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Ghost Hounds frontman Savnt joins the Blues Rock Show to discuss his remarkable journey into the band, opening for The Rolling Stones, and the making of their new album, Justified. He also shares the story behind his stage name, the challenges of joining an established band, his musical influences, and the pressure of covering The Rolling Stones’ iconic “Gimme Shelter.”

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Matt Sorum has said he’d reform Velvet Revolver with Lzzy Hale on lead vocals, telling 100 FM The Pike‘s Mike Hsu: “Yeah, I mean, come on. I’d do it. I don’t know what those other two guys are up to, but give ’em a call.” Those two guys are Slash and Duff McKagan. Nobody has approached them, Hale hasn’t been asked, and the drummer laughed twice while saying it — but the idea didn’t come from nowhere, and the reason is a comment Geezer Butler made to Sorum earlier this year.

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Scott Penfold covers the Velvet Revolver story on today’s Metal Breakdown Daily — what Sorum said, the Geezer Butler quote that started it, and the reason this exact conversation has happened before. Download the free Loaded Radio App on Apple iOS and Google Play and get it every weekday morning.

First, what Geezer said

Because this is the part that makes the rest of it make sense.

In March, Sorum produced the inaugural Sound & Vision Awards at the Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs — a benefit night honouring Paul Rodgers and Geezer Butler, with proceeds going to Adopt The Arts. The bill was absurd: Corey Taylor, Glenn Hughes, Nuno Bettencourt, Steve Stevens, Robert DeLeo, Phil X, Charlie Starr and Lzzy Hale, among others.

Hale sang Bad Company’s “Shooting Star.”

And afterwards, according to Sorum, Geezer Butler came up to him and said: that’s the best singer I’ve heard since Tina Turner.

Sorum’s reply, in his own words: “I think you’re right.”

Sit with that for a second. The man who wrote the words to “Paranoid” and “War Pigs”, who has spent fifty-five years standing next to and in front of some of the greatest singers in rock music, watched Lzzy Hale do one Bad Company cover and reached for Tina Turner.

Sorum’s own reason for booking her was more practical. He wanted some female energy on that stage, he said — he didn’t want it to be a bunch of dudes. So he invited her, and she killed it.

Then the question

Hsu, having praised the performance, put the obvious thing to him: what about Velvet Revolver, with Lzzy on vocals?

Sorum’s full answer:

“Whew. Yeah, I mean, come on. I’d do it. I don’t know what those other two guys are up to, but give ’em a call.”

Both of those laughs are in the transcript, and it’s worth being straight about what this is. It’s a drummer on a radio show being asked a fun hypothetical and saying yes to it. There’s no approach, no plan, and no comment from anybody else involved.

But it isn’t nothing either, because of who “those other two guys” are and what happened the last time this came up.

The part nobody’s connecting

Velvet Revolver have effectively been dormant since April 2008, when they dismissed Scott Weiland. Weiland was found dead on his tour bus in December 2015, at 48.

Since then the band have played exactly once — a four-song set in January 2012 at a Los Angeles tribute concert for the late songwriter John O’Brien, with Weiland back on vocals.

And in between, they had a replacement lined up.

It was reported that Velvet Revolver were going to team up with Corey Taylor. They got as far as recording demos of ten songs together.

Slash vetoed it.

So when Matt Sorum says he’d do it and adds “I don’t know what those other two guys are up to, but give ’em a call,” he isn’t just being polite about absent colleagues. He’s pointing directly at the man who killed the last version of this, and he’s doing it on the radio.

That’s a considerably more pointed remark than it reads as at first pass.

Why Lzzy Hale is a better idea than it sounds

The instinct with a suggestion like this is to file it as fantasy booking. It isn’t, and here’s why.

She has already done this job. In 2022 Lzzy Hale spent a stint fronting Skid Row — a legacy hard rock band with an enormous catalogue, a famously identifiable original singer, and an audience with strong opinions. She walked into it, sang the songs, and got out with her reputation enhanced. There is nobody else in rock who has that specific experience.

