Ukrainian metal icons, Jinjer, along with The Glorious Sons, DED and Rivals have just been announced for the 15th year of the ShipRocked festival cruise. They join previously announced acts, Parkway Drive, Hollywood Undead, Nothing More and The Struts, 10 Years, Atreyu, Buckcherry, The Ghost Inside, P.O.D. and many more. The cruise takes place January 19-25, 2025, departing from Miami, Florida on Carnival Magic, with stops at new destination St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Half Moon Cay in The Bahamas. Find out more below.
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Tag Archives: Rivals
Welcome To Rockville 2023 Books Pantera, Tool, Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold, Deftones, Rob Zombie, Godsmack, Evanescence, Incubus, Queens Of The Stone Age, Alice Cooper, and More!
Pantera, Tool, Slipknot and Avenged Sevenfold will headline the 2023 edition of the Welcome To Rockville festival, set to take place May 18-21 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. Also scheduled to appear are Deftones, Rob Zombie, Godsmack, Evanescence, Incubus, Queens Of The Stone Age, Alice Cooper, Chevelle, and Coheed & Cambria, among many others. Tickets are on sale now at the link below.
Killswitch Engage, Taking Back Sunday, Andrew W.K., Underøath, and More Booked for Furnace Fest This Fall
Bringing together the best bands in Metalcore, Punk, Rock, and Metal, Furnace Fest has been announced for this fall at Sloss Furnaces September. 24-26 this year and features a plethora of huge bands such as Killswitch Engage, Taking Back Sunday, Andrew W.K., Underøath, Astronoid, Cave In, Converge, Defeater, Eighteen Visions, Emery, End, ERRA, Every Time I Die, All Get Out, Anberlin, The Appleseed Cast, The Beautiful Mistake, Beloved, Better Off, The Bled, As Friends Rust, August Burns Red, Bad Cop Bad Cop, Be Well, Boy Sets Fire, The Casket Lottery, Comeback Kid, Counterparts, Darkest Hour, Face to Face, Fit for a King, The Get Up Kids, Hatebreed, Zao and more! The full day-by-day lineups and tickets can be found below!
Shinedown, Godsmack, Five Finger Death Punch, Live, Taking Back Sunday, Seether, Skillet Booked For Inkcarceration 2019
Last year’s inaugural Inkcarceration Fest in Ohio was a smash! The fest is back in 2019 and looks big with Shinedown, Godsmack, Five Finger Death Punch, +Live+, Taking Back Sunday, Seether, Skillet among the bands playing over three days in July 12th– 14th at the Historic Ohio State Reformatory. Ohio State Reformatory, a.k.a. Shawshank Prison, in Mansfield, OH – will feature over 30 bands on two outdoor stages, 70 tattoo artists, reformatory tours, gourmet food trucks, the best drinks and for the first time, the haunted house attraction, Escape from Blood Prison! The full line-up and links to buy tickets below. Watch the teaser for the fest now. Continue reading
On The Road… with Coal Chamber And Fear Factory
One of the more interesting bills this summer of tours in the US is the co-headline tour from Coal Chamber and Fear Factory. Both names recall a simpler time when pants were baggy, fishnet sleeves were cool on guys, and even venerable old groups were “getting jiggy wit it” to Nu-Metal. Coal Chamber of course started around the same time as Korn and Deftones in California, to spur the “Nu” tide and bring their gothy spin to the Ozzfest crowd (Sharon Osborne managed them for a spell too). Fear Factory of course is the pioneering industrial metal band who paved the way for many and also mixed in the style du-jour with their own back then. So it’s not that big a shock that in 2015 with one band already touring behind a comeback album (Rivals by CC dropped in the spring from Napalm) and another about to launch a new album, these bands would team-up like Marvel. Coal Chamber always puts on a fun show live and played a mix of hits and newer tracks. Led by fireplug Dez Fafara, they gave the fans what they wanted: nostalgia. Fear Factory, on the cusp of releasing Genexus (Nuclear Blast) this summer, kept it tight on old jams and one new one, ‘Soul Hacker’. Joining them for a few early dates was Devil You Know, who are working on a new album too. Rockers like Saint Ridley and Madlife (not pictured) are setting the table for this tour too, so get to the club early. Shot here on the first night of the tour at the Rialto Theater, in Tuscon AZ, Melina Dellamarggio of Melina D Photography brings you all the action you missed as if you were there.
Coal Chamber, by Melina D Photography
Coal Chamber, by Melina D Photography
Coal Chamber, by Melina D Photography
Fear Factory, by Melina D Photography
Fear Factory, by Melina D Photography
Devil You Know, by Melina D. Photography
Saint Ridley, by Melina D Photography
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Coal Chamber – Rivals
Thirteen years is a long time. And lots of things have happened in the time frame since Coal Chamber’s last album, 2002s Dark Days. Let’s see what’s different. Physical copies of albums don’t sell all that well. Boy bands gave way to something even more horrifying in Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. Rock Band and Guitar Hero were an odd fad. EDM unfortunately exploded onto the mainstream.
Oh and Nu-Metal was swapped out as the popular sub-genre by Metalcore and/or the New Wave of American Heavy Metal. Even Coal Chamber’s frontman Dez Fafara switched scenes and released six consistently solid albums with Devildriver.
So the question becomes what can Coal Chamber, Nu-Metal pioneers that suffered a fiery first death, offer this brave new world of extreme metal? In new album Rivals (Napalm Records) just maybe their strongest and most focused release ever.
