Trailblazing guitarist/vocalist Lita Ford is proud to announce she has officially signed to Frontiers Music Srl! In more exciting news, LITA will be debuting her new single, “Dracula,” on October 27th. The upcoming single was produced by Gary Hoey, mixed by Max Norman, and was performed by LITA, Gary Hoey, and Bobby Rock on drums.
On the signing, LITA shares:
“It’s been a long journey to create this magical dark fairytale album for everyone to enjoy. I needed the perfect team to make that happen and to help give this powerful record a life it deserves. I am so happy to say I have officially sealed the deal with Frontiers Music Srl, as we are thrilled, excited and ready to rise with the 1st new single on OCTOBER 27th, 2026. Good Night. Good Bye..Prepare To Die ‘DRACULA’!! Brace yourself.”
Check out Lita’s Facebook and Instagram for a sneak preview of “Dracula!”
Jeff Stevenson, GM of Frontiers Label Group, comments:
“We are incredibly proud to welcome LITA FORD to the Frontiers Label Group family. LITA is a true rock icon—an artist whose influence, musicianship, and unmistakable attitude have inspired generations of fans and musicians around the world. Beyond her extraordinary legacy, what excites us most is that LITA continues to look forward creatively. We’re honored that she has chosen Frontiers for this next chapter, and we can’t wait for fans to hear what she has in store.”
About LITA FORD:
LITA FORD began her career in 1976 as the lead guitarist of The Runaways, the groundbreaking all-female rock band behind classics like “Cherry Bomb” and “Queens of Noise.” After the band’s breakup in 1979, FORD forged her own path and quickly established herself as one of the most influential women in hard rock and heavy metal.
FORD launched her solo career in 1983 with ‘Out for Blood,’ followed by ‘Dancin’ on the Edge’ in 1984, which earned her a Grammy nomination and produced the hit “Gotta Let Go.” She reached new heights with her 1988 self-titled album, ‘Lita,’ a multi-platinum success that featured the iconic singles “Kiss Me Deadly” and “Close My Eyes Forever,” her celebrated duet with Ozzy Osbourne. She went on to release ‘Stiletto,’ ‘Dangerous Curves,’ ‘Black,’ and ‘Living Like a Runaway,’ earning additional Grammy nominations along the way.
Over the course of her career, FORD has been recognized with the Guitar Player Lifetime Achievement Award, Guitar Player Certified Legend Award, and induction into the Guitar Player Hall of Fame. In 2017, she was honored as the First Lady of Rock Guitar at the She Rocks Awards. Her influence has also extended beyond music, with appearances in film, television and video games, while her 2016 memoir, “Living Like a Runaway,” became a national bestseller. Her iconic B.C. Rich Warlock guitar was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s permanent collection in 2021.
Brazilian extreme metal’s early underground provides a foundation for BLASPHEMANIAC’s forthcoming second album. The band cite Vulcano and Sarcófago alongside Sodom, Kreator, Venom, Hellhammer and Bathory as reference points for a record that combines black, death, thrash and speed metal. Ataque Diabólico a Sacralidade Brasileira arrives on 25 November 2026 via Adirondack Black Mass. A […]
Type O Negative never played ‘Nettie’ live, and in a new clip from his conversation with Loaded Radio, Kenny Hickey says it was never up for discussion. ‘It’s about his mother,’ Hickey says of the World Coming Down track Peter Steele named for Annette Ratajczyk. ‘Sacred place for him.’ That was the only song Steele kept off the stage for an emotional reason.
The rest of the setlist fights were something else: a frontman who, by Hickey’s account, would release a record and then refuse to play anything from it on the tour promoting it, because of something he’d seen at a Black Sabbath show in the 1970s. The clip, from Hickey’s hour on The Loaded Radio Podcast, can be seen below, with his stories of jamming ‘Walk’ with Pantera every night and learning a Down riff two minutes before walking out at Jones Beach.
