind of hard to revert back to something that was never about Mötley Crüe.”

“Yeah, we still have those super-raw, early punk influences. We did our Vegas residency — we opened the Vegas residency in a very small area, and we played two songs off the first record, and it was like a club gig. It was smaller than the Whisky A-Go-Go stage. And then it opened into the third song, and the whole place was, like, ‘Oh my God. I didn’t even know all this was here.’”

“So that’s the kind of fun stuff… I’m not saying we’re doing that, but that’s the kind of fun stuff, the mode we’re in right now. It’s, like, what can we do? How can we keep our original roots? And how can we take the audience…? You can just go on your computer or on any of your digital devices and have your mind blown,” he explained. “So my intention is not to go out and do a show that can’t compete with that. We gotta have people going, like, ‘That was an amazing show. I love the songs. I love the show. I’m really glad I came out.’”

He closed by acknowledging the practical side: fans have other shows to budget for, schedules to juggle, and time to plan. That reality is part of why tickets are going up early while the stage build is already underway.

“It’s not easy for fans. The shows aren’t for almost eight months. And we know, from a lot of our fans, they’re saying, ‘I just wish I had a little more time to prepare to go to that.’ And there are a lot of great bands out there that are going on tour. So, people, our fans have a chance to see if they can come and bring their friends or whatever it is. So we’re going on sale early and designing the show at the same time. So that’s where we’re at right now.”

The post NIKKI SIXX Promises Fans A “Crazy Journey” During MÖTLEY CRÜE’s 2026 Tour: “It’s Gonna Be The Next Level” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

When Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster sat down for the latest episode of the “100 Songs That Define Heavy Metal” podcast with Brian Slagel, he laid out a pretty relatable path: start with whatever is around the house, find the bands that hit harder, then keep chasing weight and speed until you land in something extreme.

He described that early climb in detail, starting way earlier than most people would guess for a guy best known for some of death metal’s most punishing low end: “Well, when I was really young, single-digit age or whatever, I listened to ’50s rock, like Chuck Berry and Elvis [Presley], stuff like that, records my dad had lying around from when he was a teenager, that kind of stuff, the ’50s rock.”

“But, yeah, I got into just regular rock, like The Police and stuff like that. And then, pretty much around my early teens, that was when metal came in, and then it was bands like Accept and Iron Maiden, those two in particular. And then Metallica, all the thrash bands, Metallica, Slayer, Kreator, all those bands, Megadeth, all that stuff,” he recalled (via Blabbermouth).

“And it just kind of builds up. Metalheads are always looking for the next heavier thing, or the next step forward, and everybody sort of adds to that. So I would say out of the thrash bands, death metal owes the most to Slayer. They were the band that had those kinds of lyrics. I feel like if you’re looking at a family tree, then a lot of death metal comes from the Slayer branch, in a way. And there are other bands too, for sure — Venom, stuff like that. But for us, Slayer is probably the biggest influence of the thrash bands, for sure — Slayer, Kreator, Dark Angel, bands like that,” Webster reflected.

That “family tree” idea lands because it matches how a lot of people actually discover heavy music. You latch onto a couple of gateway records, then you move the needle: faster riffs, harsher vocals, darker lyrics, until the next thing becomes normal. Webster calls out Slayer specifically because the attitude and lyrical violence were already there. For a band like Cannibal Corpse, that bridge between thrash and death metal is a direct line.

Once the conversation shifted to vocals, Webster focused less on one single inventor and more on a chain reaction: singers pushing rougher tones, then the next wave going deeper and more guttural until melody became secondary.

“I really would love it if some of the original death metal and growling kind of thrash metal singers would get together and maybe do a roundtable on the origins of this style of singing or something like that, because I think it kind of starts maybe with Lemmy [Motörhead], who was still singing — Lemmy and Cronos [Venom]; they were singing, but it was getting into a growl, but there were still melodies going on there.”

