Deep Purple to release new studio album in April

Title has yet to be determined

Deep Purple - Rapture of the Deep

Deep Purple isn’t sitting around moping about another snub from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On April 30, 2013, the veteran proto-metal masters will release their first studio album in the U.S. since Rapture of the Deep.

As yet, the album does not have a title, although Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan has revealed a few working song titles, including “Out of Hands,” “Uncommon Man,” and “Hell to Pay.”

“The title of our new album is still a question mark to all of us … we have recorded a new album, and it’s a fantastic collection of songs,” says Gillan. “At the moment that’s the only affirmative point we can offer.”

Featuring brand new studio material, the album was recorded and mixed in Nashville with celebrated producer Bob Ezrin, who has worked with the likes of Pink Floyd and Alice Cooper, among others. Early word is that the record is mix of classic ‘70s Deep Purple with a progressive attitude and modern production.

These days, Deep Purple’s record company is earMUSIC, which plans on releasing more details about the new album when they become available on a dedicated website where all band members will be able to post and interact with fans: www.deeppurple2013.com.

Metal Evolution - "Early Metal US"

Metal Evolution - "Early Metal US"
Sam Dunn
VH1 Classic


All Access Review:  B+

Back in Aerosmith’s salad days, the early- to mid-1970s to be precise, the only way a band could hit every target demographic it hoped to reach was by touring all over and then going back out on the road to do it all over again and again. Today, they call that sort of thing “viral marketing,” as Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton jokes in the second episode of Sam Dunn’s incisive documentary series “Metal Evolution.” Others might refer to it as “paying your dues.”

Hamilton and company had no other choice when they were starting out. Neither did KISS or anybody else of that era that possessed dreams of rock ‘n’ roll world domination. In “Early Metal US,” the road to stardom is paved not with gold, but with broken-down tour buses, empty booze bottles, smashed bongs and used condoms, and while Dunn doesn’t delve deeply into the more tawdry aspects of touring, metal’s most intrepid documentarian does manage to illustrate how important it was from a business standpoint for KISS, Aerosmith and Alice Cooper to be road warriors. To spread their hard-rock contagion, gigging incessantly was the only way to get your name out there – that is unless you happened to get lucky and score an unlikely radio hit, like Alice Cooper did with that anthem of youthful rebellion “I’m Eighteen.” Getting it played on a Toronto radio station, which transmitted the song to parts throughout the North American Midwest, was certainly a coup for a band that, up to that time, had been ignored by radio, even as their elaborate stage show, a fun house of horrific thrills and chills, garnered the kind of publicity they would have never been able to buy.

Recollections of life on the road are peppered throughout “Early Metal US,” with Hamilton providing insight into how vital it was for bands like his to knock ‘em dead every night. It was certainly no different for the face-painted KISS, whose traveling circus of a stage show – what with Gene Simmons’ blood splitting and fire breathing , Peter Criss’s levitating drum kit, and Ace Frehley’s guitar gizmos – surely did the trick as far as building up a fan base goes. However, as Frehley explains to Dunn while vintage images of KISS’s theatricality in concert go rushing past, it was recording the explosive live album, Alive!, that ultimately launched them into the stratosphere and perhaps saved them from calling it quits. Delivering the goods onstage meant everything to KISS, and bringing that same excitement to vinyl was just as crucial.

And as KISS went along, they would use any tool they could to make money, even going so far as to record a chart-topping ballad in “Beth” – Criss, laughing all the way to the bank, talks at length to Dunn about how Simmons and Stanley didn’t want to do it and did everything they could to sabotage it in the studio – and go along with the trends of the day by releasing, horror of horrors, a disco song. Meanwhile, in Boston, Aerosmith set about bringing its furious, Rolling Stones-inspired blues-rock to the masses, with a Jagger-like lead singer in Steven Tyler and a guitar slinger by the name of Joe Perry. Hamilton is open and candid about how Aerosmith took on the critics and won over the people with a rugged, rollicking sound that became electrically charged in a live setting, and Dunn is just as honest in describing Aerosmith’s fall from grace due to substance abuse.

There would be a period of malaise in hard rock before Van Halen came along to inject a little hedonistic fun and a whole lot of heavy metal testosterone into an arena-rock corpse that needed to be shocked back to life. Young and cocky, with a supernatural guitar player in Eddie Van Halen, the California foursome boasted a “big rock” aesthetic, as former bassist Michael Anthony describes it to Dunn, and their thundering drums, blazing riffage and David Lee Roth’s showmanship made rock fun again. Unfortunately, Dunn and company cut short any exploration of Van Halen’s influence rather abruptly, as if time had gotten away from them and a quick-and-dirty edit was needed to wrap things up.