WATCH THE EXCLUSIVE VIDEO CLIP NOW:
‘Nettie’: The Song Peter Steele Would Not Sing Live
Asked whether the band ever tried to perform ‘Nettie,’ Hickey’s answer was immediate: ‘No. It’s about his mother.’ Steele never refused it in a dramatic way; it simply was never going to happen.
‘Nettie’ closes the first half of World Coming Down, the 1999 album Steele wrote in the shadow of his father’s death and his own collapse, and it’s the most undefended thing in the Type O Negative catalog: no irony, no horror-movie frame, just a son’s letter to his mother. Fans have spent twenty-seven years asking why a band that played ‘Everything Dies’ and ‘Everyone I Love Is Dead’ night after night never touched it. Hickey’s answer is that those songs were about grief in general and this one wasn’t. ‘Sacred place for him,’ he says, and leaves it there.
Were there other songs Steele refused on principle? ‘Not for that,’ Hickey says. ‘Deep emotional reason? No.’ The other refusals were about something Hickey still sounds exasperated by.
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Why Steele Refused To Play New Songs On Tour
Hickey says Steele’s habit was to release a record, go out on the tour supporting it, and then refuse to play anything from it, on the theory that ‘nobody knows the music.’
‘We’d release a record, and you’d go out on tour to support it, and he refused to play the songs on the record,’ Hickey says. ‘I’m like, what are you doing?’ Steele’s reasoning: ‘Nobody knows the music. They’re just looking at me like I’m an [expletive].’ Hickey traces it to one night. ‘He based it all on this memory, when he went to see Black Sabbath in the ’70s and they played some new songs off the record, and he didn’t know them. So in his mind, nobody knew the music.’
Hickey’s counter, delivered more than once over the years: ‘Peter, we’re out here promoting the record. We’ve got to play the songs from the record.’ It was, he says, ‘just another one of those things we struggled with,’ and it reframes the ‘Nettie’ question. ‘Forget about Nettie. We had other problems getting any of the songs into the set.’ For a band whose live recordings lean so hard on Bloody Kisses and October Rust, that’s the explanation: the newer the song, the harder Kenny had to fight for it.
Dimebag, Black Tooth Grins And ‘Walk’ Every Night
Hickey never formally jammed with Dimebag Darrell in a rehearsal room, but when Type O toured with Pantera in the ’90s he walked out and played ‘Walk’ with them almost every night, usually after being handed a Black Tooth Grin.
Did he and Dime ever plug in together? ‘I don’t remember, actually,’ Hickey says. ‘But I think it was inevitable.’ He’d played Dime the demos for Seventh Void, the band he and Johnny Kelly formed in the mid-2000s, ‘and he absolutely [expletive] loved it.’ The plan was for the Abbott brothers to be involved; by the time Seventh Void arranged for Vinnie Paul to produce Heaven Is Gone, Dime had already been killed. ‘I’m sure we would have, at that point,’ Hickey says of the jam that never happened.
What did happen was ‘Walk.’ ‘The times I plugged in were to play Walk on stage with them,’ he says. ‘Almost every night.’ Dime would appear with a Black Tooth Grin, the Crown Royal-and-Coke that was his calling card, and needle him: ‘Oh, what, it’s not cool enough? You don’t want to come out, Kenny?’ Hickey’s reply: ‘No, it’s not that, Dime. It’s just that I don’t want to go back out on stage. I just want to drink and be an [expletive] all night.’ He went out anyway.
‘Every night they’d give me a guitar, and we played the song and had a ball.’ The crew gave the guest guitar its own channel, ‘so if you [expletive] up and you can’t play it, they just put you lower.’
Learning A Down Riff Two Minutes Before Jones Beach
The jam Hickey rates above all of those happened this summer: Pepper Keenan handed him his own guitar on stage with Down at Jones Beach on Long Island, August 29, 2026, for a song Hickey had never played.
