In the early ’60s, back when he actually was young, Neil Young was a member of a Winnepeg band called the Squires. Next month, Young and his new band the Chrome Hearts will release their new album Second Song; we have already posted the title track. As previously reported, the new LP includes a few new versions of songs that Young wrote long, long ago. Today, we get to hear the new take on “Casting Me Away From You,” which Young wrote more than 60 years ago.
Rock music has a long history of celebrating a lifestyle of excess, and fans love nothing more than recounting tales of drink- and drug-fuelled hijinks of their favorite musicians.
Throwing a TV out of a hotel window is fun to discuss, but the impact of addiction underpinning many of these stories doesn’t come across meaningfully, and it’s only when reflecting on the missed opportunities and the lives of idols cut short that the dark side comes into frame.
There are some stars who managed to get through the party-focused phase of their lives and embrace sobriety, writing new chapters in their careers without being brought low by the perils of addiction, and telling their stories is just as important.
Ozzy Osbourne
The Prince of Darkness had well-documented addiction issues throughout his life, and regularly visited rehab clinics to stymie his reliance on alcohol and illegal substances, beginning in 1984.
By the time of his death, he had been sober for over a decade, and his son Jack has been on a journey of sobriety for even longer.
His wife, Sharon, was instrumental in many of the interventions over his life and also helped reignite his career in the 2000s with their reality show, introducing a new audience to rock’s original bad boy.
Attending private alcohol rehab centers UK residents can access, as well as equivalent facilities in the US, gave Ozzy an eventual clean break from the alcohol that was his particular peccadillo.
He performed live just days before his death, and it’s impossible to imagine that the Ozzy of the 70s and 80s would still have been capable of doing that if addiction treatment wasn’t available.
Eric Clapton
Another Brit with a drug habit, Clapton was addicted to heroin, starting in the early 70s, and this caused serious disruption to his career at the time, including on-stage collapses and canceled tours.
He stopped using this substance over the course of the decade, but moved on to alcohol as his main substance of abuse.
By the 80s, Clapton reached a low point both personally and professionally, prompting him to eliminate all forms of recreational drugs, with inpatient rehab again being instrumental in this.
As a result, we got his career resurgence in the 90s, with his Unplugged album achieving critical and commercial success he hadn’t seen in years.
Slash
Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash lived up to expectations in terms of living the rock star lifestyle, with addictive issues stemming from alcohol and heroin, along with a cocktail of other drugs taken during the peak of his band’s early success.
This took a near-fatal toll on his body, culminating in a 2001 diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, which medical professionals felt gave him less than a year to live.
Miraculously, Slash pushed forward with his recovery from this point and has been sober for 20 years, in addition to quitting smoking.
His story, like that of his bandmates and peers, shows rock star careers can be rebuilt and kept running for decades, even if addiction once looked likely to end the party early.
Trent Reznor
Reznor has spoken about how drinking gradually progressed into harder drug use as he struggled with fame and his own sense of belonging. His addiction culminated in an accidental heroin overdose in 2000.
After getting sober, he returned with Nine Inch Nails’ With Teeth in 2005 following a six-year gap between studio albums.
That comeback eventually led into an especially productive second phase of his career, including his work with Atticus Ross on film scores.
Joe Walsh
Walsh gives you another particularly clean career-rebuilding story. By the early 1990s, his dependence on alcohol and drugs had reached the point where he doubted that he could perform or write music sober.
Eagles members Glenn Frey and Don Henley encouraged him to enter recovery as the band was preparing to reunite. Walsh has said he became abstinent in 1994.
He then had to effectively relearn how to perform and create without alcohol. His recovery coincided with the Eagles’ enormously successful reunion era, beginning with Hell Freezes Over.
Walsh later described gradually rediscovering his ability to write and play comfortably while sober.
Duff McKagan
You already have Slash, so Duff could either strengthen the Guns N’ Roses angle or feel slightly repetitive depending on how many sections you want.
McKagan’s alcohol use eventually caused acute pancreatitis in 1994, and doctors warned him that his condition was life-threatening. He subsequently became sober and had to learn how to perform without substances.
His post-addiction career has been unusually broad.
He played in Neurotic Outsiders and Velvet Revolver, developed solo projects, wrote books, and eventually returned to Guns N’ Roses for the band’s major reunion era. In a 2023 interview, he described his current life and career as a “second act.”
James Hetfield
Hetfield would also be a strong choice, although his story is less neat because recovery has involved more than one treatment period.
He entered rehab in 2001 while Metallica was going through one of the most turbulent periods in its history.
His treatment and return became a major part of the period documented in Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. He later described rehab as fundamentally changing his priorities and his approach to life.
