As a part of their ongoing Download 2012 coverage, Scuzz TV will be airing the first in this year’s The Lowdown series at 1pm this Saturday (Tomorrow) – and it’ll be featuring none other than Fozzy frontman, WWE icon and this year’s Metal Hammer Golden Gods host, Chris Jericho!

If you want to see it, just click through to Sky channel 374 or Freesat 503 on Saturday at 1pm, with repeats showing all through the weekend.

Download 2012 takes palce from June 8-10 at Castle Donington and features the likes of The Prodigy, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Soundgarden, Machine Head, and so on. We certainly have our tickets, which are due through our letter box any day now, are you stupid enough NOT to have gotten yours yet??

Booyah.

Awful news arrived yesterday evening that Roadrunner Records will be closing its UK Offices. RR themselves have not released any kind of official or un-official statement as of yet, however a few of the bands have voiced their thoughts on the matter, see below.

TRIVIUM Frontman Matt Heafy said on his twitter:

“I wish I knew who or what to blame specifically, but Roadrunner records just fired some of their best employees, I don’t know if it’s corporate greed or it’s due to the fact that no one puts value in physical art and that piracy created a domino effect, But our friends who are being tossed away so quickly by the label are now out of jobs. These people helped bands get where they are today.”

“Of course I’ll be emotional when it has to do with people I love and care and respect for helping me,” he added, “The main point is that people need to remember,Internet aside-we are dealing with human beings. I feel for my friends.”

SLIPKNOT’s, Clown said:

“Today is a sad day, It has been brought to my attention that many Roadrunner offices around the world have been closed permanently. This means to us, Slipknot, in my opinion that a lot of our very close friends and comrades will no longer be around to help the art and business known as the Slipknot family. You are in my thoughts and prayers now forever. I will always consider you close friends and I will make every attempt to stay in touch with as many of you as possible.”

“RIP ROADRUNNER UK,” adds DevilDriver‘s Dez Fafara via Twitter. “THANKS FOR ALL THE HARD WORK AND MEMORIES!”

Cradle Of Filth frontman Dani Filth, whose band have also been on the Roadrunner roster, commented; “It feels like someone has stuck their fingers in our pie and pinched a great big slice of metal.”

This news, indeed, very much sucks, for all concerned.

HDE’s Will and DJ Superhans recorded an acoustic version of The Defiled’s ‘Final Sleep’ on a Monday afternoon after a few sneaky Rum & Cokes. Her dark Embrace, with now over 4,000 fans on Facebook said they did it live, un-edited a just for pure fun. They put it up on Youtube and in 24 hours had over 100 views. Rogue Tomato spoke with lead vocalist, Will, from Bristol, UK to see what initially prompted them into this unexpected, but welcome endeavour.

“We just had a few drinks and wanted to do something different” Will said. “We have a lot of respect for the guys in The defiled, and what better way to show that! maybe there are a few more drunken covers in us yet!” He added. The song is below.

Her Dark Embrace are certainly climbing up the rock ladder quite quickly, which reminds us a lot of The Defiled. The first time we interviewed them, a couple of years ago they were a relatively unknown unsigned band. Now, they’re set to play the Download Festival this coming June to many many thousands of fans and we think in a year or two, we will be saying the same about HER DARK EMBRACE.

Hey guys, a little off topic here, but I decided to help a friend out and let you know about an awesome new product that is coming soon. I had a go on one of the prototypes the other day and I have to say, this thing is awesome. .

If you like Snowboarding / sledging, check this out….It’s a brand new kind of sledge called Axiski..

https://www.facebook.com/axiski

This sad news came this morning officially from the Sonisphere website, after rumours a couple of days before had surfaced. They didn’t state a reason, but rumours are flying around that they only sold around 6000 tickets….Which by any festival standards, is very poor. We are just glad we have bought our Download Festival tickets as we think there will be a surge in people buying them now as it’s pretty much the only major rock festival in the UK thats going ahead. Good news is that the people who already bought sony tickets will get a full refund.

Statement after the break, so Continue reading →

Download Festival Director, John Probyn is, for a noble cause walking over 100 miles from Donington to Hyde Park after this years Download Festival. So far he has raised over £3,000 for Cancer Research, so if you’d like, why not donate some money yourself in the name of all things rock.