The range fits. Velvet Revolver material sits in the territory Halestorm operate in — big, dirty, hook-driven hard rock with a singer who has to carry a room. It’s not a stretch for her voice the way a lot of hypothetical pairings are.

And she is the most in-demand guest vocalist in rock, which is why she was on that Palm Springs bill in the first place. She sits at number one on our ranking of the best female-fronted metal bands for reasons that have nothing to do with the category and everything to do with being one of the best singers currently working.

There’s also a precedent inside the band’s own history. Velvet Revolver ran a two-year public singer search when they formed, complete with an open invitation for anybody to send in demos. They have never been precious about where a frontperson comes from.

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What Velvet Revolver actually were

Worth the context for anyone who wasn’t paying attention in 2004.

The band formed in 2002, built out of three-fifths of the classic Guns N’ Roses lineup — Slash, Duff McKagan and Sorum — plus guitarist Dave Kushner. After the two-year search they settled on Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots.

They released two albums through RCA and Sony BMG: Contraband in 2004 and Libertad in 2007. Contraband went to number one in the United States and sold over two million copies, and “Slither” won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance.

Then it fell apart, the way most supergroups do. Weiland was out by April 2008 and the band has been in stasis ever since — one of the more unresolved stories in modern rock, given that all four surviving members are still active and on reasonable terms.

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The night this all came from

The Velvet Revolver line is the headline, but the thing Sorum was actually promoting deserves a mention because it’s a genuinely good cause.

Sound & Vision Live is a limited-edition double vinyl album capturing that March performance, honouring Paul Rodgers and Geezer Butler. Every artist on it donated their time.

All of it supports Adopt The Arts, the foundation Sorum co-founded in 2012 with actress Jane Lynch, which restores and sustains music education in underserved public elementary schools.

The record was mixed by Kemble Walters at Goodnoise Studios in Palm Springs and mastered by Grammy-winning engineer Howie Weinberg, with artwork and liner notes by Glen Wexler.

And the Lzzy Hale performance of “Shooting Star” is on YouTube, which given what Geezer Butler said about it is probably worth six minutes of your afternoon.

TL;DR

• Matt Sorum says he’d reform Velvet Revolver with Lzzy Hale on lead vocals, telling 100 FM The Pike: “I’d do it. I don’t know what those other two guys are up to, but give ’em a call.”
• “Those other two guys” are Slash and Duff McKagan. Neither has commented, and Hale has not been approached.
• The idea came out of the Sound & Vision Awards in Palm Springs in March, where Hale sang Bad Company’s “Shooting Star.”
• Geezer Butler told Sorum afterwards that she was “the best singer I’ve heard since Tina Turner.” Sorum’s response: “I think you’re right.”
• Velvet Revolver already tried to replace Scott Weiland once — with Corey Taylor, with whom they recorded ten demos. Slash vetoed it.
• The band has been dormant since 2008, playing once in 2012. Weiland died in 2015.
• Lzzy Hale has done this job before, spending a stint fronting Skid Row in 2022.

FAQ

A drummer’s yes, a Geezer Butler endorsement, and one guitarist who’s said no before. Would you want to hear Lzzy Hale sing “Slither”? Tell me below. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.

The post Matt Sorum Says He Is In For Velvet Revolver Reunion With Lzzy Hale On Vocals appeared first on Loaded Radio.

Goodnight Nobody’s music melds the knotty rhythms and dissonance of noise and math rock with the melodic hooks of

DEFILED return with Altered State, once again delivering the raw, tight and deliberately unpredictable world that has defined their sound for decades. The Tokyo outfit work with short, three‑minute tracks built on a stripped‑down, no‑frills approach. The album was created by guitarist Yusuke Sumita alongside vocalist‑guitarist Shinichiro Hamada, bassist Takachika Nakajima and drummer Keisuke Hamada. […]

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Posted on September 21st 2026, 1:30pm

The inimitable and borderless Japanese poet and singer-songwriter Nanaco Sato has shared a new single titled “Lust –