Black Stone Cherry have released an official lyric video for their version of the Bad Company classic “Burnin’ Sky.” The track appears on Can’t Get Enough: A Tribute To Bad Company, the first tribute album dedicated entirely to the legendary British rock band.
The collection brings together artists from rock, country, and Americana, reflecting the wide influence Bad Company has had across those styles. The lineup includes Hardy, The Pretty Reckless, Joe Elliott and Phil Collen of Def Leppard, Slash Featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators, Charley Crockett, Halestorm, and several others, offering fresh takes on the band’s iconic songs.
Bad Company was founded by Mick Ralphs and Paul Rodgers in 1973. Rodgers and Bad Co drummer Simon Kirke also appear on the album, bringing the tribute full circle.
The album is available here on limited-edition silver vinyl, CD, digital formats, and special merchandise bundles.
Guitar World has released the video below to announce Alex Skolnick’s return to the magazine more than 30 years after his previous column.
This time, the Testament guitarist will break down the ideas and techniques that shape his approach to both lead and rhythm guitar, covering material that players can apply to their own playing.
“Alex will be sharing and illustrating some of the many various concepts and techniques for both soloing and rhythm playing that are at the core of his multi-faceted approach to music and guitar playing. The tabs for this lesson are available in the current issue of Guitar World (Oct-26), out now.
The accompanying lesson is featured in the current October 2026 issue of Guitar World, with tabs available for players who want to work through the material themselves.
Epiphone has unveiled a new signature guitar built with Halestorm frontwoman Lzzy Hale, dubbed the Lzzy Hale Explorer Custom and finished in a glittering Black Diamond Holographic Sparkle. The model marks the latest entry in Hale‘s run of Epiphone signature instruments, a lineup that’s consistently sold out and become a target for collectors. It’s available now through authorized Epiphone dealers, the Gibson Garage locations in Nashville and London, and here.
Built to mirror the intensity Hale brings to the stage, the Explorer Custom leans into bold, high-impact styling paired with a high-output tone suited to heavy riffing and big leads. Epiphone product manager Aljon Go framed the guitar as an extension of Hale‘s stage identity: “Lzzy has always brought a rare combination of power, precision, and unmistakable style to the stage. The Lzzy Hale Explorer Custom captures that same energy in an instrument that looks unforgettable, plays fast, and delivers the clarity and punch players need to own the moment.”
Underneath the sparkle finish sits a mahogany Explorer body with 7-ply top binding and a mirrored single-ply pickguard designed to catch stage lighting. The mahogany neck follows Epiphone‘s SlimTaper 60s C profile, topped with an ebony fretboard, 22 medium jumbo frets and pearloid block inlays. The signature Explorer “hockey stick” headstock carries a raised 3D Epiphone logo, a Graph Tech nut and Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners, while a black truss rod cover engraved with Hale‘s signature and a black stinger on the back of the headstock round out the custom touches.
Tone comes courtesy of a matched pair of Epiphone ProBucker Ignite pickups, each running its own volume control alongside a shared master tone knob and a three-way selector switch. A LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece handle intonation and sustain, and the guitar ships with a hardshell case.
Fans hitting Halestorm‘s fall 2026 North American tour can go a step further than the store shelf — a VIP upgrade includes a chance to win a stage-played, Hale-autographed Explorer Custom, plus a pre-show meet-and-greet, photo op, and exclusive merch. Full package details are available here.
A Grammy Award winner and co-founder of Halestorm, Hale has racked up seven No. 1 rock radio hits, more than three billion streams and upward of three million albums sold domestically across her career, along with two Grammy nominations and a win in 2012 for “Love Bites (So Do I)” in the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance category. This past July, she was honored by the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame as part of its “Women In Metal: You Will Know My Name” exhibit, where she performed alongside Halestorm guitarist Joe Hottinger. Her band’s current era centers on the album Everest and its single “Rain Your Blood On Me,” which Hale has described as “our ode to women” and “our war cry.” As Gibson‘s first female brand ambassador and a longtime Epiphone signature artist, she continues to expand a catalog of guitars built to match her stage presence.