“And then you get Jeff [Becerra] from Possessed, Chuck [Schuldiner] from Death, Kam Lee from Massacre, people like that, doing something deeper, more guttural,” he added. “And then it just goes on, and on to [where] everybody ended up being pretty guttural and not really having any kind of a melody. There was a point where it was still singing, where you’re carrying a tune, and then it just really became more of a rhythmic growl. And that, I think, it kind of started with some of the really early death metal, of course, like the bands I mentioned, and then also thrash, like Mille [Petrozza] from Kreator was a big inspiration for us as well.”

Plenty of bands stumble into a sound while the scene forms around them. Webster described something more focused: the intention was there from the start, and the map was already drawn by the demos and records they were absorbing.

When asked if forming a death metal band was the goal or if it happened naturally, he said: “When we made Cannibal Corpse, that was the plan. That was 1988, so there were already death metal bands out there that we liked. We had the Morbid Angel demo, and we loved Death. Kreator Pleasure To Kill, to me, that album is sort of — at least at that time, it was very close to being death metal. Same thing with some of the Sodom albums. So when we made Cannibal Corpse, it was pretty clear that we were gonna go in that direction.”

“The band that [ex-Cannibal Corpse guitarist] Jack [Owen] and I were in before was more of a crossover kind of band where it was sort of a mixture of Kreator and D.R.I., that kind of thing. To make a long story short, we had a lot of different sounds, but we were a crossover band, that band Beyond Death, that Jack and I were in before Cannibal Corpse,” Webster mused.

But, yeah, when we made Cannibal Corpse, we were already pretty inspired by bands like Death and Morbid Angel, so we were ready to kind of get going in that direction. And it still took us a little bit of time. But I’d say by the time [Cannibal Corpse‘s 1990 debut album] Eaten Back To Life came out, we were there — you could hear, for sure, that we had thrash roots, but it was death metal right out of the gate.”

Outside the podcast talk, Cannibal Corpse also had a notable live wrinkle this past summer/fall when Brandon Ellis filled in for guitarist Rob Barrett on the band’s U.S. run. The tour kicked off September 15 in Nashville and wrapped October 22 in Charlotte, with Municipal Waste, Full Of Hell, and Fulci providing support on the trek.

Ellis had announced his exit from The Black Dahlia Murder back in February, making his appearance with Cannibal Corpse an extra point of interest for anyone tracking modern extreme metal lineups.

The post CANNIBAL CORPSE’s ALEX WEBSTER On Death Metal Evolution: “The Genre Owes The Most To SLAYER” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

When people talk about Opeth, the “progressive” label usually shows up fast. In a new chat with Japan’s Prog Project, Mikael Åkerfeldt got hit with a familiar question: Is it a “challenge” to stay progressive or to keep evolving when he writes for the band?

His answer cuts straight to why he treats genre tags like background noise, rather than a target.

“Yeah, good question. I’m not sure if it’s so important for me to feel that we are progressive, because I don’t really know what it means anymore. Back in the day, I think that it was easier to define a progressive band because they were mixing styles and stuff like that, but now progressive means fast guitar solos, and it’s become a sound and maybe not so progressive, “he explained (via Blabbermouth).

“I think progressive music, especially in rock and metal, has become a bit regressive. And it’s also, I don’t know if I can decide if we are progressive or not. I think it’s up to the audience to decide, but for me, it’s become less and less important to be labeled progressive because I don’t know what it means anymore.”

“But when I write music, it’s easy to, I think, make progress for our own music, because I have so many different kinds of influences and I’m very passionate about my music and stuff like that. So I try, but at the end of the day, I just wanna write emotional music,” Åkerfeldt added.

The follow-up question gets even more direct, asking if he doesn’t “think about trying to be progressive” while writing for Opeth. His reply lands like a mission statement, especially for anyone still stuck on a specific era of the band.

“No. I don’t wanna repeat myself. Many of our fans want us to maybe repeat what we did in the early 2000s, but I’m not really interested in that. I like for us to progress, but not necessarily just so we fit into the progressive rock/metal genre.”