‘What was more cool was going out and playing with Down in Long Island,’ he says. ‘Pepper actually gives you his guitar. I just learned the riff two minutes before.’ He didn’t know the song? ‘I didn’t know anything. He showed me the riff on stage before he was handing me the guitar.’ The brief was a lead out of the riff in F-sharp minor, ‘and that’s it.’ From the floor, it looked rehearsed.
‘It really put me out there,’ Hickey says, ‘but I had so much fun doing it.’ Then, with the shrug of a man who has played sludge since before it had a name: ‘If I don’t know how to improvise in F-sharp minor by now, I should give up.’
Those slow, dragging riffs are, as Scott points out in the clip, Hickey’s native language; Down’s Jimmy Bower and Kirk Windstein were building Eyehategod and Crowbar in New Orleans at the same time Hickey and Steele were building Type O in Brooklyn. ‘That’s up my alley,’ Hickey says. ‘I could slide right into that.’
Where Kenny Hickey Is Now
Hickey spoke to Loaded Radio in the week of Type O Negative’s ongoing archival releases and his recent update on the band’s legacy. The full hour, including the Bloody Kisses years, the Peter Steele stories that didn’t make the clip, and what he and Johnny Kelly make of the band’s second life with a generation that never saw them, is on The Loaded Radio Podcast. If you only know Type O from the hits, start there, then go find ‘Nettie.’ Just don’t expect to ever hear it from a stage. That was the point.
TL;DR
Type O Negative never played ‘Nettie’ live because, per Kenny Hickey, it was Peter Steele’s song for his mother: ‘Sacred place for him.’ It was the only song he kept off the set for an emotional reason.
Steele routinely refused to play songs from a new album on the tour promoting it, convinced ‘nobody knows the music,’ a belief Hickey traces to a Black Sabbath show Steele saw in the 1970s.
Hickey played ‘Walk’ on stage with Pantera ‘almost every night’ on tour, usually after Dimebag handed him a Black Tooth Grin. Dime loved the Seventh Void demos; he was killed before the planned collaboration happened.
On August 29, 2026, Pepper Keenan handed Hickey his guitar on stage with Down at Jones Beach for a riff Hickey had learned two minutes earlier.
The full interview is on The Loaded Radio Podcast; the clip is embedded above.
FAQ
Did Type O Negative ever play ‘Nettie’ live?
No. According to guitarist Kenny Hickey, the band never attempted it. ‘Nettie,’ from 1999’s World Coming Down, was written by Peter Steele about his mother, and Hickey says it was a ‘sacred place for him.’ It was the only Type O Negative song Steele kept off the stage for an emotional reason.
What is the Type O Negative song ‘Nettie’ about?
‘Nettie’ is Peter Steele’s song for his mother, Annette Ratajczyk, known as Nettie. It appears on World Coming Down (1999), an album shaped by the death of Steele’s father and his own health and addiction struggles. Unlike the album’s other songs about loss, it has no irony or horror framing, which is why Steele never performed it.
Why did Peter Steele refuse to play new songs live?
Kenny Hickey says Steele believed that ‘nobody knows the music’ on a new record and that audiences would stare at him blankly. Hickey traces the belief to a Black Sabbath concert Steele attended in the 1970s, where the band played new songs he didn’t recognize. Hickey says getting any new material into Type O Negative’s sets was a recurring struggle.
Did Kenny Hickey play with Pantera?
Yes, as a nightly guest. When Type O Negative toured with Pantera in the 1990s, Hickey came out to play ‘Walk’ with the band almost every night, usually after Dimebag Darrell handed him a Black Tooth Grin. He and Dime never had a formal jam session; Dime loved the demos of Hickey’s band Seventh Void, but was killed in 2004 before a planned collaboration, and Vinnie Paul later produced Seventh Void’s album Heaven Is Gone.
When did Kenny Hickey play with Down?
On August 29, 2026, at Northwell at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, during Down’s set at Berzerkus Fest. Pepper Keenan handed Hickey his own guitar on stage; Hickey says he learned the riff two minutes beforehand and improvised a lead in F-sharp minor.
After releasing the song of the same name last week, NOAHFINNCE has now revealed all of the details of their new full-length album.