Here is the link – http://www.justgiving.com/TLW

So we did a little piece on the guys in January, and they’ve gone from strength to strength!! Their music video Define, will soon be on KERRANG! TV and available to the masses. I knew these guys would go far!! So anyway, down to the important stuff, their debut album is going to be released march 12th! That’s next week, so we urge all of you music lovers to go buy it.

They won ‘Best EP’ at last years Pure Rawk Awards, for their 2011 EP ‘Fell’, and have been nominated for 4 Awards this year – ‘Best Band’, ‘Best Frontperson’, ‘Best Bassist’ and ‘Best Drummer’. They’ve supported the likes of Supergrass, The King Blues, The Blockheads, Streetlight Manifesto, Go:Audio, Alabama 3 and Dreadzone and they’ve played at numerous festivals including, amongst others, the Bearded Theory festival, Y-Not Festival, BOMFest and Glogow Festival in Poland.

Make way for THE JAMES WARNER PROPHECIES. We love it when bands do well, especially on their own merit. These guys worked hard and they’ve come far and since I love the song define so damn much, here it is again so just click Continue reading →

The brand new, Costa de Fuego Festival is Maraworlds – the organisers of FIB, newest project. A festival devoted to the most energetic rock, hardcore and metal genres. The line up will see the cohabitation of first class acts, renowned artists and up and coming bands, both national and international.

Guns N Roses and Marilyn Manson are the headliners for the first year of Costa de Fuego which are 2 of the biggest key players in todays Rock wish list . It will be held at the Benicssim concert venue on July 20th and 21st 2012 with 3 stages and over 50 bands including OPETH, LACUNA COIL, WARCRY, CANCER BATS, WE ARE THE OCEAN, BERRI TXARRAK and STEEL HORSE.

Two-day tickets include 4 days free camping from Thursday July 18th to Sunday 22nd. The campsite is located in the natural setting of the Las Palmas desert and is close and well connected to the beaches and village centre.

The brand new festival will count on the facilities, equipment and production values Maraworld is well known for and which made them the leaders in this sector both, on a national and international level! This reputation, coupled with some stella performances should put Costa de Fuego on the festival map!

The festival will hold a 30,000 capacity and there will be 5000 two day tickets – with 4 days free camping – available at the special price of £70. Once these have been sold, the price will be £90 for two day tickets. Bargain!

To find out more about this exciting event, go to their official website.

Since we frequent the official DL forums we get to see a few snippets in the way of posts from festival director John Probyn who has hinted that tickets are selling pretty quickly so get the while you can folks.

This years line up has been said to be the best in many years by the avid DL goer, and we’d be inclined to agree. Although we think Corey Taylor could have done with being on a higher stage. We are certainly looking forward to it ourselves as there’s nothing like a good ol’ 5 day bender in a field with a shit tonne of rockers, 24 hours chinese food and a rather large amount of alcohol.

I can almost feel the headache already.

Full line up poster after the break, so to view, Continue reading →

SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor made a special in-store appearance to sign his book, “Seven Deadly Sins – Settling The Argument Between Born Bad And Damaged Good” which I have yet to read, still, even though it’s been sitting in my office now for a few weeks, at Dymocks in Sydney. The video is below and there are 3 more videos after the break of a 3 part interview about the book.

Continue reading →

The crew over at Download festival HQ have announced on Facebook that they’re adding a huge 22 more bands to the line up for 2012′s 10th year of rock at Donington park tomorrow at 9am. Obviously no one knows who will be added, but people are guessing none the less, with bands mentioned such as Enter Shikari, Architects, Parkway Drive, The Hives, Halestorm, Lower Tha, Atlantis, Yashin , Cancer Bats, Your Demise and Asking Alexandria, as I said, these bands are just a small ”wish list” but who knows eh.

We know for sure it’s not going to be anyone ”huge” as they already have their front runners, so they are mostly going to be filler bands and mid range acts.

We will keep you informed.

Well this was unexpected, Queen playing Sonisphere. Pretty good no? We personally would have preferred someone other than lambert to be singing, obviously we can’t have the original Mercury. That would have been fitting actually, Sonisphere, mercury.. Get it. haha.

Playing alongside those almighty legends is Kiss and Faith No More., along with many others including Within Temptation, Evanescence Incubus, Manson, Wolf Mother, and lots more. We’ll keep you posted on their next announcements.