Metal fans still waiting on Ozzfest‘s comeback got a fresh update straight from the family. During an August 19 stop on SiriusXM‘s Page Six Radio hosted by Danny Murphy and Evan Real, Jack Osbourne dug into where things stand on next year’s edition of the festival, set to land at Villa Park — home turf of the Aston Villa Football Club — in Birmingham, U.K.
Asked how the planning has gone so far, Jack Osbourne compared it to reviving an old ride (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “It’s been interesting, ’cause it’s kind of like finding the old car in the shop and being, like, ‘All right, let’s get this engine going.’ But it’s cool. There’s a lot of excitement around it. And we’re gonna announce pretty soon — I think in the next couple of weeks we’re gonna announce kind of who the main headliner is and where we’re doing it. So it’s been nice.”
Jack Osbourne confirmed the 2027 show won’t stretch across multiple days: “not gonna be a multi-day thing. We’re gonna kind of stick to our roots of… We did a couple of two-day Ozzfests years ago, but it’s just gonna be one day.”
Curating the bill hasn’t gotten any easier, Jack Osbourne admitted, given how crowded the festival landscape has become: “I do. It’s just really difficult now. It’s really difficult to kind of, like, ‘All right, who’s doing what?’ Because a lot of huge bands now are doing their own festivals, they’re doing their own thing, so it’s, like, ‘All right, who’s not got their own festival? Who’s available? Who’s reasonably priced?’ Because with all these huge festivals, artists are, like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it for, like, 10 million dollars.’ You’re, like, ‘Eh.’”
He confirmed that finding acts with a genuine tie to his father’s legacy still matters: “100%. Yeah, yeah. And there’s a lot of the huge artists now in the genre; they all kind of were on Ozzfest at a certain point. We had everyone from Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, Disturbed, Slipknot. I mean, they all kind of came up… Well, not Rob Zombie and Manson, but Disturbed and Slipknot and System Of A Down.”
Spotlighting newer talent will remain part of the formula too, Jack Osbourne confirmed: “Yeah, that’s still gonna be a big part of the lineup, is new artists. And we’re gonna probably have a spot for at least one unsigned artist.”
Villa Park previously hosted Ozzy Osbourne‘s farewell concert, the star-studded Back To The Beginning, on July 5, 2025.
Ozzfest launched three decades ago as the first national festival built specifically around hard rock. It hasn’t toured the U.S. since a free 2007 run, morphing into a one-off Dallas show in 2008, skipping 2009 entirely and hitting just six cities in 2010. The 2017 edition — merged for a second year with Slipknot‘s Knotfest — drew more than 17,000 fans for a day headlined by Ozzy Osbourne, with Rob Zombie closing out Knotfest‘s bill the following day.
A one-off New Year’s Eve edition followed on Dec. 31, 2018, at the Forum in Los Angeles, pulling in 12,465 fans according to Pollstar, with the Live Nation-produced show grossing $1.2 million on tickets ranging from $59.50 to $179.50. Ozzy Osbourne headlined that night alongside Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, a solo set from Korn‘s Jonathan Davis, and Body Count, while Zakk Sabbath — the Black Sabbath tribute act fronted by Ozzy Osbourne‘s guitarist Zakk Wylde — topped a second stage outside.
The reasons behind the festival’s original hiatus came up during an October 2023 Osbournes episode, where Sharon Osbourne pointed to ballooning demands from managers as the real culprit: “Yeah, it was a very weird beast because all the bands were our mates, but the managers were greedy, and for some reason they thought that we were making billions on it and we weren’t. We made a profit. But it was not like — we couldn’t retire on it. And managers and agents wanted more and more and more, and it just wasn’t cost-effective anymore. We stopped because it just wasn’t cost-effective.”
Former Hanoi Rocks frontman Michael Monroe is bringing his solo show back to the States, with a run of shows locked in for April and May 2027.