‘WONKY’ will be released on February 19 2027, via Hopeless Records, and serves as the follow-up to 2024’s ‘GROWING UP ON THE INTERNET’.
Noah had this to say about the record in a stark Instagram post:
“Wonky is a direct reaction to the state of the world right now – it’ll drive you crazy if you let it: The rise of the alt right. The increase in anti-trans legislation. The polarisation of everyday people. The hopelessness that my generation feels about the future. The dystopian way in which billionaires, AI and algorithms dictate decisions that make life infinitely more difficult for the masses. And the unrelenting anxiety caused by all of the above.
But it’s also an album about: Accepting yourself for who you are. Rejecting the notion that other people get to define your worth. Celebrating the differences that draw us to each other. Persevering despite everything that’s thrown at you.
It took 2 years to write this thing and FUCK was it worth the wait. This is the most amount of work I’ve ever put into anything in my life and I could not be happier with the final product. It’s not just an album, it takes you through a journey and I can’t wait for you to catch up.”
The artwork looks like this:
1. w3Lc0me 2 w0nky 2. RAYGUN 3. STUBBORN 4. THREES 5. fr33f@ll 6. WHAT IF 7. TOO SENSITIVE 8. MR OVERWHELM 9. CROSS EYED 10. DEAD IN AMERICA 11. d.3.a.d 12. WONKY 13. an att3mpt @ p3rs3veranc3 14. ALWAYS TOMORROW
As you can see, it features the previously shared ‘MR OVERWHELM’ and ‘TOO SENSITIVE’, as well as the freshly unveiled ‘WONKY’.
Noah had this to say about the title track, which was co-written with As It Is’ Patty Walters and Ben Biss:
“This is my first fully acoustic song since Asthma Attack came out 8 YEARS AGO and woweee this is very much another NOAHFINNCE song to cry to. Patty asked the question, ‘Why have you never written the classic acoustic emo song?’ This is what came out of it. It’s about accepting being different/a little bit fucked up and letting go of the idea that you need to change in order to be worthy.”
Noah is heading out on tour from today, and here are the dates you can catch him:
OCTOBER
22 – CARDIFF Y Plas, Cardiff 23 – BIRMINGHAM O2 Institute 24 – LEEDS Stylus 26 – NOTTINGHAM Rescue Rooms 27 – LONDON Electric Ballroom 29 – GLASGOW Saint Lukes 30 – NEWCASTLE Newcastle University 31 – MANCHESTER Academy 2
And Noah was also recently a guest on Rock Sound 7of30, which you can catch up with below:
I have always had a thing for bubblegum music. It’s just fun to listen to. I would also argue that it’s not as easy to write as many people think. Writing catchy pop songs is a true art. Have you ever tried to write one yourself? It’s not easy to do. Or at least do it well. The 1910 Fruitgum Company was one of the most successful bubblegum pop groups of the late 1960s, helping define a musical movement built around catchy melodies, upbeat rhythms, and irresistible sing-along choruses. Originally formed in Linden, New Jersey, as Jeckell and the Hydes,
Sci-fi and speed metal. If that isn’t enough to get your hyperdrives boosted, then I don’t know what will. This particular combo isn’t as well represented in the metalverse as some of the more common varieties—sci-fi and black metal, campy horror and death metal, you know the ones—which puts Swedish speed freaks Armory in a prime position to dominate. With three full lengths under their belt so far, one of which positively received by our own Ape ov Steel, and a new vocalist at the helm, what new wonders await in fourth excursion Echoes of the Astrolith?
