Search Results for: nirvana

It has finally come to this: labels are simply giving their music away. A new Web site named SpiralFrog.com allows visitors – with label approval – to download music free of charge. It launched Monday in the U.S. and Canada after a beta-testing period. The fine site features more than 800,000 tracks and 3,500 music videos, and promises hundreds of thousands more soon. It makes money through advertising, rather than by the 99-cent downloads popularized by Apple’s iTunes. The service, founded by Joe Mohen, pays record companies part of its advertising revenue. Thus far, Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, the… Read more »

Atreyu’s Lead Sails Paper Anchor rocketed onto Billboard’s Top 200 this week at No. 8, and Billboard’s Rock and Hard Rock Album charts at No. 1, making it the highest-charting album of the band’s career. The debut is also significant in that Atreyu distinguish themselves as one among a very short list of hard rock acts to have debuted in the Top 10 this year. News of the album’s explosive arrival follows a flurry of headline-making moves for Atreyu, who were recently named as a headliner on one of the biggest tours of the new year: “Rockstar Taste of Chaos… Read more »

“We grew up in a small town and didn’t know anything about the music industry or major labels,” he recalled. “All I knew was that Nirvana had signed to Sub Pop, and I thought that was cool.” Although Hot Hot Heat got its start as a screamo band, by the time it made contact with Sub Pop, its sound had mutated into what would soon be known as dance-punk. The band stood at the forefront of a movement that would explode on the indie rock scene within another year. Sub Pop head of A&R (artists and repertoire) Tony Kiewel realized… Read more »

Acclaimed metallic rock act ATREYU have announced plans for a headlining tour in support of their upcoming Hollywood Records debut, Lead Sails Paper Anchor. The much-buzzed-about album arrives in stores on August 28th and the tour begins September 9th at the Big Easy in Boise, ID, with openers Haste The Day, It Dies Today plus a special guest to be announced. Atreyu, who will grace the October cover (on stands Aug. 21)  of Revolver magazine, are currently previewing select songs from the new album while on the Family Values Tour, which sees them third on the bill and sharing the… Read more »

The Kurt Cobain documentary which features voiceover from the Nirvana frontman himself is due to be released in the U.S. in October. AJ Schnack’s documentary film Kurt Cobain: About A Son is set to come to cinemas in New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle in early October. According to Schnack’s blog: “The film will open in New York at the IFC Centre on Wednesday, October 3 at Landmark’s Nuart in Los Angeles on Friday, October 5 and in Seattle at Landmark’s Varsity on October 12. Additional cities and dates will be announced soon.” The film sets impressionistic images of Washington… Read more »

Recently, Maureen Callahan wrote a piece for the New York Post about Crush Management, the NYC cadre that shepherds the careers of Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, the Academy Is … , Boys Like Girls and Armor for Sleep (or, as Callahan puts it, “basically any band that a 13-year-old girl with a blog and a Hot Topic habit obsesses over”). Aside from providing readers with some genuinely bananas quotes from songwriter/ rock-and-roll vampire Butch Walker about credibility (especially considering this is on his résumé), the article is excellent primarily because it floats the hypothesis that the artists… Read more »

NEW YORK – An evening with Hinder is like hanging out with a bunch of frat boys. Only most frat boys don’t have tour buses. Most have pledges – not roadies, managers, security guards and publicists – and sorority girls, not strippers, as their dates. Plus, most frat parties eventually end. But Hinder’s party is showing no sign of winding down. “Lips of an Angel,” their power ballad about infidelity, is a huge hit. Extreme Behavior, their debut album, has topped a million sales and was the 10th best-selling CD of 2006 . And at one point, the band was… Read more »

When Jonathan Davis refers to having the terrible twos behind him, it’s not a parenting reference. (His son, Pirate, will actually turn 2 in March.) “We always say that, musically, our 20s are the terrible twos,” the Korn singer explained. “When you are 20 you do the stupidest stuff to your body, you’re close-minded, you’re like a 2-year-old – just grown up and can drink. Once we hit 30, we started really playing the stuff that opened our minds up.” It’s with that open mind that the 36-year-old Davis was able to envision his metal band playing a 14-song acoustic… Read more »

Actor Michael Pitt’s plans to release a new album and tour the U.S. have been defended by his label boss, Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore, who describes the indie star as an ‘artist’. Pitt rose to fame in 2005’s ‘Last Days’, which was generally considered to be based on the last days of Nirvana star Kurt Cobain, not only playing the iconic singer but also recording the film’s soundtrack. Last year Moore signed his band Pagoda to his Ecstatic Peach label, and hit back at critics comparing his music career to that of badly received musical ventures for Keano Reaves… Read more »

Last we heard from Garbage, in the fall of 2005, the group was going on an indefinite hiatus. Fortunately for fans, that break is not turning out like, say, Blink-182’s “hiatus.” “We’re recording a couple new songs at the end of February,” drummer Butch Vig revealed recently. “I think everyone’s excited about getting back in a room and playing some music together.” The new tunes will be included on a Garbage greatest-hits album the band is putting together for release later in the year. “We’ve been working on it for a while,” Vig said. “There was originally talk about doing… Read more »