Monroe‘s current touring band is stacked with veterans. Bassist Sami Yaffa, formerly of Hanoi Rocks and New York Dolls, has been by Michael‘s side since the ’80s. Guitar duties fall to Rich Jones (ex-Ginger Wildheart band) and Steve Conte, who stepped into Johnny Thunders‘ shoes in New York Dolls and has logged time with acts like Suzi Quatro and Eric Burden. Karl Rockfist, who’s drummed for Danzig, rounds out the lineup.
Monroe had to bow out of last fall’s U.S. run supporting Buckcherry after rupturing his meniscus, pulling out of that tour in August 2025.
The singer marked his 60th birthday in September 2022 with a show at Helsinki’s Jäähalli, capped off by a reunion of Hanoi Rocks‘ original lineup — Monroe, Andy McCoy, Sami Yaffa, Nasty Suicide and Gyp Casino — plus a reformed Demolition 23, the cult band Monroe fronted for a single 1994 album before it split, playing its first show since 1995.
Monroe and McCoy started Hanoi Rocks in the late ’70s, with the classic lineup solidifying by 1980. As the first Finnish rock band to break through internationally, the group cut three albums with that lineup — Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks (1981), Oriental Beat (1982) and Self Destruction Blues (1982) — before Casino was replaced by Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley in 1982. Razzle‘s death in a 1984 accident effectively ended the band the following year.
Hanoi Rocks reunited once before, in 2002, with only Monroe and McCoy from the original lineup, releasing comeback album Twelve Shots On The Rocks before splitting again in 2009.
Christian metal outfit Demon Hunter has taken Netflix to court, filing a trademark infringement and unfair competition suit over the KPop Demon Hunters name.
Per Complex, the band’s corporate entity, Hyde Lane, filed the suit Tuesday, August 18 in the Central District of California, naming Netflix, Netflix Studios, and concert promoter AEG Presents as defendants. The complaint accuses the companies of “jealously guard[ing] and enforc[ing] their own intellectual property rights” while “willfully disregarding the rights of others in pursuit of profits.”
Demon Hunter, active for roughly 25 years and responsible for a dozen studio albums, laid out its case bluntly in the filing: “Demon Hunter [is] a well-known and celebrated metal band. Demon Hunter was formed at the turn of the century and, in the quarter-century since, it has consistently released albums, toured, and sold merchandise to a large and dedicated audience. Unfortunately, in 2025, Netflix and Netflix Studios — despite almost certainly being aware of Demon Hunter — chose to release a movie titled KPop Demon Hunters … [which] reached unprecedented levels of success, not only as a film on Netflix‘s streaming service, but also via the KPop Demon Hunters movie soundtrack album and merchandise.”
The suit also takes aim at Netflix‘s tie-up with AEG for a KPop Demon Hunters world concert tour set to hit 150 cities in 2027, arguing the reach has gone well beyond the film itself: “In short, in just a year’s time, Defendants have taken step after step to move into almost complete overlap with the goods and services offered by Hyde Lane under the Demon Hunter mark. As a result of their adoption and exploitation of the ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ brand, which is confusingly similar to senior user Hyde Lane‘s established Demon Hunter mark, junior users Netflix, Netflix Studios, and AEG have created a substantial likelihood of confusion (and, indeed, actual confusion has already resulted), leading consumers to believe the parties’ goods or services are affiliated, sponsored, or otherwise connected with one another.”
The band claims real-world mix-ups have already happened as a result of the naming overlap, and pins blame on the sheer scale of its opponent: “Even more devastatingly, by leveraging their superior resources and reach, Defendants can, and do, eclipse Hyde Lane‘s Demon Hunter marks in the marketplace and effectively misappropriate the marks’ source-identifying significance. Thus, Defendants’ greater size and strength overwhelms Hyde Lane‘s established identity, causing consumers to perceive Hyde Lane as affiliated with, sponsored by, or derived from Defendants and denuding Hyde Lane of power over its commercial fate.”
Hyde Lane casts itself as the “senior user” in the dispute, pointing to decades spent building the mark before Netflix entered the picture. The filing frames the stakes in existential terms: “The brand that Hyde Lane has carefully built over the course of the past quarter century now faces an existential crisis, thereby necessitating the filing of this action and the granting of the requested relief from this Court.”
