Exclusive: Inside the Red Hot Chili Peppers Comeback Album

"There is no question – this is a beginning," Anthony Kiedis, singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, says in his first interview about the band's new album, I'm With You, which is released by Warner Bros. on August 30th. "Yeah, the sun is just coming up here." Produced by Rick Rubin, I'm With You is the Los Angeles quartet's first studio album since the 2006 double-disk set, Stadium Arcadium. The 14-song record also marks the debut of the Chili Peppers' new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, who joined in the fall of 2009 following the departure of John Frusciante. The latter guitarist had been a crucial writer as well as player on the Chili Peppers' biggest albums, including 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik and 1999's Californication. But after...

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Slipknot Reveal Donnie Steele To Replace Deceased Bassist Paul Gray

Hard rock super group Slipknot have asked former member Donnie Steele to replace Paul Gray on bass for their upcoming 2011 shows, according to a statement on the band's website. The 38-year-old Gray, who had been with the band since their inception, died last year (May 24, 2010) from an accidental overdose of morphine and fentanyl. "Donnie was in the band at the very beginning, and rather than get an outsider, we thought it would be a fitting tribute to Paul to play with someone from within the family," the band wrote. "Donnie was great friends with Paul and we can't think of a better way to celebrate his memory than with someone who was there with us at the very beginning. The eight of us are looking forward to being onstage again...

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Posted in: donnie steele,paul gray,slipknot

SlipKnot Biography

Mate.Feed.Kill.Repeat EraSlipknot started in September 1995 with Anders (Colsefni) and Shawn (Crahan). Anders and Shawn hung-out all the time, they would play Werewolf: The Apocalypse (RPG) all the time (where much of the lyrics came from for MFKR). Anders was helping Shawn with some welding in his garage one winter, and they got talking about putting together a brand new band. At the time they were both drummers (Anders had been singing for awhile), and wanted to put together a band with extra stand-up percussion. Anders called Paul Grey (who was in L.A. at the time), and persuaded him to return to Des Moines and give it a try. They'd attempted to do so before as early as 92 and even wrote songs: "Slipknot" and "Gently", but Shawn...

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Posted in: all hope is gone,iowa,slipknot

Red Hot Chili Peppers Biography

Formed in the wake of the L.A. punk scene, the Red Hot Chili Peppers combined funk and punk with macho, sexed-up lyrics. (One early track was called "Party on Your Pussy"). The result was a high-octane sound that made the quintet alt-rock favorites in the Eighties, then superstars in the Nineties. But as the Chili Peppers aged, their songs became more laid-back and lyrical, and the band went from flesh-baring firecrackers (a 1992 Rolling Stone cover featured them naked) to respected veterans.  After meeting at L.A.'s Fairfax High School, singer Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea, guitarist Hillel Slovak, and drummer Jack Irons formed Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem before changing their name to the Red Hot...

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Posted in: Biography,Red Hot Chili Peppers

Axl Rose One of the most sensational vocalist

For the past decade and a half, Axl Rose has ranked among music's most sensationalized sideshow attractions. But as with his fellow Indiana-native Michael Jackson — with whom both his lyrics and lifestyle always shared a certain palpable paranoia, apparently traceable back to an intensely traumatic childhood — nobody would care about him if he hadn't once been one of the most aurally and visually exciting performer of his day. With Guns N' Roses, Rose's whip-cracking mid-Eighties falsetto attained uncharted heights across the emotional spectrum: "Axl sings the most beautiful melodies with the most aggressive tones and the most outrageous, freakish range," Skid Row's Sebastian Bach told Rolling Stone in 2008. But he also put together...

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Posted in: Axl Rose,Gun N Roses

AC/DC Biography

AC/DC 's rowdy image, giant riffs and macho lyrics about sex, drinking and damnation have helped make them one of the top hard-rock bands in history. When they first emerged from Australia in the Seventies, the primal simplicity of their songs and riffs fell on deaf ears of more prog-attuned American rock fans; in fact, they were initially marketed as a punk band. But that started to change by decade's end. And thanks in large part to duck-walking, knickers-clad guitar showman Angus Young, who became as famous for mooning audiences as for his gritty blues-based lead guitar, the group has remained one of the world's most dependable concert draws. AC/DC's albums consistently go platinum, despite never having produced a Top Twenty...

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Posted in: AC/DC,Biography

Nirvana Biography

Prior to Nirvana, alternative music was consigned to specialty sections of record stores, and major labels considered it to be, at the very most, a tax write-off. After the band's second album, 1991's Nevermind, nothing was ever quite the same, for better and for worse. Nirvana popularized punk, post-punk, and indie rock, unintentionally bringing it into the American mainstream like no other band to date. While their sound was equal parts Black Sabbath (as learned by fellow Washington underground rockers the Melvins) and Cheap Trick, Nirvana's aesthetics were strictly indie rock. They covered Vaselines songs, they revived new wave cuts by Devo, and leader Kurt Cobain relentlessly pushed his favorite bands -- whether it was the art...

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Posted in: Biography,Kurt Cobain,Nirvana

Kurt Cobain Biography

Kurt Donald Cobain was the leader of Nirvana, the multi-platinum grunge band that redefined the sound of the nineties. Cobain was born on the 20th of February 1967 in Hoquaim, a small town 140 kilometres south-west of Seattle. His mother was a cocktail waitress and his father was an auto mechanic. Cobain soon moved to nearby Aberdeen, a depressed and dying logging town. Cobain was for most his childhood a sickly bronchitic child. Matters were made worse when Cobain's parent's divorced when he was seven and by his own account Cobain said he never felt loved or secure again. He became increasingly difficult, anti-social and withdrawn after his parent's divorce. Cobain also said that his parent's traumatic split fueled a lot of the anguish...

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Posted in: Kurt Cobain,Nirvana