If you’ve been around heavy music long enough, you know how this goes: fans fall in love with a run of records, then treat that sound like a contract. Åkerfeldt treats it like a chapter. He keeps the parts of Opeth that matter: identity, taste, atmosphere, but writes toward wherever his head is now, not where people want him to rewind.

One of the more telling parts of the interview is how casually he admits his listening habits run backward. Opeth pulls from classic death metal, older metal, and prog roots, and Åkerfeldt isn’t shy about the fact that his personal listening stays planted in earlier eras. When asked why newer bands rarely hook him, he lays it out in plain terms:

“I don’t know. Maybe because I don’t really listen. I don’t search for new bands. I don’t know what’s going on in the music scene. I don’t know what’s popular or what’s happening or original or progressive, to be honest. I’m stuck with my old records. And I still have so much music to listen to. So I have no idea what’s happening.”

This isn’t a new take from him, either. Back in 2017, he told Rolling Stone something that still matches what a lot of hard rock and metal lifers complain about: modern metal often sounds too cleaned up.

“I was born in 1974, so I grew up with the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and the German scene and the U.S. scene of the ’80s and that kind of stuff, so I think today’s metal scene is a bit too sterile for my own taste. I’m not excited about a new metal band or a new metal record because I’ve tried, and most of the time, I just feel it’s just too un-metal-sounding — too polished and too streamlined to fit the genre. It’s just not interesting enough for me, you know?”

Whatever arguments people want to have about what era rules, Opeth’s current run keeps earning respect. The band was honored in the “Best Hard Rock/Metal” category at this year’s Swedish Grammis awards (the Swedish Grammy equivalent), held March 27 at Annexet in Stockholm.

The post OPETH’s MIKAEL ÅKERFELDT Explains Why The “Progressive” Mindset Matters Less Now: “Progressive Music, Especially In Rock And Metal, Has Become A Bit Regressive” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

If you were watching rock TV in 1991, you remember how fast the air changed. One minute, big hooks, louder guitars, and glam attitude were everywhere. Then the industry decided the whole thing was “out of style,” and pushed a new look and sound to the front.

Bands like Poison, Mötley Crüe, and Whitesnake went from being automatic adds to being treated like yesterday’s news, while Jane’s Addiction, Nirvana, and Nine Inch Nails got the spotlight. For a lot of hard rock and metal acts who came up right at the end of the ’80s boom, that timing was brutal.

One of the bands that felt that shift firsthand was Dangerous Toys. They broke through with their gold-certified self-titled debut, Dangerous Toys, in 1989. But when Hellacious Acres landed in 1991 and Pissed followed in 1994, the ground had already moved under them.

Talking about that moment, Jason McMaster framed it less like an enemy takeover and more like the business doing what it always does: signing anything that looks like it might sell until the audience gets sick of the template.

“There were a lot of bands such as us. I call it ‘The class of ’89,’ where a bunch of bands on the coattails of Guns N’ Roses got signed because their singer had long hair, tattoos, and sang really high. So, which brings me to the point that I’ve been making lately that I feel grunge did not kill hair metal, hair metal killed hair metal,” McMaster told Rock Interview Series (via Ultimate Guitar).

“And, as a matter of fact, not trying to one-up anything or be a pundit here, but grunge also killed grunge for the same reason. Grunge killed grunge, and hair metal killed hair metal. It’s the over-saturation of a market until the climate changes, until somebody just goes, ‘It doesn’t matter what you wear or what you sound like. If the music is good, listen to it and buy it and support [it].’”

McMaster also pointed to the culture machine around the music, especially MTV, because back then, that pipeline could make or break a band’s reach. If you weren’t in the rotation, you were fighting uphill, no matter how tight the band was live.

He described the early ’90s as a weird stretch where critics and outlets acted like the debate was settled, and anyone who looked like a late-’80s hard rock band had already missed the boat.

“Between the Hellacious Acres tour and the release of Pissed, which was a crazy time for what it is that we’re sort of talking about, when everybody at Rolling Stone magazine or everybody who had a pen and called himself a music journalist had an opinion about the Seattle sound, versus what was hot on MTV,” he recalled.