Hetfield returned to treatment in 2019. In a 2023 Metallica interview, he described that period as another “rebirth” and said he needed to stop band activities temporarily to deal with his personal health.
Metallica subsequently released 72 Seasons and continued touring at stadium level.
Nikki Sixx
Sixx is almost tailor-made for the subject. His heroin addiction became severe enough that he suffered a near-fatal overdose in 1987. Recovery subsequently became a major part of his identity and later work.
His career continued with Mötley Crüe, but the more interesting second-act angle is what he did with his experience afterward.
The Heroin Diaries became a bestseller; he formed Sixx: A.M., and he became involved in addiction-awareness initiatives.
Sixx has said that after becoming sober, his creativity and personal relationships improved dramatically.
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper would work particularly well because his comeback was substantial.
His alcoholism became so serious that he was hospitalized, and he has said he finally stopped drinking in 1983. He described his earlier drinking as something he had come to depend on simply to function.
That period was followed by a major career revival later in the decade.
Cooper returned to touring, found a new generation of listeners, and ultimately developed one of rock’s longest-running sober careers.
Elton John
Elton isn’t exclusively a “rock star” in the hard-rock sense, but his story may actually be one of the strongest available.
He entered treatment for alcohol and drug addiction in 1990 and has repeatedly described that point as the beginning of a completely different life.
His post-sobriety career included The Lion King, “Candle in the Wind 1997,” hugely successful tours, continued albums, and decades of AIDS activism.
He also became someone other musicians, including Eminem, turned to for advice about recovery.
Summary
The most striking part of these stories is not that addiction became part of rock history, but that it did not have to be the final chapter.
For musicians such as Ozzy Osbourne, Eric Clapton, Slash, Trent Reznor, and others, sobriety created the chance to return to the studio, get back on stage, rebuild damaged relationships, and keep making music long after their most chaotic years.
Rock culture may have spent decades turning excess into mythology, but the careers that survived tell a more important story.
Getting help did not make these musicians less compelling. In many cases, it gave them the time and stability needed to produce some of their most significant work.
Veteran Valparaiso-born thrashers Critical Defiance are firing off the latest .50 cal salvo from their forthcoming record, Rivers of Blood. That track, which we’re premiering today, is “The Feeling Destroyer,” and it’s a pure weapons-grade distillation of the band’s patented “fast thrash metal violence.” Opening with woozy riffs and blistering war drum blasts, Critical Defiance channels the suffocating South American darkness of their distinguished forefathers in Sarcófago and Sepultura. “The Feeling Destroyer” accelerates at a frantic, damn near untenable pace, proto-black metal vokills spewing antisocial venom until the song crashes into a wall of absolutely bonkers soloing. Extra bonus points are awarded for the unexpected inversion of an old-school metal trope as a foreboding acoustic piece plays at the end of the track. Fine work, indeed. Sebastian Palomino’s production gives the song a clarity that sacrifices none of Critical Defiance’s intensity. Give it a listen before Rivers of Blood drops on Dying Victims Productions this September.
…
…
Rivers of Blood releases September 25 via Dying Victims Productions.
In January 1977, the Great Lakes Blizzard struck the Niagara region of North America. Temperatures plummeted to -18c degrees and hurricane-level winds smashed windows and doors. Anyone driving on the motorway was forced to abandon their cars and try and make it home on foot. Two thousand children were trapped in their schools by nearly three metres of snow over the weekend, and rescue workers took on thirty six hour shifts to try and keep Ontario and New York State running. Five days after the Blizzard hit, the area was declared safe again, at a cost of $300 million worth of damage.
Among those affected were the parents of Alexisonfire, and their suffering and fear became distilled into their 2006 album, ‘Crisis’. It was a turning point in the Alexis sound; any whimsy or light-heartedness is replaced with brooding anxiety, and also the moment that their career accelerated into the stratosphere. ‘Crisis’ debuted at number one in the Canadian charts and was certified platinum a year later. Two decades later, when it was played in London, the show at Wembley Arena sold out months in advance. ‘Crisis’ became the definitive Alexisonfire album from the second it came out.
“Alright! This is from our hearts!” The first line of ‘Drunks, Lovers, Sinners, Saints’ feels like a declaration, and a chorus leading with “are you even listening?” is a dare. That’s what makes ‘Crisis’ so great; it’s so provocative without ever striking an individual. The entire world outside of their bubble is what needs to be stirred into action, or dragged kicking and screaming into their universe. Yet somehow their bubble encompasses all of us and everywhere, and perhaps that’s what’s made ‘Crisis’ such a universal success. They’ve taken their central experience and made it ours, to understand those trapped by the Blizzard and to hold it close to our own lives. When Dallas Green screams “The streets are in distress / The sun suffocates behind darkened skies” on ‘This Could Be Anywhere In The World’, is he talking about the small towns choked by snow in 1977, a war zone in the Middle East, or a derelict council estate in South London? It could be all of them, or none of them, or whatever we want to it to mean in our experiences.