Demon Hunter is asking the court to bar Netflix from using the KPop Demon Hunters name across recorded music, live shows and merch, plus unspecified damages.
The band’s most recent studio effort, There Was A Light Here, arrived last September through its own Weapons MFG label — its twelfth full-length. Frontman Ryan Clark and guitarist Jeremiah Scott handled production, with mixing and mastering from Chris “Zeuss” Harris, known for his work with Rob Zombie, Hatebreed and Suffocation. The title track was the exception, mixed instead by Eric Stenman (Awolnation, Thrice, Deftones).
Since forming in 2002, Demon Hunter has built a reputation as one of the acts that helped shape modern metalcore, racking up multiple Billboard 200 entries, two No. 1 Independent Albums and six Top 5 Hard Rock Albums along the way. The band currently pulls in 350,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
KPop Demon Hunters, directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, centers on fictional K-pop group HUNTR/X— Rummi, Mira and Zoey — who moonlight as demon hunters protecting their fans from supernatural threats. Since premiering on Netflix in late June 2025, it’s become the streamer’s most-watched English-language film ever. The soundtrack scored five Grammy nominations, and its breakout single “Golden” won the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 98th Academy Awards.
Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine is heading to New York City for a night of storytelling. Mustaine will take the stage at the Kaufman Music Center on Tuesday, September 8, at 7:30 p.m. for an in-depth conversation tied to the release of his upcoming memoir, In My Darkest Hour.
Tickets are on sale now, priced at $50 and each bundled with a signed copy of the book.
In My Darkest Hour drops the same day via Grand Central Publishing‘s newly relaunched Da Capo imprint. Mustaine co-wrote the book with author Joe Layden, and it walks through his “gnarly” treatment following a 2019 diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma at the back of his tongue. The memoir tracks how Mustaine bounced between chemo and radiation sessions and marathon studio time to complete Megadeth‘s sixteenth record, The Sick, The Dying … And The Dead!, released in 2022, while also digging into the mental toll of confronting mortality and how family and faith carried him through it.
During a recent TalkShopLive Q&A (transcribed by Blabbermouth), a fan asked the 64-year-old musician whether beating cancer pushed him toward a more spiritual outlook. Mustaine wasn’t buying the premise, saying: “Nah. I was pretty set spiritually before this all happened, and a lot of the people that have suggested stuff online, a lot of them were really wonderful people. So, it was great to see like-minded people, people that were willing to send positive thoughts and feelings my way. But I have to remember my whole thing — God wanting me to be healed — and that that was it. He said that was gonna happen, and I got healed.”
Asked what kept him showing up to the studio through treatment, Mustaine credited the people around him: “Great bandmates. A really professional co-producer. We had a really great thing working. Unfortunately, we had the drama that was going on in an area of the band that has been resolved,” an apparent nod to former bassist David Ellefson‘s May 2021 departure following the leak of sexually explicit messages and footage, “and we don’t usually bring it up very much just because it’s an ugly chapter, and I don’t think anybody wants to talk about it. So, it was mainly focusing on the music, which was such a great thing to go in and do a musical offering to our fans, and to focus on the music instead of all this just crap with people trying to get drama out of bands that they love.”
Mustaine also singled out drummer Dirk Verbeuren for his support during that stretch: “Yeah. Dirk was great. He was wonderful. [Current Megadeth guitarist] Teemu [Mäntysaari] wasn’t in the picture yet. [Then-Megadeth guitarist] Kiko [Loureiro] was very helpful, but I think he was very uncomfortable, and that he was more or less a little bit afraid of what was gonna happen, because here’s this guy that he just met that he really looks up to, and we’ve become friends, and the next thing you know, I’m looking like I’m gonna die on the outside. So, yeah, Dirk was very supportive, and so was my son and my wife. My daughter was also scared a lot too, so I think everybody dealt with it their own way. And we talk about that in the book. Each one of the people that were part of the book, they were asked to share their experience with everything, and I think it turned out really great to have all those different outlooks towards it.”