“And how anybody resembling Guns N’ Roses may not have a chance. We’ll play Guns N’ Roses because they sell records, but everybody else that came right after that, they’re dead. For them to be able to just like, say that and call it law was a trip.”

The post JASON MCMASTER Explains Why The Glam Metal Scene Imploded In 1991: “Grunge Didn’t Kill Hair Metal, Hair Metal Killed Hair Metal” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

On a recent episode of Twisted Sister guitarist John “Jay Jay” French’s The Jay Jay French Connection: Beyond The Music podcast, Jay Jay sat down with legendary singer/bassist Glenn Hughes (of Deep Purple, Black Country Communion, and Trapeze) for a 44-minute conversation that stayed focused on real-world artist problems: longevity, writing in public, and what the streaming era does to the album format.

They also spent time on Hughes’ current output, including the new singles “Voice In My Head” and “Chosen,” and the album Chosen (released September 5, 2025, via Frontiers Music Srl). And when Jay Jay brought up the studio-album cycle, Hughes got blunt about where his head is at right now.

“Well, you can see I’m kind of smiling and kind of sad because this probably will be my last solo album. Because, as you know, yourself being in the industry, nobody really buys ’em anymore. I don’t like streaming. People buy an album, listen to one or two songs, and it’s done. It’s painful sometimes for me to write these albums. I mean, these songs are very personal to me, these lyrics are very personal. I don’t think I can continue to do that anymore. I think the live work is way more important for me,” Hughes explained (via Blabbermouth).

“We don’t live in a long-player world anymore, do we, Jay Jay?” Glenn continued. “We don’t live there anymore. Maybe you can release a single here and there, maybe a live thing coming out. Albums don’t really mean anything unless you have a huge fanbase.”

The idea of live music carrying more weight than the “long-player” album also connects to how Hughes approaches setlists in 2025. He talked about how long he’s leaned into legacy material, and why he’s shifting away from running the same classics on repeat.

“The way I feel about it, Jay Jay, is, look, I’ve been playing the legacy songs for a couple of years now. I don’t know if you know — I’ve been doing this Deep Purple classic show, and I’ve come to the point, well, I’ve done that now, and I’ve done it years ago. I’m gonna go back to being simply Glenn with all those other great songs. I’ve done 18 solo albums. They’ve done really well. I’ve got [material from] Trapeze, I’ve got Hughes/Thrall, I’ve got other things to play. I’m getting into a new era when I wanna play new songs. I look different, I feel different. I’m happy. I can’t keep regurgitating these old catalog [songs]. I love them — don’t get me wrong — people wanna hear them, but my audience now is ready for something new. They’re ready for something more dangerous and more exciting, and I am the man to do that.”

For longtime fans, the message is clear: the classics still matter, but Hughes wants the next chapter to move forward with new songs, deeper cuts, and fewer “greatest hits” expectations.

And for a bit of timeline context, Hughes recorded the follow-up to 2016’s Resonate in June 2024 in Copenhagen, Denmark; work that ultimately fed into the current Chosen era.

The post GLENN HUGHES Explains Why Streaming Has Turned Records Into Throwaways: “People Buy An Album, Listen To One Or Two Songs, And It’s Done” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

After a long run at the mic for Dutch rock institution The Gathering, Norwegian singer Silje Wergeland has announced she’s leaving the band. She has been fronting The Gathering since early 2009, and she shared the news in a statement posted on her social media on Sunday, December 28.

“It’s a new dawn and a new year. After 16 years of creating and playing great music with The Gathering, it’s time to move on to new ventures. I have had so many awesome experiences and made great memories with this band that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I wish my bandmates all the best for the future. Thanks for all the great support and the lovely conversations with all you wonderful [The Gathering] fans around the globe. Lots of love.”

Before stepping into The Gathering, Wergeland sang for the Norwegian band Octavia Sperati.