Lead single ‘I.O.U. Nothing’ sets an aggressive and confident tone that permeates the following 38 minutes. And confidence is the right word here as Coal Chamber sound like a new band as opposed to one trying recapture its former glory. It’s all mid-tempo crunch from there on out with über-producer Mark Lewis providing a clean, but menacing mix. It’s public knowledge that their 2003 onstage demise was dramatic and highly amplified by substance abuse, but time does really seem to heal all wounds here. Dez and Co. have taken years of successful and momentum gaining reunion tours and channeled it on Rivals. For the faithful, ‘Suffer in Silence’ and ‘The Bridges you Burn’ are straight Nu-Metal rippers from when the genre had teeth instead of gimmicks. But there is musical progression as well, ‘Another Nail in the Coffin’ and the title track are more in sync with Devildriver’s punishing groove than channeling the 90s.
Not every blow connects, ‘Light in the Shadows’ and ‘Empty Handed’ feel more like afterthoughts or songs that couldn’t quite crack it on Dark Days. But the important take away in Rivals is the energy and level of commitment. Especially from a band that didn’t need to release a new record and continue touring. Drummer Mikey ‘Bug’ Cox and guitarist Miguel Rascon had been toying in other musical ventures for years and we all know what Fafara has been up to. They didn’t need to, but the great news is that they wanted to.
Rivals is a solid recording even if you didn’t take Coal Chamber or the sub-genre they had been associated with seriously. And in defense of Nu-Metal, for how many kids (myself included) was that a gateway drug to other bands? Maybe I wouldn’t have eventually learned of Relapse Records if I didn’t start with Korn and Mushroomhead first. Maybe there’s a great column waiting to be written on the importance of Nu-Metal, but that’s for another time.
So if not for the strong music, respect Rivals and Coal Chamber for being available to a new generation of young and hungry metalheads.
8/10
HANSEL LOPEZ
Dark Days Behind – Mikey “Bug” Cox of Coal Chamber
Coal Chamber is still a band. That seems a bit odd to me. Truth be told, if you had told me a few years back that Coal Chamber would still be a touring act with new music on the way, I’d kindly remind you to stop sniffing glue. Front man Dez Fafara, guitarist Miguel “Meegs” Rascon, bassist Nadja Peulen and drummer Mikey “Bug” Cox onstage again?
But hey, its 2015 and Coal Chamber are playing packed venues across the country. And somebody who is very pleased with their current trek is Cox.
“The tour is good, man” shares Cox. “Personally this is my first 100% sober tour. I quit drinking and everything so for me it’s incredible. And it translates to the whole band. I mean, offstage we’re all like best friends which is crazy because we never used to be. Lots of drama that everyone knows about.”
Coal Chamber, Photo by Meg Loyal Photography
The reason to clean up his act came from Cox’s longtime exposure to the touring life and how it would have an impact on the people around him. Maintaining sobriety while being on the road may seem daunting, but “It’s been easier than [being] at home” for Cox. “Going into this tour I was like ‘Oh, this might be hard.’ But I just had a kid, you know, and for me I had my run from 20 until not too long ago. Just being out of my mind all the time. I went from the drug phase to the drinking phase. I’m getting sick of watching friends dying and dying on the road. I think we’ve all had our run for sure. To me it translates to how the band is with each other and we’re tighter onstage.”
One friend such friend lost to substance abuse was former Static-X frontman, Wayne Static. “We gave him some of his first show. In fact my other band [We Are the Riot], the side project with Meegs were opening for Wayne on his last tour. So me and Meegs – I’ve known Wayne since I was 19 years old – we actually sat and talked to him weeks before it happened. So it was definitely a shock you know. The music industry has a crazy lifestyle to it, but nobody should be dying that young. Especially over something stupid and unnecessary, but you get stuck in it out here on the road. It’s a lonely place.”
Coal Chamber, Photo by Meg Loyal Photography
So how does Coal Chamber, they of the very tumultuous 2003 break up come back together after several years of no communication? Cox’s longtime friendship with Rascon has certainly helped him get through the rougher days, back into music and ultimately playing with Coal Chamber again. “Me and Meegs we’re best friends,” Cox says. “I quit music for like seven years. Didn’t play once. Like randomly, never played. I was done with the business. And then me and Meegs started talking like ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we tried to do this.’ So Meegs contacted Dez and went onstage with Devildriver and played ‘Loco’ in California and that was kind of like an apology through all parties.”
But even after reconnecting with Fafara nothing was set in stone. “Then we took more years off and it was just a slow process. If we forced it before it happened now we wouldn’t have lasted. So it took a long time to enjoy each other’s company.”
Coal Chamber, by Meg Loyal Photography
What helped cement Coal Chamber’s return was the crowd’s reception at early comeback gigs. “The plans were to do Australia, which was our first show back and that was it,” says Cox. “Let’s see if it’s going to work, we’ve never been there and the kids asked for it. We’re gonna go do that and be done. Then in South America same thing happened. The shows in Australia were insane, crazy shows. So we were like ‘Maybe we have something still.’”
After that came campaigns across North America and Europe that were met with equal praise and enthusiasm. With that enthusiasm in mind the labels came calling again. Coal Chamber envisioned the tour in Europe as a way to “put the exclamation point on the band and then all of a sudden we started getting label interest to make a record. Once that happened it just snowballed into us sitting here right now.”
The new album Rivals is due May 19 through Austria’s Napalm Records. With the release date just around the corner, Coal Chamber are ready to ride that wave of momentum. “This tour finishes On April 12 in Dallas. We have one week off and we go to South America. We’re doing the Monsters of Rock festival with Ozzy Osbourne. Which is going to be insane. We’re doing a show with Black Veil Brides in Chile. We’re headlining Mexico City, which down there the shows are crazy. The kids are insane. Then we have three weeks off then we off to the UK for three and a half weeks and that’s when the record comes out. That’s when the work really begins. Right now we’re just getting started.”
INTERVIEW BY HANSEL LOPEZ
LIVE PHOTOS BY MEG LOYAL PHOTOGRAPHY