On what pushed him to actually write the book, Mustaine said: “I personally adore my fans. I did not want them to get as sad as I saw them get. And I was really happy to be able to say that I was in remission once the doctor told me that in October [of 2019].”
He continued: “You never really know with some of these things that happen in your life, the extent of what the treatment’s gonna entail. I had a lot of hope, and I had a lot of people praying for me, a lot of people sending me positive thoughts and stuff. I had money to get good treatment. I was living in an area where the doctors were fantastic. And not everybody’s gonna have that same opportunity. So, I wanted to make sure that I was available to tell my story and share that story of hope. ‘Cause even if you do have access to all that stuff, you’re still afraid. You don’t know what’s going on. And you’re gonna go put your head into a machine that’s meant to fucking kill you.”
Pressed on whether chemo sessions were as grim as they sound, Mustaine didn’t sugarcoat it: “A lot of it I don’t remember. That was one of the terrible things that comes along with when you do radiation and chemotherapy. It’s called chemo brain, where your brain is, as is your entire body, is being attacked, and your body’s dying. So, it was mentally a complete mindfuck to go into some place and to willingly say, ‘Okay, kill me. Kill me a little more today.’ It was very terrifying.”
The Da Capo name isn’t new to music publishing — it’s a revival of Da Capo Press, which Hachette Book Group picked up through its 2016 acquisition of Perseus Book Group before folding it into Hachette Books in 2018. That imprint was later shut down in 2024 amid restructuring at Hachette.
Mustaine framed the book’s stakes in a statement: “One of the most harrowing experiences of my adult life has been my seven-year journey through cancer treatment and onward into remission. This story is considerably more than just, ‘Go to the doctor, get diagnosed, get treatment and hopefully I live happily ever after.’ This was a journey of me saving myself, staying alive, keeping my family together, and continuing to make music through it all.”
Da Capo executive editor Ben Schafer echoed that sentiment, calling the memoir Mustaine‘s most exposed work yet: “In My Darkest Hour is Dave Mustaine at his most revealing, vulnerable, and true. With lacerating honesty and soulful reflection, he speaks to the universal human experience of facing serious illness and how it changes a person, their family and friends, and one’s relationship with creativity.”
Co-author Joe Layden is a The New York Times journalist who’s worked with Mustaine before, having co-written his 2010 autobiography Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir as well as original Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley‘s No Regrets: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Memoir. Layden‘s other credits include The Last Great Fight, chronicling James “Buster” Douglas‘s stunning tenth-round knockout of Mike Tyson in 1990.
Da Capo‘s official synopsis for the book reads: “From King of Metal Dave Mustaine, a powerful reflection on the harsh truths and raw realizations that can only come from confronting death. Dave Mustaine is no stranger to pain and suffering. He battled demons all his life — including an alcoholic father, addiction, and black magic — and turned fifty-eight believing he’d survived the worst. But in 2019, Mustaine was forced to face the loss of his instantly recognizable voice and the disintegration of his musical talent. Diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma at the back of his tongue, his entire career — and possibly his life — was about to end. For Mustaine, it was one more opportunity to fight like hell. In My Darkest Hour takes readers from the treatment room to the studio as Mustaine chronicles how his diagnosis inspired him to take up the pen and guitar pick, going from radiation and chemotherapy appointments straight into hours-long recording sessions, resulting in Megadeth‘s sixteenth studio album, The Sick, The Dying…And The Dead! Along the way, Mustaine details how confronting his own mortality brought him closer to his family, taught him how to ask for help, strengthened his faith, and challenged the vulnerability of his art. Filled with perseverance, hope, and the determination to never let the bastards grind you down, In My Darkest Hour is a masterful portrait of a Dave Mustaine that the world has yet to see, and serves as a moving reminder that even our most invincible heroes are human.”
This isn’t Mustaine‘s first trip to the shelves. His 2010 memoir, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir, cracked No. 15 on The New York Times “Hardcover Nonfiction” list and came out stateside via HarperCollins‘s It Books imprint, with a U.K. edition titled Mustaine: A Life In Metal following that September. A decade later, in September 2020, he released Rust In Peace: The Inside Story Of The Megadeth Masterpiece (previously titled Building The Perfect Beast) through Hachette Books, digging into the making of Megadeth‘s classic 1990 album Rust In Peace.