The band also issued a statement, thanking her and wishing her well: “We’d like to thank Silje for her contribution to the band over the past 16 years. We’re very proud of the wonderful records we’ve made together (from The West Pole to Beautiful Distortion), and all the shows we’ve played. We will miss her as a fantastic vocalist and a dear friend. We wish her all the best in the future!”

Her departure also lands during a busy period for the band’s legacy-era activity. To mark the 30th anniversary of Mandylion, the The Gathering lineup that recorded the album — including singer Anneke Van Giersbergen — regrouped for multiple shows in the Netherlands this past summer. That same Mandylion lineup already has more than two dozen dates lined up for 2026, with concerts announced across Europe and South America, plus a slot at the ProgPower USA festival in Atlanta in September.

The post Singer SILJE WERGELAND Parts Ways With THE GATHERING After 16 Years appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

Don Dokken dropped by the latest episode of The SDR Show with hosts Ralph Sutton and Aaron Berg, and the conversation covered a lot of ground: Dokken playing the first Rocklahoma, his early years in an orphanage until age six, starting out on drums and guitar in a musical family, working as a sous-chef for his uncle, landing in juvenile hall after stealing quarters, then moving in with his dad in Los Angeles.

He also got into writing “Dream Warriors,” the physical hits he’s dealt with (including a paralyzed arm and a shattered ankle), and the ongoing “what if” around one more release with George Lynch and other classic-era Dokken members before he finally calls it.

When asked if the classic Dokken lineup still has a real shot at making a new album, Don laid out where things stand right now (via Blabbermouth): “Well, the last 20 or so shows we’ve [the current lineup of Dokken] done in the last few months, George was coming on as a special guest. And he would play two songs with us, or three. And we’re old — we’re too old to bicker and fight, even though a couple of years ago he went at it again with the lawsuits. But that’s in the past. So, we’re both gray-haired now.”

“And then the last show he just did, he brought his whole band, the Lynch Mob, and they opened for us. And he still came on stage at the end of the night and did two songs, or three maybe. He did three songs… So we talked about it. And I said, ‘But the problem is I can’t play guitar anymore.’ And I said to George very openly, I said, ‘And you don’t write as I write.’ He’s got his own trip. If you listen to the last four Lynch Mob albums, they have nothing to do with Dokken. And you listen to [former Dokken bassist] Jeff Pilson‘s solo albums, they have nothing to do with Dokken,” he continued.

“It comes out of your mind, your spirit, God. I can’t stand when people go, ‘How do you write a song? You get a piece of paper, and you sit down, and you start playing your guitar, and that sounds cool. And start writing lyrics.’ I’ve never written like that. I wait — I wait for the moment. And the bitch is sometimes it doesn’t happen for, like, three weeks. I’ll write four songs. I’ll come back to ’em in my studio and go, ‘It’s crap.’ Or ‘I just repeated myself,’” Dokken elaborated.

For anyone hoping a reunion album would magically appear because George has been jumping onstage lately, Don made it clear that playing a few classics live and writing new material as a unit are two different beasts, especially when everyone’s styles have drifted.

He also pointed out that they already tried testing the waters years ago, and it went about as smoothly as you’d expect when history and pressure are both in the room: “So I talked to George — to answer your question — and a lot of labels keep approaching us. And we did an experiment — what’s it been, like seven years now? — We did an experiment, and we said, ‘We’ll write one song together’. And that was ‘It’s Another Day’. And we wrote, recorded it, and made a cool video. Original members.”

“We went to Japan. I said, ‘I’m not doing America. We’ll go to Japan, and we’ll see if we don’t kill each other.’ And that’s exactly what I said. We did the Japanese tour. It was a disaster, mostly because of me. I just wasn’t on my game. We did that song, ‘It’s Another Day’, put the video out, and we just came back, and I said, ‘I don’t think this is gonna work.’ So that was the end of that,” he added.

If an EP happens, Don wants it to hit like Dokken, not like a side project with familiar names.