On the plus side, Dunn doesn’t drop the ball in detailing the impact of surf guitar legend Dick Dale and garage-rock, especially the variety that made Detroit famous, had on heavy metal’s development. Lenny Kaye is particularly articulate and concise in his analysis of garage-rock’s influence, while Dale passionately and without artifice explains how his use of thick strings and a revamped Fender amp led to increased volume. The role Blue Cheer played in drawing the blueprints for heavy metal is explored, as well, but it’s when Dunn travels to Detroit to revisit the incendiary, scene that birthed the MC5, The Stooges and Ted Nugent’s Amboy Dukes that things really get interesting. Fiery, visceral concert footage of the MC5 kicking out the jams back in the day – some of it familiar, and some of it not so familiar – and Nugent’s wild-eyed tribute to the Wayne Kramer and the boys is something to behold. And Dunn does a fine job playing up the blue-collar influence on Detroit’s toughest, most confrontational acts, like Iggy Pop and The Stooges, with James Williamson and Scott Asheton establishing a link between the automobile industry and the bombed-out ruins of The Stooges’ drugged sonics.

As usual, Dunn and his partner Scot McFayden do a wonderful job of weaving interviews with astute, knowledgeable insiders and great period video footage – the Alice Cooper material, comprised of Q&A and live imagery, is fascinating, fully realized and visually dynamic – together to tell a story. With the exception of the short shrift given to Van Halen, the editing is superb, and Dunn’s winning personality as a tour guide and intellectual vigor as an interviewer make “Early Metal US” another strong episode. Though made of compelling stuff, the KISS segment feels a little short on depth, as does Dunn’s look at Aerosmith. But, in such an exercise, time is of the essence, and for the most part, Dunn and company make good use of it.


- Peter Lindblad

Metal Evolution - "Shock Rock"

Metal Evolution - "Shock Rock"
Sam Dunn
VH1 Classic


All Access Review: A

Along with his similarly desensitized boyhood chums, a teenaged Sam Dunn took great delight in poring over the violent, gore-splattered imagery that bled all over the lyrics of death metal titans like Cannibal Corpse. The heavy metal-obsessed filmmaker waxes nostalgic for such warped innocence in his acclaimed documentary “A Headbanger’s Journey.” As someone with a strong stomach for such horrific scenes of human depravity and sick fantasies, it takes something truly frightening and unsettlingly dark to scare Dunn out of his wits. Des Moines, Iowa, mental ward escapees Slipknot had that effect on him.

On his way to the Midwest to interview Slipknot co-founder Shawn Crahan, otherwise known as Clown, during “Shock Rock,” the latest installment of his “Metal Evolution” series on VH-1, Dunn reveals how “terrified” of Slipknot he was the first time he saw them live. Intensely chaotic onstage, with an angry, relentlessly bleak nihilistic streak lyrically, Slipknot’s grotesque masks and matching uniforms, hellish growls, aggressive, multi-dimensional percussion and borderline psychotic stage shows make KISS seem cuddly by comparison. In fact, Monte Conner, A&R guy at Roadrunner Records, a regular on “Metal Evolution,” recounts how Clown would inhale deeply while holding a decomposing crow to his nose and breathe in all the evil and blackness that bird represented before shows. The stench often made him vomit, according to Conner, and sometimes, he would throw up in his mask and continue wearing it while playing whole concerts with that awful smelling spew in his face. Holy God, how do you top that?

The answer is … well, probably, you don’t. Although circus performer Danny Vomit, also interviewed for “Shock Rock” to provide commentary on how freak shows may have influenced shock-rock theatrics, cautions that somewhere some kid is dreaming up something even more appalling, it’s hard to imagine anything more assaulting to the senses than Slipknot or Marilyn Manson. Even the godfather of the genre, Alice Cooper, admits in the most recent episode of “Metal Evolution” that it’s probably impossible to shock anybody these days, and Rob Zombie concurs. And now that people are so anaesthetized to violence that we’ve gotten to the point where “Faces of Death” passes for entertainment, what’s left? Forget trying to shock people, says Cooper. That’s pretty impossible now. It all comes down to providing them an imaginative show, according to Cooper, who equates his own elaborately bloody stage show these days with Cirque du Soleil.

