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“Unconquered” is set to find him paired with Irish rappers Kneecap.

The post Tom Morello Teases His New Single With The Group He Previously Hailed As “The Rage Against The Machine Of Now” appeared first on Theprp.com.

It takes a certain kind of courage to turn against the system that gave you your career. Criticizing something from the outside is one thing. Doing it when you have a respected position inside that system is another. You know exactly what you could lose, and you also know that the people you are criticizing have the power to take it from you.

That was the position Nawal El Saadawi found herself in.

El Saadawi was a physician and psychiatrist who eventually became Egypt’s Director of Public Health. Through her work, she saw how political and social attitudes toward women affected their bodies and their lives. She also knew this subject personally. As a child, she had undergone female genital mutilation, so this was never just another medical issue to her. It was something she had lived through herself.

She could have kept her head down. She had built a successful career and had reached a position where most people would have thought twice before putting everything at risk. Instead, she used her position as a doctor to talk about things the people around her did not want discussed.

In 1972, she published Women and Sex. The book openly addressed female genital mutilation, patriarchy, and the religious ideas used to justify the control of women. It was not exactly the kind of book that would make the Egyptian establishment happy, and they made sure she understood that.

El Saadawi was fired from her position as Director of Public Health. She was also removed as chief editor of a medical journal, and her books were banned. The government had taken away the professional life she had worked for. Perhaps they expected that losing all of this would make her reconsider what she was doing.

It didn’t.

Without her government position, she kept writing and found other ways to reach people. During the 1970s, she published fiction and nonfiction, including Woman at Point Zero, which brought the experiences of Arab women to readers far beyond Egypt. She also became involved in organizations working on human rights and women’s issues. She co-founded the Egyptian Association for Human Rights, established the Health Education Association, worked as an advisor on women’s programs for the United Nations, and later founded the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association.

She also started an independent feminist magazine. That part of her work matters because El Saadawi was not only interested in saying what she thought. She wanted other women to have somewhere to say what they thought too.

Then came 1981. President Anwar Sadat’s government was carrying out a crackdown on political opponents, and El Saadawi was among those arrested. She was sent to Qanatir Women’s Prison with other political dissidents. The authorities knew she was a writer, so they made sure she had no pen or paper. This is where her story starts to sound almost unbelievable.

One of the prisoners, a sex worker, managed to get hold of a black eyebrow pencil and smuggle it into the prison. El Saadawi used it to write Memoirs from the Women’s Prison. She wrote the book on pieces of toilet paper and kept the pages hidden in her cell.

I keep coming back to that detail because there is something strangely human about it. After everything that had happened, it came down to an eyebrow pencil and toilet paper. There was no proper desk, no typewriter, no comfortable writing room. Just a prisoner who wanted to write and another prisoner who had managed to get her something she could write with.

The government had already taken away her job. Her books had been banned. Now she was in prison and they had even taken away her pen. And still she wrote.

After Sadat was assassinated, El Saadawi was released, but being free did not mean that she was left alone. She received death threats from extremists, faced legal action on charges of apostasy, and was eventually forced into exile. She continued writing and speaking, though, and never withdrew the things she had said to make herself safer.

She also kept returning to Egypt. In 2011, at the age of 80, she joined protesters in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian Revolution. By that point, she had been fighting these battles for decades. She had already been fired, censored, imprisoned, threatened, and forced into exile. Yet when a new generation took to the streets, she went there too.

Nawal El Saadawi died in 2021 at the age of 89. She spent most of her adult life making powerful people uncomfortable, and she never seemed particularly interested in learning how to stop.

That is probably what I find most interesting about her story. Women are often encouraged to think of success as something that has to be carefully protected. Get the good job. Build the reputation. Don’t cause trouble. Don’t make the people above you uncomfortable. Once you have something, hold on to it. El Saadawi did almost the opposite.

She had a prestigious medical career and risked it by writing about women. When the government took that career away, she kept writing. When her books were banned, she found other ways to reach people. When she was imprisoned and denied a pen, she wrote with an eyebrow pencil on toilet paper.

There is something almost funny about how badly that plan failed. They had tried to make her powerless, and she was sitting in a prison cell writing a book with a piece of makeup.

She could have made things easier for herself at many points in her life. She could have softened her words. She could have stayed quiet long enough to keep her position. She could have decided that exile was a good reason to stop looking back.

She didn’t. And maybe that is the part of Nawal El Saadawi’s story worth remembering. Not that she was fearless, because she was human and fear is part of being human. It is that fear never became a good enough reason for her to stop saying what she believed.

They could take her position. They could ban her books. They could put her in prison and take away her pen. She still found something to write with.

The post She’s In Charge | Nawal El-Saadawi: Fighting the establishment with an eyebrow pencil first appeared on FemMetal – Goddesses of Metal.

“People are gonna be like when they hear it, ‘There’s no way that’s Slipknot. There is no actual way that that is Slipknot.'”

The post Corey Taylor On Slipknot’s New Single “Arsenal”: “It Is Absolutely A Pummeling Experience” appeared first on Theprp.com.

The latest single from their upcoming fifth album, ‘Space 1993: Wrath of Kor-Virliath’

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Various vinyl, CD and cassette options are available.