Mustaine went public with his cancer diagnosis in June 2019, when doctors gave him a 90 percent shot at beating it. He’d go on to complete 51 radiation treatments and nine rounds of chemotherapy, declaring himself cancer-free before returning to the stage in early 2020 — just weeks before the pandemic brought touring to a standstill.
Back in 2014, Mustaine and his family relocated to Tennessee partly to support his daughter Electra‘s singing ambitions. Electra now runs House Of Mustaine, a wine brand built around music and culture.
Frank Beard, the drummer of ZZ Top for the past 56 years, died on August 17 at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, surrounded by family. He was 77 and had been in hospice care.
In a statement, Billy Gibbons said: “Today, Elwood and I lost a great friend and collaborator, and the world lost one of the most naturally innovative drummers and a great and true son of Texas. His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top. The band of which he was part for six decades is going to keep on keeping on as he had wished.”
In early August, Beard dropped out of ZZ Top’s “The Big One!” tour due to health issues, with Gibbons and bassist Elwood Francis continuing to perform, with drummer Michael Monahan filling in. Following Beard’s passing, the band announced it would cancel its August 18–19 shows in Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs. The tour is set to resume August 22–23 at ACL Live at The Moody Theater in Austin, Texas — described by the band as one of Frank’s favorite venues and a city that had long been something of a second home for him.
Beard had been a member of ZZ Top since 1970, playing on every studio album the band released, beginning with ZZ Top’s First Album in 1971. In the band’s early years, he was known by the nickname “Rube” and credited as “Rube Beard” on the first album and on Tres Hombres, though his real name appeared on Rio Grande Mud and on every subsequent release. In a longstanding irony, Beard was the only member of ZZ Top who did not have a beard — typically wearing only a mustache, though he did sport a tidy beard for a period in the 1990s.
Beard resided in Richmond, Texas, where he owned and operated the Top 40 Ranch. He was a scratch golfer, well known locally for his participation in tournaments and community events.
ZZ Top was founded by Gibbons in 1969; both Beard and longtime bassist Dusty Hill joined the following year. Hill died in July 2021 at age 72, with Francis — a longtime guitar tech and roadie for the band — taking over on bass thereafter. Beard is the second of the band’s three original members to pass away.
MVD Entertainment Group has locked in September 22, 2026, for the digital release of Heavy Healing, a new documentary built around dispelling old myths and putting a spotlight on the healing power of aggressive music.
Metal, hardcore and their offshoots have long been dismissed by parents, teachers and religious leaders as noise rather than music, written off as disorderly, violent and bad for young people’s health.
Reality tells a different story. Plenty of people dealing with serious illness and mental health struggles have leaned on heavy music to get them through some of the hardest stretches of their lives.
Heavy Healing gathers candid, first-person accounts from artists, fans and industry veterans, people who have turned to (or become) “controversial” musicians for inspiration while recovering from cancer, anxiety, depression, strokes, heart attacks, cerebral palsy, blood diseases, diabetes and HIV/AIDS, among other conditions.
The film features Jesse Leach (Killswitch Engage), Lou Koller (Sick Of It All), Jaret Reddick (Bowling For Soup), Mike IX Williams (Eyehategod), Vinnie Stigma (Agnostic Front), Eddie “Sutton” Pomponio (Leeway), Jesse Malin (Heart Attack, D-Generation), Jimi Hazel (24-7 Spyz), Michael Alago (former A&R executive, Metallica, White Zombie), Michael “Kaves” McLeer (Lordz Of Brooklyn), Jimmy G. Drescher (Murphy’s Law), Brian “Mitts” Daniels (ex-Madball), Adam Blake (H2O), and one of the film’s makers and its inspiration, music business veteran Seth Abrams, among others.
Seth Abrams offers: “I’ve survived several severe, life-altering medical ordeals. When you strip away the doctors and family and friends’ support, it’s the music that gets you through it all. In my case, I specifically leaned on Suicidal Tendencies‘ ‘You Can’t Bring Me Down.’ Heavy Healing gives a voice to those who have relied on heavy, aggressive music to recover from any number of things, medical, emotional, or both.”