Dunn pretty much leaves it at that in what is quite possibly the best episode of the “Metal Evolution” series. “Shock Rock” has it all – controversy, a fascinating history, lively debate, and unflinching social commentary. There’s the gutsy Little Richard, strutting his gender-bending fashion sense and blatant homosexuality in the Deep South of the late 1950s, which earns the undying respect of one Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead. Next up is the campy horror show of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, complete with still shots of him arising from his coffin and vintage clips of him performing “I Put a Spell on You.” Perhaps more surprising, however, is how much crazy, manic footage there is of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown doing “Fire,” and Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickenson admitting to copping much of his onstage persona from Arthur, who emerged from the psychedelic safe house of Paris in the ‘60s with wild ideas about confrontational performance art and challenging music – all of which Brown, with a red stripe of makeup running across his face, discusses in great detail with Dunn. That connection that Dunn establishes between Brown and heavy metal is a fascinating one and Dunn displays a deft touch in making it. There’s nothing heavy-handed about his storytelling technique; he’s a natural when it comes to interviewing, and the editing work that he and partner Scott McFadyen, who co-directs and co-produces “Metal Evolution,” keeps everything flowing naturally.

Not forgotten in the story of “Shock Rock” are Alice Cooper and KISS, of course. The infamous chicken incident is dissected with Alice, who goes on to regale Dunn with rehashed tales of how the band was banned in certain countries and how the “bad” publicity they received actually served to increase the band’s popularity – all with the help of former band mates Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith. Whole books have been written about KISS’s makeup and the genesis of the band’s outrageous stage craft. Somehow, Dunn manages to squeeze all the essential information about KISS, as it relates to the subject at hand, while segueing into KISS’s gradual morphing from every parent’s nightmare into a somewhat more innocuous, family-oriented act that saw children arriving at shows made up as their favorite KISS character. While Criss bemoans the increasing commercialism that enveloped KISS, Frehley talks about having to tone down the sexual congress he used to perform with his guitar every night and reluctantly back off on his cursing. This is where things take a turn for the really, really weird.

With KISS having become sort of a kid-friendly cartoon, a shock-rock void developed. Nobody was testing the boundaries of good taste and social convention. Then along came Marilyn Manson. Taking on conservative Christian values with a fierce intelligence and a brutally tortured, gothic aesthetic that seemed to bring to life the inner workings of a serial killer’s scrambled mind, Manson and his deranged crew put on a stage show that was like some fascist S&M rally in a dystopian nightmare. When things got too real, though, as they did when responsibility for the Columbine massacre was placed squarely on Manson’s shoulders, this sinister creature went on MTV and took umbrage with the media for its ghoulish, uncaring coverage of the tragedy and the grief and sadness of those it affected the most. Interestingly, Manson’s one-time co-conspirator, Daisy Berkowitz, criticized Manson’s reaction, basically calling him out for being soft. That, combined with the bizarre, intensely personal stories of Clown and Slipknot, makes the second half of “Shock Rock” the most compelling television produced so far by Dunn.

“Shock Rock” alternates from lighthearted kitsch to serious debate on its effects on society and whether rock music could ever produce anything that could be considering “shocking” ever again. Again, it must be difficult to keep this train on the tracks, to maintain focus on the role “shock rock” plays in the evolution of heavy metal. And yet, Dunn does it, even while occasionally detouring into ancillary subject matter that would threaten to derail less talented filmmakers. Over and over, Dunn and McFadyen stitch together interviews, vintage live footage, still photography and any other ephemera he can get his hands to effortlessly tell a story that deserves this kind of exhaustive study. The world of heavy metal owes him a debt of gratitude.

Peter Lindblad

Metal Evolution - Shock Rock

Watch the Full Episode - Here and Now! 

Metal the next big thing in rock auctions

Goldmine Magazine

By Susan Sliwicki

Al Jourgensen's Buck Satan

Backstage Auctions is betting on the universal appeal of metal music and memorabilia among fans worldwide for its next auction. The Rock Gods and Metal Monsters Auction preview runs Oct. 24-30; the auction runs Oct. 31 to Nov. 6. 

“Heavy metal is a lifestyle, and it shows in everything; it shows in the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the haircut you have, the concerts you go to, the music you listen to, the friends that you have,” Jacques van Gool of Backstage Auctions said. 

When it comes to business, make no mistake. Van Gool has done his homework. Just because metal music has never really seen the light of day in the mainstream media doesn’t mean it lacks a following. Van Gool cited the massive number of Web sites and magazines dedicated to heavy metal worldwide, as well as a plethora of heavy-metal festivals and legions of incredibly loyal fans who follow their favorite acts on social media platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. 