The post My Chemical Romance Unveil 20th Anniversary Edition Of “The Black Parade” appeared first on Theprp.com.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra is celebrating 30 years on the road with a revamped run of its holiday staple, The Ghosts of Christmas Eve, paired with a high-energy second set built for the anniversary. The band, known for stacking its live show with lasers, pyrotechnics and every special effect it can fit onstage, has once again built the tour around keeping ticket prices accessible for returning fans.

Fan club pre-sales open September 10 and 11, followed by general pre-sales on September 17 and public on-sale on September 18. In an effort to keep the milestone tour within reach for families, Trans-Siberian Orchestra has expanded its lower-priced ticket inventory across every stop.

Music director and guitarist Al Pitrelli framed the anniversary as a reminder of why the band still does what it does: “Thirty years in, we never take a single person in that audience for granted. With the economy the way that it is right now, it shouldn’t be a mortgage payment for a family to come out to see us. Paul O’Neill was very adamant about giving people in the audience more ‘show’ than they could’ve even imagined, and that’s what we do every year. We reimagine the show, we rebuild it, we make it bigger than last year so people come back again. I want you to look and go ‘Oh my God, they outdid themselves one more time!’ We want to make sure you guys can come out and celebrate because you and everyone in that audience are the greatest fans in the world.”

The band’s story traces back to 1996, when late creator, lyricist and composer Paul O’Neill set the whole thing in motion. Three decades on, Trans-Siberian Orchestra has become a multi-platinum progressive rock powerhouse, crossing $1 billion in gross ticket sales and turning its annual rock theater run into a tradition passed down across generations of fans.

O’Neill himself laid out the goal back in 2010: “When someone goes to a TSO concert, we don’t want them to walk away saying ‘that was a great show’ or ‘that was worth it’ or even ‘that was the best show I’ve seen in a long time.’ We want them to say, ‘Man, that was the best show ever; we just ripped that band off.’”

Check out dates and get tickets here.

The post TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA Announces 30th Anniversary Tour appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

Created by longtime collaborator Costin Chioreanu

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Slipknot has unleashed “Arsenal”, the first new song from the band in over three years. The anthemic release arrives with a music video directed by Slipknot‘s M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan.

The song made its debut in the “Hottest Record” slot on BBC Radio 1‘s “New Music Show With Jack Saunders.” It’s the first taste of new material since Slipknot said goodbye to longtime members Sid Wilson and Craig Jones, and swapped out drummer Jay Weinberg for Eloy Casagrande. It also marks the band’s first release under its own (sic)est Records imprint, following the close of its two-and-a-half-decade run with Roadrunner.

Talking to Saunders about the new single, Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor didn’t hold back on his enthusiasm: “It pummels. It is absolutely a pummeling experience. One of my favorite things about it is it kind of encapsulates everything that we do. It’s got these great moments of hyperactivity, and then at the end, man, there’s this sublime drop that just makes it. It’s like we’ve got everyone by the hair, and we’re just going, ‘Go! Go!’ That, to me, sums up Slipknot completely.”

Few could have predicted just how far the Slipknot blueprint would travel. What started with nine guys from Iowa in masks daring the world to keep up has since seeped into rock and pop’s biggest stages, shaping artists across the genre map who trace their lineage straight back to the U.S. Midwest. None of it required compromise.

“Arsenal” throws just about everything Slipknot has in its arsenal into one track: hammering rhythms, sharpened vocal work, jagged keyboard lines, and riffs heavy enough to measure in tons, before slamming the track to a halt and barking at his own bandmates mid-song. The result is a tight, compressed shot of the firepower this band has spent decades sharpening.

Nearly 30 years into their run, Slipknot still bring the same drive and creative chemistry that built their reputation in the first place. Their climb to becoming one of the 21st century’s most influential rock acts has come through real tragedy, weathered publicly and alongside their fans. That resilience has kept them pushing their sound into new territory rather than settling into a formula.

“Arsenal” finds Slipknot locked in, the byproduct of staying committed to the music above everything else. It’s a reminder, once again, of how the band has managed to stay both essential and current for this long.

Slipknot‘s last album, The End, So Far, dropped in August 2022, closing out the chapter before Jones exited in June 2023 and Weinberg was replaced by Casagrande.

The End, So Far debuted at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Album Sales chart and No. 2 on the Billboard 200, Slipknot‘s sixth Top 10 album on that chart. It also topped the charts in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Mexico, with Top 3 debuts in Canada, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Japan and Belgium. The band’s previous record, 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, was Slipknot‘s third straight No. 1 on the Billboard 200, topping charts in twelve countries including the U.K., Australia, Canada and Mexico, with Top 5 debuts in twelve more, including Germany, France and Sweden.

Since dropping their debut album in 1999, Slipknot has picked up a Grammy Award and 11 nominations, notched multiple platinum and gold certifications worldwide, and racked up billions of streams and video views. Rolling Stone placed 2001’s Iowa on its list of the 100 greatest metal albums ever, while The Ringer called them “the most important heavy band of their era.”

The post SLIPKNOT Returns With New Single “Arsenal” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

With select dates opening for Upon Your Dead Body

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I am not worthy of reviewing Botox’s new instant classic ’77-style punk album in the wake of the masterpiece that my friend Jay Castro has already unleashed. Seriously: There is nothing left for me to say. The world has been put on notice. So go ahead and read your scripture, blast the album so loudly that it enrages your friends, foes, and neighbors, and do whatever is necessary within the bounds of the law to secure the vinyl from No Front Teeth Records. This has been a public service announcement.