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The group hit the stage in Berlin, Germany for their first-ever live performance.

The post Watch: Blue Medusa Livestreamed Their Surprise Debut Show Yesterday appeared first on Theprp.com.

After hitting me with one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen, Rox Pink a.k.a. RØRY jumped up into the “definitely see what she does next” category. I’m still surprised to realise that this is only her second full album, her older material being standalone singles and a pair of EPs (if we limit … Continue reading Album Review: RØRY – BLOODLETTING

Public sales for 70000TONS OF METAL 2027 will begin on Monday, September 7 at 12:00 PM EDT, corresponding to 18:00 CEST in Hungary and Central Europe. Reservations will open through the event’s official website, with places limited to 3,000 passengers. The next edition of the heavy metal cruise will depart from Miami on January 14, […]

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Four musicians from different corners of hard rock and metal have joined ACCEPT around a song first released more than four decades ago. The new version of “Losers and Winners” features Blind Guardian vocalist Hansi Kürsch, guitarist Paul Gilbert, bassist Chuck Garric and drummer Tommy Aldridge. Originally included on Balls to the Wall in 1983, […]

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Delivering a 23-song set.

The post Watch: Slayer Played The First Of Their “Reign In Blood” 40th Anniversary Shows Last Night appeared first on Theprp.com.

Alex Van Halen wrote an entire memoir and left Sammy Hagar out of it. Eleven years of the band’s history, four number one albums, and the only acknowledgement anyone could find was a single line about having “a lot of other singers over the years.” He wouldn’t say the name to Rolling Stone either. So when a Brazilian magazine asked the 73-year-old drummer what he made of Hagar’s autobiography, the interesting part was never going to be the answer. It was that he answered at all.

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What he said

The exchange happened earlier this year with Brazilian music journalist Marcelo Vieira — the man who translated Alex’s memoir Brothers into Portuguese — and ran in issue 293 of Roadie Crew, which is why it’s taken until now to travel.

Vieira asked about the other Van Halen books. On David Lee Roth’s 1997 Crazy From The Heat, Alex was warm. He called it quite fun, said it accurately reflects Dave’s sense of humour, and noted that while the text is abstract and loses its train of thought at times, it’s still a very interesting perspective on that era.

Then Hagar’s Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock.

He said he had no interest in reading it. He doesn’t know what Sammy wrote and he doesn’t want to know. And in his opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot.

Two words. First time he’s used the name in public in years.

Why that’s the story

Here’s the context that makes this more than a insult.

Alex wrote a book about Van Halen and did not include the Hagar era. Brothers stops in 1984, when Roth first left. Eleven years of Hagar, four consecutive US number one albums — 5150, OU812, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance — none of it in there. Gary Cherone’s stint isn’t either, and neither is the 2007 Roth reunion.

His stated reason, to USA Today: for him the spirit of the band ended in 1984. They did good work after that, but the primary spiritual aspect, the magic, the potential, the looking to the future together — that was what made Van Halen, and Ed and Dave and he were outsiders, and those intangible things were the fabric that tied them together.

To Billboard he was blunter: what happened after Dave left is not the same band.

And to Rolling Stone he wouldn’t say the name at all. His line was that the heart and the soul and the creativity and the magic was Dave, Ed, Mike and me. Four people. The man who sang on their four biggest-selling albums simply isn’t in the sentence.

That’s the position he’s held for years. Today it broke, in a Brazilian magazine, over a book he hasn’t read.

The part nobody else will mention

Hagar already apologised for that book. In 2021.

Speaking to Brazil’s Inside With Paulo Baron — Brazil again, oddly — he said that because of Eddie’s untimely and tragic death, he apologises from the bottom of his heart for exposing Eddie’s dark side, to the point where he doesn’t think anyone wants to hear it now, and unfortunately it’s in the book.

He was careful not to retract it. It’s all true, he said, it’s not like he has to claim he was lying. But if he wrote the book today he would only put in the good of Eddie Van Halen, because he was a brilliant, genius guitar player, a great friend and a great partner.

He also described what Eddie was like when they first met — walking into his dressing room at Anaheim Stadium on a bill with Boston and Black Sabbath, and being one of the sweetest, most humble people Hagar had ever met. His reaction at the time: how can this guy play that well and be that humble? He must have a fire inside he isn’t showing. And when the fire came out, Hagar said, it was a volcano.

So Alex is calling a man an idiot over a book that man has already publicly apologised for. That doesn’t make Alex wrong to be angry — the passages about Eddie during the 2004 reunion tour were brutal, and Eddie himself questioned an embellished portion of them to Rolling Stone in 2015. But it’s a materially different story than “Sammy wrote a hit piece and Alex is responding.”

Hagar’s theory of what this is actually about

He’s been asked, repeatedly, and he gave Rolling Stone his best guess in April 2025 — the same interview where it was reported the two men hadn’t spoken in 25 years.

He said he’d put the question to people including former Van Halen manager Irving Azoff. What’s the problem? And the answer that kept coming back was Cabo Wabo — the tequila and nightclub business the band were all partners in when Hagar built it, which they wanted out of when it was losing money. They gave it to him. He turned it around and made hundreds of millions.