“So now I’ve talked to George when we played, and I said, ‘I might be up for an EP only.’ But I said flat out, ‘It has to sound like Dokken. I’m not trying to insult you, George, but I’ve listened to all your records. It has to be Dokken.’ That’s what the fans want. They don’t want to hear tripped-out stuff… George puts out what he puts out, but it has nothing to do with the way I write.”

Pressed to confirm that the Dokken EP idea is “still on the table”, Don added one more detail that makes this whole thing even stranger: “We haven’t got down to the nitty-gritty. George is now my neighbor, which is weird. I live in New Mexico. He lives in New Mexico. He actually dropped me off from the airport two weeks ago.”

The post DON DOKKEN On Likelihood Of New Material With Classic-Era Members: “If It Happens, It Has To Sound Like DOKKEN” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

For a lot of heavy bands, the big moment comes from a single push: one monster single, one radio cycle, one label gamble. For Iron Maiden, the path stayed simpler and harder. Adrian Smith said the band made its name the way metal fans actually care about: turning up, playing loud, and leaving towns with new believers.

Talking about why that road worked, Smith pointed to a truth that every hard rock lifer recognizes. Iron Maiden was never built for the mainstream machine. Their sound, their length, their attitude, none of it screamed “easy playlist placement.” So the band worked the only angle that made sense: get on the road and put the songs directly in front of people who would actually listen.

That approach matters even more now that people keep saying the band is “bigger now” than “it has ever been”. Here is how Adrian Smith put it (via Ultimate Guitar): “Yeah, people say that. I mean, it’s wonderful, isn’t it? I have to say, though, that the band’s philosophy has always been to take music out to the people, because it was never music that was going to get mass radio play. And I think, when you build a career like that, it lasts a bit longer than just having a few big hit records.”

Smith was basically saying that bands that build their crowd face-to-face get a longer runway, because the relationship becomes real. And he backed it up with the kind of detail that sounds like scars, not marketing.

“You know, we’ve actually gone to all these places. We used to do 15-day tours in France and go to every little city. In England as well, all over the world. It hasn’t always been us playing massive gigs and everyone coming to see us. We’ve always taken it out there. People remember that. I think that’s why a band stands in good stead, you know, later in their career. Because people remember that. It’s like an honest way of building a career.”

That is the grind a lot of newer acts skip. Small cities. Repeated loops. The slow conversion process. You can hear the pride in how he frames it: Iron Maiden went to the crowd first, and the crowd grew into arenas later.

Longevity like that usually comes with drama, lineup wreckage, or burned bridges. Yet in the decades since Steve Harris started the band in 1975, the story around Iron Maiden has stayed unusually steady by rock standards. Even when members moved on, the band often kept things friendly.

From Harris’ perspective, staying functional comes down to managing ego and keeping the temperature lower than the music. He described the day-to-day reality of being in a band for the long haul like this (via Music Radar): “You have to put things to one side. I think the older you get, the easier it is to deal with, in the sense that you just bite your tongue and get on with it. You don’t let things get bogged down where they might have done a few years before.”

There is nothing glamorous about that quote, which is exactly why it rings true. Bands break up over tiny stuff when everyone feels like winning the argument matters more than playing the next show. Iron Maiden made room for people to breathe and kept moving, and the results show up in the only scoreboard that counts: the band still fills venues.

And they are not acting like a nostalgia act ready to coast into retirement, either. Dave Murray summed up the idea of quitting on your own terms, while making it clear that the moment is not around the corner: “We’re nearly hitting the seventies mark now, but I think we will all know when it would be time. It would be a mutual decision. I think there’s a time and a place to bail out with dignity and grace – as opposed to dragging it out. If you can leave it at that high level and then bow out gracefully, I think it would be satisfying for us. And not just flog a dead horse, when you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”

Right now, the momentum is still pointed forward. Iron Maiden is lining up the next stretch of dates for the second European leg of their current “Run for Your Lives World Tour,” with more runs across the Americas slated for later next year.