“You have to go a little bit underground for this. I don’t see Fox News or CNN wasting their time saying Al Jourgensen of Ministry is going to put 100 items in a heavy metal auction, because they wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of news. But at the same time, the official Ministry database has 250,000 registered users, so, I’m going to forget about the Foxes and CNNs of the world. All that matters is that 250,000 Ministry fans know about it.” 

The market for heavy metal memorabilia is probably healthier than that of any other musical genre, he added. 

“Metal just doesn’t go away. It doesn’t die. Fans won’t allow it,” van Gool said. “The market for memorabilia from bands that are considered part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, such as Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and Motorhead, remains strong worldwide, van Gool said. 

In the past five years, van Gool has noticed younger metal fans expressing interest in the second- and third-tier bands of the NWOBHM that may sound obscure to non-metal fans. 
“From a collectible point of view, the original vinyl of these bands demands incredible, incredible amounts of dollars,” van Gool said. 

He cited original 7-inch records from Neat Records as being particularly hot with collectors. Records issued on Shrapnel or the original Metal Blade label also are popular in the U.S. 

“The very first Shrapnel album was called Metal Massacre, and Metallica is on that album, which was their first vinyl appearance before they got a record deal,” van Gool said. “In the early years, the Metal Massacre albums featured bands that were on their way to the next big thing, and everybody wants to have that.” 

The uniquely American hair metal phenomenon, which included acts like Cinderella, Poison, Motley Crue, Winger and Ratt, dominated mainstream music in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and those acts still have a strong fanbase here. However, overseas, hair metal isn’t as big of a draw as speed or thrash metal, which boasts bands like Metallica, Slayer, Testament, Exodus and Megadeth, van Gool said. 

One of the biggest “holy grail” items that collectors seek is Iron Maiden’s first 7-inch record a three-song EP called “The Soundhouse Tapes.” 

“That little 7-inch single can sell for $600, $700, which is an amazing amount of money for a single for a band that made it 30 years ago,” van Gool said. 

Autographs are another great collectible, although they are not always extremely valuable, van Gool said. 

“The great thing about most heavy metal bands is that they are, in my opinion, more approachable than most other artists you can think of,” van Gool said. “The moment you start to act like a superstar, you’re gonna lose fans. Your fans need to feel like they can associate themselves with you.” 

That means the desire to bootleg signatures isn’t as high in the metal realm as in other genres of music, he said. 

When it comes to stage-worn clothing, pristine isn’t always the most desirable state, he added. 

“The more an item shows wear and tear, the better, because the more use a piece of attire has, the more it will tell you that the artist really enjoyed wearing that piece,” van Gool said. “When you get something that has makeup on it or smudges on it or hairspray on it, or, even better, bloodstains on it, that, in my opinion, definitely adds value.” 


The focus of The Rock Gods and Metal Monsters Auction is near and dear to van Gool, who grew up listening to and collecting memorabilia from bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Saxon. 

The sense of history associated with the memorabilia featured in this auction is staggering, Van Gool said. 

“You have to look at an individual piece, and you’ve gotta think about on how many stages this microphone stand has been, or what songs were recorded through this particular guitar, or how many photos have been made of this individual wearing this shirt or boots or whatever,” van Gool said. “It’s not just a shirt that’s on a mannequin that you photograph. There’s a little bit of history in front of you.” 

The auction lots are continuing to evolve, as many of the bands are first getting off the road from the hectic summer touring season. Confirmed headliners including the Al Jourgensen collection, which features everything from amps and road cases for guitars to microphone stands, pins, jackets, rings, sunglasses, gloves, hats and boots from the early 1980s until 2008. 

“You name it, it’s in there. He even included original master recordings from the early Ministry days,” van Gool said. 

When Ministry officially retired in 2008, it played its final farewell show in Ireland. A concert poster from that last show, signed by Jourgensen, also is in the auction. 

Whether you dig autographed records, signed posters or stage-worn attire from your favorite artists, the one thing that really matters at the end of the day is a piece’s provenance, van Gool said. 

Pantera, White Zombie, Metal Church, Exodus, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond, Whitesnake, Dio, Quiet Riot, Mr. Big, Winger, Nelson, Queensryche, Alice Cooper and Rainbow also are represented, he said. 

The final auction lineup will boast about 400 lots that range from concert photos sold with negatives and full rights, to vinyl, stage-worn clothing, backstage passes, concert posters and instruments.




For more details on The Rock Gods and Metal Monsters auction visit Backstage Auctions. The auction goes live on Halloween.