Well, MOAR speed, of course! This is high-octane, laser-focused fare set to collide with Earth at warp 9.5. Touchstones ranging from Agent Steel to Bütcher to Riot City inform Armory’s various traipses through speedy riffs, heavy metal bravado, and black metal flourishes. Melodies move with an almost Xoth-like wiggliness that brings a lot of whimsy and exuberance to otherwise dark and seedy songwriting (“Interceptor Squadron,” “Frequencies of Terror”). Riffs pound and pummel with the vigor of death metal without venturing into the structures that genre often builds, which gives Armory a sense of heft and fullness not unlike what Dark Angel’s seminal Darkness Descends must’ve felt like when it was new (“Sanity Disposed,” “The Final Invention,” “Astrolith (Rising)”). Of course, it wouldn’t be speed metal without 10,000^10 ft/lbs of torque to send it flying off the galactic rails, and thankfully Armory fueled up extra before launching. Echoes of the Astrolith moves with an urgency rarified even in this vigorous style (“Return of the True Godz,” “Frequencies of Terror,” “Pillars of Fire”).
While new vocalist Chris Rostoff acquits himself with aplomb here, guitarists G.Sundin and N.Ingelman steal the show and make Echoes of the Astrolith a clinic in guitar wizardry. If it isn’t by way of screaming solos that nosedive and pitch back up in aerobatic fashion (“Interceptor Squadron,” “Frequencies of Terror”), Armory’s axe arsenal displays electrified pyrotechnics through monolithic riffs that find a perfect center position between death, thrash, and speed (“Astrolith (Rising)”); or with melodious leads and tremolo flares that writhe impatiently from measure to measure as they pull the rest of the band into unexplored space (“Return of the True Godz,” “Cosmic Dreams,” “Pillars of Fire”). A.Holmström blisters his way through asteroid fields with double-bass pummels, sharp blasts, and menacing gallops all throughout. Yet, his unhinged fill work sends his weaponry into overdrive at every opportunity to leave even the space dust in Armory’s wake obliterated (“Interceptor Squadron,” “Omens,” “Sanity Disposed”). Chris Rostoff, as previously mentioned, proves himself an absolute powerhouse on the mic here. His sneering bark and soaring wails are a perfect fit for this sound, and his scalpel-precise pitch-work is nothing short of astounding at the record’s peaks (“Interceptor Squadron,” “Pillars of Fire”). I just wish I could hear Jesper Lundin’s bass better. I’m sure he’s keeping up with the band with ease, but his presence lacks oomph in many quadrants and what playing I do hear with clarity follows the path laid by the rest of the rhythm section (“Frequencies of Terror”).
Quality speed metal albums like this make me rethink my high estimation of other quality acts like Hellripper ever so slightly, but it’s hard to know what kind of staying power Echoes of the Astrolith has. Certain highlights such as “Interceptor Squadron” are sure to be trapped in the event horizon that is my playlist rotation. At 39 minutes, Echoes as a whole is tight enough to get regular spins out of me regardless of long-term memorability. However, a small question of consistency in songwriting quality nags at my thoughts. “Cosmic Dreams” is fun, but its mid-paced and slightly repetitive riffing introduces a poorly timed speed bump in the first quarter. In the second half, fluffy three-minute instrumental interlude “Spaceworkz” once again interrupts Echoes of the Astrolith’s momentum right before two high-octane bangers save the final third from certain doom. In the center, Echoes of the Astrolith keeps up a consistent level of songwriting quality—one that any band in this space should be proud to have penned—but a preponderance of overlong intros (“Omens”), and overlong outros (“The Final Invention”) conspire to pull these works back from greatness.
You know speed metal is really fucking good if I’m close to calling it Great, and Echoes of the Astrolith is almost great. Armory deliver an impressive salvo of cooler-than-you’ll-ever-be speed metal tracks embellished with blackened, deathened, and thrashened elements the likes of which are sure to set your blasters to kill. If you’re looking for something to jam while you scream directly into a space-bound dogfight with the enemy mothership, look no further than Echoes of the Astrolith!
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Sci-fi and speed metal. If that isn’t enough to get your hyperdrives boosted, then I don’t know what will. This particular combo isn’t as well represented in the metalverse as some of the more common varieties—sci-fi and black metal, campy horror and death metal, you know the ones—which puts Swedish speed freaks Armory in a prime position to dominate. With three full lengths under their belt so far, one of which 