The post ADRIAN SMITH Breaks Down IRON MAIDEN’s Key To Success: “The Band’s Philosophy Has Always Been To Take Music Out To The People” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

Dream Theater have been living on the road behind Parasomnia since the record landed in February 2025, and by Jordan Rudess’s count, the cycle has stretched into a full-on marathon. In a new chat with Costa Rica’s Backstage Magazine, the keyboardist framed the last stretch as the kind of run a band only gets a few times in a career — especially with a major lineup piece back in place.

Rudess put it plainly (transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Well, it’s been a very exciting year. We’ve been on tour for over a year now… We’ve been having a great year. It’s been wonderful to have Mike Portnoy back in the band after so many years. He kind of came back home, if you will, which has just felt so good. So, the whole last — whatever it’s been — 15 months of running around the world and playing shows and putting out our Parasomnia album has been pretty, pretty awesome.”

“It’s been a great time in a very long career. And I guess to kind of like top it off, ’cause when we see all of you [in Central and Latin America], it’ll be the last phase of the world tour, it’ll be a nice way to do it because we know the fans are really great and they’ll be excited. And I’m sure that’ll just be a great celebration for everybody,” he added.

For anyone who’s followed Dream Theater through the years, that “back home” line hits the core of what longtime fans wanted: chemistry that feels natural, and a band that sounds locked in while still taking the same risks. Rudess makes it clear that the touring grind has felt rewarding rather than routine, and the final leg in Central and Latin America is being treated like the send-off lap.

He also dug into what it’s like to stand in front of big crowds night after night playing music that leaves very little room to breathe. The band’s live headspace, as he describes it, is equal parts adrenaline and focus, and that balance is part of the job.

“What we do is pretty interesting because when you think about people like us, bands or any entertainer, artist being in front of large audiences and getting the kind of love and emotion and energy from the audience, plus the emotions that we feel just in our internal world, just the band by being together and making music for this many years and all that, you can really get hit with a big wave of kind of intensity, and it can be very joyful. It can be really amazing.”

That’s a solid way to describe the Dream Theater experience from both sides of the barricade: the room pushes, the band pushes back, and the songs demand full attention. Rudess took it further, talking about how that intensity becomes a life skill, especially for younger musicians learning how to perform under pressure without letting the moment take over.

“It’s always been an interesting thing for me and something that I’ve tried to even share a lot with younger people, younger musicians or anybody who has to get in a situation where they have to be in front of the public and have to deal with emotions that are more than just sitting in their own home and just hanging out or being with a friend, because we all get kind of pushed into these situations where life can get kind of challenging and challenging not always in a bad way, but even in a way, like, something’s happening, and it’s a big emotion and you have to know how to kind of deal with it and keep thinking clearly and keep kind of being aware and, in our case, being able to play intricate music while there’s a lot of stuff going on, whether it’s the audiences cheering or there’s noises or we’re playing a really hard section of the music.”

“So, for me, that kind of being able to focus and being able to absorb those emotions and still remain calm is probably one of the biggest life lessons. It’s allowed, I think, all of us in the band to kind of become the people who we are and to refine our craft in a way that we can get up there and we can play a complicated Dream Theater song. And I mean, we’re human beings — we make mistakes certainly — but just to be able to perform at a high level and to do it and to feel the joy and to put out the energy and to share that with everybody, it’s kind of a big deal,” he summed up.

Next up, Dream Theater are taking that mindset into a spring 2026 Latin America run, continuing the “An Evening With Dream Theater” format. The plan celebrates Parasomnia by playing the album in full, and it also brings back a major centerpiece: the entire seven-movement “A Change Of Seasons,” being performed for the first time since Mike Portnoy returned, alongside other staples and fan favorites pulled from across the catalog.

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Former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman recently came back to one of the biggest “what ifs” of his early career: the late-’80s audition for Ozzy Osbourne’s band. In a new interview with Argentina’s TCDG Guitar Lessons, he laid out the situation as he remembers it: down to the clothes, the scene, and the feeling that he walked into the wrong movie.