Hagar’s response to that theory is the funniest thing in the whole story. How could they be angry, he asked, when they gave him the thing, walked out on him, left him with it, and made him indemnify them in case he got sued and lost everything. They made him sign off, big time.

Then he added his own read, and it’s less charitable.

He thinks Alex is angry because Hagar and Michael Anthony are out doing it and Alex can’t. His argument: Alex isn’t a singer, isn’t a guitar player, isn’t really a band leader, and doesn’t seem to want to or be able to play drums anymore. Alex wasn’t the songwriter — Eddie and Sammy wrote songs, Dave and Eddie wrote songs, so those two can go out and perform them.

And the closing line: he’d feel terrible in Alex’s shoes, but he’s the happiest guy out of all of them, and being too happy annoys people in itself.

When the interviewer noted Alex has had genuine health problems and reasons to feel bitter, Hagar agreed, and said he’s fine with it. Al, you’re fine. Leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone. Everything’s good. And, he added, I’m making you money — out there selling Van Halen records and keeping the name alive.

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The tour Alex won’t touch

The immediate friction is The Best Of All Worlds, the ongoing tour built largely around the Hagar-era Van Halen catalogue, featuring Hagar and Michael Anthony alongside Joe Satriani and Kenny Aronoff.

Hagar and Anthony reached out about Alex taking part in some way. He didn’t respond.

His explanation to Billboard: he’s not interested, they’re not doing the band justice, they can do what they want to do, and it’s not his business.

There’s an unbuilt version of this that stings more. Satriani revealed a couple of years earlier that he’d been approached about a Van Halen tribute show with Alex and David Lee Roth — a project that never got off the ground, reportedly because Roth was holding up approvals.

So the tour Alex wanted didn’t happen, and the tour he didn’t want is selling tickets without him.

Where it stands

Four studio albums, four US number ones, eleven years, and a drummer who won’t put any of it in his book or the name in his mouth.

Hagar and Eddie made peace in the months before Eddie’s death in October 2020, which is the one genuinely warm thing in this whole story and the reason Hagar can talk about him the way he does now.

Alex and Sammy have not spoken in 25 years. As of today they’re two words further apart than they were yesterday, and the person who finally got it out of him wasn’t an American rock journalist — it was a Brazilian translator working through a memoir that had already decided Sammy Hagar didn’t exist.

Van Halen remain one of the handful of bands who genuinely changed what a rock group could be, and their catalogue turns up everywhere from movie soundtracks to any serious account of how the genre developed. Whether the people who made it ever speak again is a separate question, and the answer today looks like no.

TL;DR

• What happened: Alex Van Halen called Sammy Hagar a complete idiot, saying he has no interest in reading Hagar’s memoir Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock and doesn’t want to know what’s in it.
• Where it came from: an interview earlier this year with Brazilian journalist Marcelo Vieira, who translated Alex’s memoir Brothers into Portuguese. It ran in issue 293 of Roadie Crew and is only now surfacing in English.
• Why it matters: Alex left Hagar out of Brothers entirely and refused to say his name to Rolling Stone, describing the band as “Dave, Ed, Mike and me.” This is the first time he’s used the name publicly in years.
• He was complimentary about the other book: he called David Lee Roth’s Crazy From The Heat fun and an interesting perspective on the era.
• The context most coverage will miss: Hagar publicly apologised in 2021 for the passages about Eddie, saying he’d only include the good if he wrote it today — while standing by their accuracy.
• Hagar’s theory: he believes the anger is partly about Cabo Wabo, the business the band handed him before it became worth hundreds of millions, and partly that he and Michael Anthony are still touring the catalogue while Alex isn’t.
• The two have not spoken in 25 years.

FAQ

Twenty-five years of silence, an entire memoir that pretends he doesn’t exist, and it took a Brazilian magazine to get two words out of him. Is Alex right to keep the door shut, or is it time? Tell me below. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.

The post Alex Van Halen Breaks 25-Year Silence To Call Sammy Hagar A Complete Idiot appeared first on Loaded Radio.

The three-part narrative that began with The Shores of Melancholia in 2025 has reached its conclusion. GREEN CARNATION released A Dark Poem, Part III: The Messiah Complex on September 4 through Season of Mist, and the complete album is now available to stream. The final instalment consists of four compositions with a total running time […]

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“…It has made for a situation where my left arm and hand aren’t working and I can’t play guitar very well at the moment.”

The post YOB Forced To Postpone Immediate Shows Due To Mike Scheidt Suffering From Nerve Damage appeared first on Theprp.com.

German blackened death metal band HORRESQUE have released “They Came to Kill,” the second single from their forthcoming third album, Chasms Pt. III – The Dread, Unveiled. Although it is the record’s second advance track, the song will serve as its opening number when the album arrives in early 2027. Combining black metal hostility with […]

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Frontiers Music Srl is proud to announce the return of legendary Danish hard rockers Pretty Maids, who are officially working on a brand-new studio album, set for release in 2027. The upcoming record will be the band’s first new studio album since 2019’s acclaimed “Undress Your Madness” and marks the beginning of an exciting new… Continue Reading →