When they tell a story, they do it with magnificent subtlety. “A man sits at his desk one year from retirement / And he’s up for review, not quite sure what to do / Each passing year the workload grows,” howls George Pettitt on ‘Boiled Frogs’. Ostensibly he’s retelling a story of his father’s dispute with a former boss, but with each micro-narrative they pour universal messages. Each taut little song is it’s own set of images, and that has to be the biggest turning point represented in ‘Crisis’. This was the point where they told their own stories rather than relying on second hand experiences. Just compare the lyrics to the title track to 2004’s ‘That Girl Possessed’ – who cares about The Exorcist when their own experiences hold the same drama within them? It’s the everyday darkness floating throughout this record which makes it hypnotic. A couple fighting over death on the hollow ‘You Burn First’, the raw vitriol of the betrayed that sweeps through ‘Keep It On Wax’, the domestic desperation of the slow-burning ‘Rough Hands’; all of these are such small personal incidents, yet when they’re expanded out into song, they’re transformed into all-consuming bleakness which lingers around you.
In true Alexisonfire style, the band didn’t let the explosion of ‘Crisis’ fade into smoke. As soon as it was out, they toured on and off for a year, and their tour mates started to build on what they heard of the new Alexis. Cancer Bats’ 2008 ‘Hail Destroyer’ record was hugely influenced by ‘Crisis’, as was hometown neighbours Silverstein’s ‘Arrivals & Departures’ in 2007. Even as late as 2015, 36 Crazyfists credited ‘Crisis’ as being a big influence on ‘Time And Trauma’. That’s another wonderful aspect of ‘Crisis’; it lingers through the ages, from a spark in the seventies through to an exploration of generational experiences in 2006, to a very frustrated writer in the early 2010s who would use this record (along with Motörhead’s Greatest Hits, Linkin Park’s ‘Hybrid Theory’, and the gangster-larping magnum opus that is ‘Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes’ by Social Distortion) to scream out her employment misery at any opportune moment. While my apologies go to anyone who heard me singing ‘To A Friend’ at a bus stop in the suburbs after a bad day, I can’t be ashamed for feeling a power in the way that Alexisonfire turned trauma and terror into a reclamation of your own destiny.
‘Crisis’ is a triumph which stands strong after twenty years, and will continue to be the pinnacle of perseverance music for decades to come.
The August Burns Red singer is aiming high for a collaboration, but shares that there's photographic footage of this person donning one of his band's t-shirts. Continue reading…
Holding Absence have shared the title track of their upcoming new album ‘Modern Life Is Lonely’, and it showcases them at their most soaring and savage.
The song blends everything that makes the band such a compelling asset to the scene, with post-hardcore choruses clashing with intricate lo-fi atmospheres throughout, before a guttural closing that pushes the band to its heaviest sound yet.
It’s a surefire sign of how much the band have pushed and pulled at expectations of themselves whilst continuing to find new ways to guide their sound. With the song serving as the title track to this new record, it looks to umbrella everything that this era want to be defined by. And in the case of how this epic feels, they have succeeded in showing off what they are capable of.
Vocalist Lucas Woodland had this to say about the tune:
“After the release of our album was pushed back a few weeks, we knew we had to offer something special to our fans to tide them over until the new release day… And what better song to do that than the title track!
Modern Life Is Lonely – the song – is steeped in Lofi, whilst still being able to juxtapose itself against one of the heaviest moments in our discography. We’re hoping this’ll get people even more excited for the whole record to drop in just under a month!”
‘Modern Life Is Lonely’ will now be released on September 18 via Sumerian Records.
Here is previous offering ‘Lucid Love’:
Holding Absence will be hitting the road as support for Enter Shikari later this year alongside The Callous Daoboys. Here are all of the dates:
NOVEMBER
03 – HAMBURG Sporthalle 04 – MUNICH Zenith 05 – LEIPZIG Haus Auensee 06 – DUSSELDORF Mitsubishi Electric Hall 07 – BERLIN Columbiahalle 10 – BRUSSELS Forest National 11 – TILBURG 013 13 – NOTTINGHAM Motorpoint Arena 14 – CARDIFF Utilita Arena 15 – HULL Connexin Live 18 – GLASGOW OVO Hydro 19 – MANCHESTER Co-op Live 20 – LONDON Alexandra Palace 21 – LONDON Alexandra Palace