Heavy Healing director Howie Abrams adds: “As someone who has worked with underground bands for over four decades, I’ve encountered far too many musicians who are forced to cope with one disorder or another. That said, it’s incredible to see how they’ve been able to rely on the extreme music we grew up with to help them remain motivated and to recover. Our hope with the film is that others can draw just as much inspiration from the music as our interviewees have.”
About the filmmakers:
Seth Abrams has worked across the music industry, from street promotion and marketing to A&R and tour management. An aortic dissection followed by a paralyzing stroke on his left side at age 34 planted the seed that would become Heavy Healing. During the spring of 2019, Seth Abrams also went through seizures and a short-term memory-erasing brain infection, and he has leaned on recorded and live music throughout his recovery ever since.
Howie Abrams has a long history in heavy music, holding A&R, product management and music publishing roles at labels including In-Effect Records, Roadrunner Records, Jive Records/Zomba Music and Warner Chappell. He shifted his focus to books in 2013 and has since published ten, including biographies of H.R. of Bad Brains, Vinnie Stigma of Agnostic Front and the Koller brothers of Sick Of It All, as well as The ABCs Of Metallica. Over the years, he’s also worked with Shelter, Vision Of Disorder, Nuclear Assault, Sepultura, Type O Negative, Misfits and plenty more, and produced television for the MSG network and Fuse. Heavy Healing marks his directorial debut.
Jammi York is a New York City-based freelance photographer and videographer with more than two decades of experience, having shot everything from live music and celebrity portraits to fashion imagery, protests in Nicaragua, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. York‘s work has run in entertainment and news outlets around the world.
The Professor of Shred Joe Stump returns with the pedal firmly to the metal on his new solo album, Lord of the Strings, set for release on October 16th via Silver Lining Music. Pre-orders are available here from 18th August.
The first single taken from Lord of the Strings, aptly titled “Full Throttle”, kicks off the album in blistering style. An unfiltered blast of riff-driven firepower and shreddery, the track sets the tone for what’s to come, delivering a relentless introduction to the electrifying virtuosity that runs throughout the record.
“”Full Throttle” is a high-velocity track incorporating all the elements you’d expect to hear from me on one of my solo records,” Joe Stump affirms. “Fierce Metal riffage combined with strong classically influenced melodies and of course, the usual absurd amount of highly technical blazing shred guitar pyrotechnics. All of it is executed with a modern-day Ritchie Blackmore badass rock attitude. If you’re a guitar enthusiast or a metal fan, there’s certainly plenty of action on this one!”
Stump doesn’t just lay down the speed as he does in “Full Throttle” or revisit the classic grounds of traditional melodic heavy metal on tracks such as “Playing with Fire”, on this 12-track instrumental opus, Stump takes the guitar into lyrical territory with the likes of “In the Hall of the King” and “Eternity of Darkness” with his supremely detailed licks taking the lead narrative role. Stump also exercises moments of poetic acoustic reflection on “Den of Vipers” and “Leipzig 1722”, but overall, Lord of the Strings is a belting, relentless beast, and (as the man himself says) ‘a heavy metal guitar orgy’.
If you crave screaming guitars of Valhallic proportions, this one is for you. Stump is a guitarist who likes his riffs to roar and his leads to flash like lightning. Stump delivers every track with extraordinary power, precision, and purpose, pushing the guitar to its limits while never holding back. From searing riffs to jaw-dropping shred, Lord of the Strings is designed to hit hard, hit fast and leave its mark. This is guitar playing at full force and you won’t want to miss it.
Lord of the Strings will be released on standard CD digipak, special edition CD digipak, digital download, streaming and special D2C bundles.
Joe Stump / All Guitars and Bass Guitar Francisco Palomo / Keyboards and all Drum Programming Produced by Joe Stump and Francisco Palomo Engineered, Mixed, and Mastered by Francisco Palomo at the Dungeon All Guitars recorded at the Dragon’s Den