“They actually called me when I lived in San Francisco. I was in Cacophony at the time and completely broke, almost homeless. But [Ozzy’s wife and manager] Sharon Osbourne called me up and said if I wanted to go to L.A., they’d fly me out to L.A. to audition. I’m, like, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ So, I did the audition and played,” Friedman remembered (via Blabbermouth)

“I thought I did a good job. But I didn’t really match the vibe of the band very much. They were full-on L.A.-metal type of guys with handcuffs in their belts and Jack Daniel’s t-shirts, and they were all decked out for rehearsal. And I understood doing that for a show, but at rehearsal, they wore cowboy hats and all kinds of necklaces and jewelry. And they were full-on Sunset Strip rock mode. And I came in a t-shirt and jeans. I looked like a regular guy waiting for a bus or something,” Friedman added.

From his side, the playing part felt solid. He learned the material, ran through the set, and left thinking it sounded fine. The bigger issue came from everything around the notes: who fits, who hangs, who looks like they belong in that specific machine.

“I played, and I thought it went well. And it did sound fine to me, and it was no problems. I learned, like, four songs, and we did ’em bam, bam, bam, and it was fine. But we were in this rehearsal hall. There were all kinds of envelopes with cassettes and resumes, and so they were probably trying hundreds of guys. And so I never heard back from them. And then finally Zakk Wylde got the job. And he was just perfect. He was so much better than I would’ve been for that gig. He was just right, and he plays really well. So I understood it, but at the time I thought, ‘Well, I did a good job, but I don’t think those guys are gonna [pick me].’ They probably went out drinking and partying right after rehearsal, and I was a real good-boy type of guy. Really boring.”

That same story came up again when Friedman talked about it publicly at Rock ’N’ Roll Fantasy Camp’s Metalmania III event in November 2023 in Los Angeles. His takeaway stayed consistent: the performance side held up, but the image and chemistry carried more weight than most players want to admit: “I failed miserably. I think it was probably because of the way I looked.”

“I was practically homeless at the time, living with my then-girlfriend and dealing with the rent and all that stuff, as California rock musicians do. And I was so happy to get the call. So I learned the music, went down to L.A. — they flew me down to L. A. to play with the band. And it was, I guess, the guys who were in the band at the time. And I thought I played everything absolutely just fine, and I thought it sounded great. Everybody was friendly enough. But our images were very different. It wasn’t like these three guys are gonna get together and jell, even though it sounded fine, I thought. I mean, I thought I played everything correctly.”

For metal and hard rock fans, it’s an honest reminder of how many moving parts exist behind a “dream gig.” You can walk in prepared, nail the parts, and still miss because the band wants someone they instinctively click with. Friedman put it in blunt terms: vibe first, chops second.

“Being in a band is so much more than playing. And, actually, the playing is kind of down on the list. If you have the same kind of vibe with the people, you can just kind of smell it: ‘This is the guy I wanna hang out with.’ And it was different on that level… They smelled like L.A., and I smelled like San Francisco, which was a different smell. Neither of us smelled very good. But they were cool. Everybody played everything great. They were auditioning thousands of guys. So I didn’t get it,” Friedman mused.

“A band is just… It’s more about the personalities between the people. Because there are so many great players who can play every gig, you know what I mean? It’s really about who you wanna hang out with? I would have loved to have gotten the gig, but they were probably just getting ready to go back out drinking, and I’m not a very big drinker, so it wouldn’t have jelled so well. But at the time I was, like, ‘Oh, I played it perfectly. Why didn’t they call me back?’ But I get it [now].”

The irony, of course, is that missing that audition never slowed him down. He helped shape shred guitar alongside Jason Becker in Cacophony, became a defining piece of Megadeth’s rise in the classic thrash era, and built a solo catalog that leans hard into his “Marty-esque” phrasing and the mix of Eastern and Western ideas; fifteen solo records and counting.

The post MARTY FRIEDMAN Remembers Auditioning For OZZY OSBOURNE: “I Did A Good Job, But I Didn’t Match The Vibe Of The Band” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.