Search Results for: extreme

Around the time Brett Gurewitz was launching Epitaph Records in 1981, his father was lecturing him to take guitar lessons. The Bad Religion guitarist and punk-rock entrepreneur never sat down for courses with a guitar instructor, although he did go to school to learn to be a recording engineer. However, no amount of schooling could have prepared Gurewitz for the next 25 years of his life. Epitaph Records brought a new era of punk rock to the masses in 1994 when the Offspring’s “Smash” turned into one of the biggest rock records of the decade. The success of the label’s… Read more »

Pete Burns, the flamboyant lead singer ’80s band Dead Or Alive, has filed a lawsuit against a London plastic surgeon for allegedly making him look “physically repulsive.” The androgynous frontman, most famous for the hit “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record),” claims Dr. Maurizio Viel performed a terrible job on his lip augmentation procedure at the London Center For Aesthetic Surgery. Burns’s suit complains of swelling, blistering, discharge, and impaired ability to eat, drink, or talk. He claims the damage was so extreme that at one point it looked like his lips would actually need to be surgically removed.… Read more »

Washington D.C.-based metallers DARKEST HOUR will travel to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on February 19 to start the pre-production and recording process for their new album with producer Devin Townsend (STRAPPING YOUNG LAD, LAMB OF GOD, SOILWORK). A June/July release via Victory Records is expected. The band has issued the following update:  “All is good from the underground bunker where DARKEST HOUR is riffing out our new songs. We have nine songs (that’s a full album, dudes!) and we will definitely have a few extra tracks that will be floating around after the record is recorded to so we hope… Read more »

It’s New Year’s Eve in New York and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is headlining the buzziest indie rock bill in town. The eclectic quintet — which has risen to notoriety for selling more than 110,000 copies of its 2005 debut album in the United States without the help of a record label — has plenty to celebrate. The band is using the show at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom to preview a half-dozen tracks from its self-released sophomore set, “Some Loud Thunder,” due January 30. CYHSY’s most rabid fans don’t need much of an introduction to some of the new material.… Read more »

High School Musical officially graduated at the top of its class. The surprise monster hit soundtrack accompaniment to the Disney Channel’s tween song-and-dance fest, finished as 2006’s chart valedictorian, selling more than 3.7 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures released Thursday. In the SoundScan era, the only other soundtracks to finish atop the yearend chart were The Bodyguard in 1993 and Titanic in 1998. Remarkably, High School Musical debuted on the charts way down at number 143 in January 2006. The disc increased its position each week, eventually hitting the top spot on two nonconsecutive weeks in March. It… Read more »

Apparently when the bell tolled for Marissa Cooper, it also spelled curtains for the entire O.C. After ordering up an abbreviated season of what was once TV’s hottest prime-time teen drama (Beverly Hills, 90210 with even more beach time, if you will), Fox announced Wednesday that it has officially deep-sixed The O.C. The finale will air Feb. 22 after a non-stop run of new episodes starting Thursday. “The O.C. season four finale will also be the series finale. This feels like the best time to bring the show to its close,” O.C. creator and executive producer Josh Schwartz said in… Read more »

As 2006 comes to an end, Angels & Airwaves are looking back with a strong sense of pride. (We know, big surprise!) “I think we’ve all made the record of our lives,” singer and resident hype machine Tom DeLonge said, referring to We Don’t Need to Whisper . “It’s been a super-spiritual year for our band and for us personally, and I think we’ve offered something extremely imaginative and futuristic to rock and roll. I also think that I’ve become a good dancer along the way.” “Yeah, and you’ve also perfected the art of making the di– jokes seem really… Read more »

One sunny afternoon not long ago, Dick Copaken sat in a booth at Daniel, one of those hushed, exclusive restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the waiters glide spectrally fro table to table. He was wearing a starched button-down shirt and a blue blazer. Every strand of his thinning hair was in place, and he spoke calmly and slowly, his large pink Charlie Brow head bobbing along evenly as he did. Copaken spent many years as a partner at the white-shoe Washington, D.C., firm Covington & Burling, and he has a lawyer’s gravitas. One of his bes friends calls… Read more »

The All-American Rejects’ second album is truly a work in progress. There are still so many nails exposed and the paint is still so wet that if this album were an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” Ty Pennington would be bellowing stuff like “Come on, guys! Let’s take it up a couple of notches!” into his megaphone. He would also probably be shirtless. The point is, for a record that’s been in the works for eight months, there’s a whole lot that needs to be done. Like, for example, choosing a proper title. When Interscope Records mailed out promo… Read more »

Some of the greatest hard-rock bands in history have thoroughly awesome – and thoroughly undead – mascots. Iron Maiden have toothy demon Eddie. Megadeth have a similarly toothy yet blind demon named Vic Rattlehead. And Motörhead unleash yet another toothy, snarling hellion: a bulldog/gorilla named Snaggletooth. So you can’t blame My Chemical Romance for wanting to get in on the act. By now, you’ve probably seen the video for “Helena,” in which MCR play pallbearers at a funeral for a young girl who just happens to rise from her casket about halfway through the clip to bust into a ballerina… Read more »