Blog

Several artists on Australia’s fastest growing rock label, XMusic have come together under the name, Project X to record their own version of one of the most powerful songs of the early 90’s and arguably the one song that birthed an entire sub-genre. Temple of the Dog’s immortal, Hunger Strike.

Listen to Hunger Strike here
https://lnk.to/pIOSyw

Featuring members of  Dreamkillers, Fractured State, Dellacoma, Audio Reign, Awaken The Hate, Wayward Kings and Whiteford, Project X is a charity arm of XMusic and a share of the proceeds will go to charities including Men’s Mental Health and Support Act from this track.

Mastered by Roger Lian who also mastered Soundgarden, gave this song a great lift from the amazing recording done from Damien Kechagias.

Hunger Strike is such a special song to me and fans around the world, with its haunting vocals and was such an amazing song to hear live from both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam! I have had this idea for a few years now and then Damien Kechagias (Dreamkillers and now FRACTURED STATE) came to me with a full album concept and thus the fun began. A huge thanks to Damien Kechagias for the production of this track and enlisted fellow Dreamkillers/Fractured State drummer Steve Hatchman and then the hunt for the vocalists began.

The overwhelming response from all vocalists on this track was amazing! A let’s do this! Attitude, so a huge thanks and much love goes out to Dellacoma Rio of Dellacoma, Jake Fleming of Audio Reign, Ben Rogers of Awaken The Hate, Ryan Daley of Wayward Kings and Zarz Vox of Whiteford – XMusic CEO, Tim McLean-Smith

As part of the 5^th Anniversary of XMusic we decided to start the project before the Anniversary live shows. There are more songs coming from Project X featuring your favourite artists from XMusic, with the next being Adele’s Hello featuring some amazing female vocalists. Simply we want to give back to the people who help us, Support Act and Men’s Mental health charities who are very important to the musicians in our industry! So Please Turn it UP! And enjoy….

XMUSIC 5th ANNIVERSARY SHOWS
To Celebrate the 5th Anniversary there will be a series XMusic Live Shows
featuring some of your favourite XMusic Artists and New Merch.

Thursday, April 30: Musicland, Melbourne
Dellacoma
Sisters Doll (Special Acoustic Performance)
Karly Jewell
Electric State

Friday, May 1: Musicland, Melbourne
Frankenbok
Cicadastone
Awaken The Hate
Electric State

Saturday, May 2: The Den, Newcastle
Wayward Kings
Kodem
Whiteford
Stormflower

Sunday, May 3: Soapbox, Brisbane
Dellacoma
Awaken The Hate
Tailor Made Rejects
Kaosphere
Sound Affliction
Slythr
Runt

Tickets for all shows and
5th Anniversary Merch including Limited Edition T-Shirts & Muscle Shirts
are available from
https://xmusic.au/tours/

The post Project X – XMusic Artists Unite and Deliver Epic Tribute to Temple Of The Dog’s ‘Hunger Strike’ appeared first on The Rockpit.

A Slipknot fan got an early copy of the long-awaited album 'Look Outside Your Window' and shared their first thoughts on it on Reddit. Continue reading…

Surprise guests, the Nine Inch Noize debut and a killer Turnstile set led Coachella 2026's opening week highlights. Continue reading…

The Demon Hunter singer speaks about what it was like to finally see the fan response to what was a deeply personal and emotional album to create. Continue reading…

Halford offers an honest take on his former bandmate's involvement in the official Judas Priest documentary, 'The Ballad Of Judas Priest.' Continue reading…

"It was confusing then. If I’m perfectly honest, it remains confusing," Weinberg said of his 2023 firing from Slipknot. Continue reading…

The following rock and metal musicians have always been universally known by fans and other musicians for being very nice. Continue reading…

Get details on new tours featuring Jack White, Billy Idol, Silverstein and Story of the Year and more. Continue reading…

I must admit that part of me was hoping this was a new album by Mythologic, the quartet which was the Rodler brothers (i.e. Drama) plus singer Melissa Rodler (i.e. the trio which was Leger De Main) and Andeavour’s guitarist Steve Matusik, but instead this is the fourth release by multi-instrumentalist Scott David (keyboards, bass, electric & acoustic guitars, vocals). He  is joined by a few guests, including drummer Louis Alexi, but it is basically a solo release (apart from the excellent decision to bring in a human to hit the skins instead of programming).

Violinist Chris Barbosa is only on a couple of tracks, but whenever he comes in the songs immediately veer much closer to Kansas than anything else, whereas for most of the time Scott is taking a multitude of Seventies classics bands as influences. I like his voice, and he is a fine musician, but there is something about this release which leaves me somewhat cold and finding it difficult to get inside. It has a big production, quite bombastic at times, with plenty of layers, but even the gentle keyboard introduction which opens the album doesn’t grab me as it should and when it went into a Chris Squire bass lead I wondered what was going on, and soon I found myself playing “spot the influence” which is never a good thing (Utopia, Styx, Yes, Kansas, ELP are just a few which come immediately to mind) and there are some passages which are incredibly reminiscent of songs we all know and love.

This means I found my attention was concentrating on the wrong aspect of the album, and instead of enjoying it for what it was, kept looking for musical references, so I only skated across the surface. There will be plenty who find this enthralling and totally enjoyable and I get that, but I am not one of them. 6/10

By Kev Rowland

Mike Johnson will always be associated with the band he co-founded more than 40 years ago, the hugely influential Thinking Plague, so why pick 2026 to release his first ever solo album? The reason was that he wanted to do something which was deliberately more orchestral, using real musicians as opposed to sampling, and felt the name Thinking Plague may be too restrictive (which is quite a statement given just how groundbreaking they have been over the years). The result is a hugely expansive release which features performances by 19 musicians, some based in the States (Johnson, several Thinking Plague alumni, and more) while other are in Canada (Kimara Sajn), Portugal (Nuno Mourão), Spain (Pau Sola Masafrets), Sweden (Simon Steensland, Morgan Ågren) and The Netherlands (Oene van Geel, Pablo Rodriguez, César Puente Sandoval, George Dumitriu).

The result is something which will of course be closely linked to Thinking Plague given it is such a core part of Johnson’s identity, but here it has been combined with modern classical avant garde to create something which is truly an amalgam of both. This takes guitars, lap steels, fiddle, fretless banjo, sampler-synthesizer programming and “pencil guitars”, bass, drums and percussion, piano, vocals, flute, oboe, English horn, bassoon, clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello and double bass and somehow brings them all together in a such a manner that they all make sense and one cannot imagine the album without all of them working together. The scoring and orchestration must have been a huge piece of work for Johnson, but the result is certainly worth it as here we have an album which is true to RIO, eclectic and modern, yet somehow it all makes sense and when one has played it a few times it is remarkable at just how melodic and beautiful this is. This is not an album which is immediately easy listening, but gradually one realises this is a significant release which builds on what Johnson has undertaken previously but he is now moving in a slightly different direction. Does this mean that Thinking Plague is over and we will get more albums like this one? I don’t have the answer to that but am sure Johnson’s adventures still have a long way to go and based on this whatever is next will be hugely exciting. For fans of the unusual, where the word “progressive” truly does mean just that. 9/10

By Kev Rowland