Snoop Dogg, Escape The Fate, Gojira, More To Play Louder Than Life 2021

After COVID-19 canceled last year’s Louder Than Life, the rock festival is planning on making 2021 its best year to date.

The Louisville, Ky., festival announced its lineup for 2021 earlier yesterday, unveiling that this year’s headliners are Korn, Snoop Dogg, Machine Gun Kelly, Cypress Hill, Staind, Jane’s Addiction, Mudvayne, Nine Inch Nails, Judas Priest, Rise Against, and Metallica who are performing two different sets. Others attending include Teenage Wrist, Beartooth, Escape The Fate, Killswitch Engage, The Blue Stones, Gojira, Ice Nine Kills, Spiritbox, The Distillers, Pennywise, The Hu, and From Ashes To New. Check out the full lineup below.

“[Promoter Danny Wimmer Presents] has always considered Louisville home, so to be able to bring America’s Biggest Rock Festival back in 2021 means everything to us,” the festival’s founder Danny Wimmer said in a statement. “After a year filled with challenge after challenge, we worked incredibly hard to curate a lineup worth the wait for our fans. Weather got in the way of Nine Inch Nails in 2018, the pandemic derailed our plans for two big Metallica sets in 2020 – so to have them both back for 2021, along with KORN and the rest of this incredible lineup over four days, that’s the kind of ‘new normal’ that we’re all looking forward to.”

Louder Than Life 2021 will be held at the Highland Festival Grounds at KY Expo Center on September 23 – 26. Tickets are available now.

The festival premiered in 2014 and has boasted a lineup of bands and artists including Stone Temple Pilots, Whiskey Myers, Being As An Ocean, Falling In Reverse, and Guns N’ Roses.

Attack Attack! Are Reuniting

2020 has been one strange year, but this takes the cake.

Word about an Attack Attack! reunion broke out earlier Monday when Note To Scene published the news. A source inside the band told the publication that the group are in fact reuniting and are recording new material with longtime producer Joey Sturgis (Asking Alexandria, Emmure, I See Stars).

Not much info has surfaced, but a brand new Instagram account for the band was created, posting this mysterious photo below.

View this post on Instagram

🦀🦀🦀 – – #crabcore #attackattack #metalcore

A post shared by Attack Attack! (US) (@attackattackus) on Oct 18, 2020 at 5:30pm PDT

Also, no word yet on who is in the reformed version of Attack Attack!, but a Facebook comment said that drummer Andrew Wetzel and guitarist Andrew Whiting, both founding members, are returning alongside Nine Shrines vocalist Chris Parketny, Drudge vocalist Jay Miller, and Traitors bassist Cameron Perry are tied to the reunion.

Attack Attack! formed in 2007 under the name of Ambiance. The crabcore band signed with Rise Records (Covey, Jetty Bones, Make Them Suffer) that same year and released three albums, 2008’s Someday Came Suddenly, 2010’s self-titled, and 2012’s This Means War. AA! broke up in 2013 after Wetzel and Whiting got involved in an actual fight. Later that same year, AA! somewhat reunited with I Am Abomination frontman Phil Druyor and AA! merch guy Tyler Sapp and released a song called “No Defeat”. Listen to it below.

This final lineup of AA! went on to create the band Nativ with guitarist William Honto. Nativ released only one EP and broke up shortly afterwards due to Wetzel and Whiting’s fight. Check out the EP below.

But if you think the whole OG lineup is reuniting, you’re dreaming. AA! kicked out Austin Carlile in 2008 while on tour in Utah and left him crying in a parking lot. He went on to form Of Mice & Men alongside members of Odd Project, Lower Definition, and A Static Lullaby. Clean vocalist/guitarist Johnny Franck quit the band in 2010 to get closer to God and then made the project The March Ahead. He’s currently working under the moniker Bilmuri, who was featured in this year’s Prenatt’s Picks list with Lilac Queen, Wristmeetrazor, and Bamily. Keyboardist/unclean vocalist/lead vocalist Caleb Shomo is currently the lead frontman for hard rock band Beartooth. Shomo and Franck did confirm that they will not be involved with the reunion.

My Chemical Romance, Pepper, Britney Spears, More Announced For Record Store Day 2020

In a few Saturdays, thousands of people (myself included) will be flocking to record stores in hopes of copping some new, exclusive vinyl records for Record Store Day 2020.

This year’s event which takes place on Saturday, April 18, will feature over hundreds of artists and musicians dropping rare, exclusive, or reissuing old records. Mainstream acts like Maroon 5, The Rolling Stones, Post Malone, Sam Smith, and Britney Spears are dropping records (ex. Spears’s release is a remix and B-sides record featuring tracks from Oops!…I Did It Again.) Scene bands like CHON, The Menzingers, Bayside, Asking Alexandria, and My Chemical Romance, will also have content.

Others dropping records of all speeds and sizes include Pepper, August Burns Red, Glass Animals, Ice Nine Kills, Hootie And The Blowfish, Odd Future, Snoop Dogg, U2, HUNNY, and Eve 6, just to name a few. To see the full RSD 2020 lineup, look for the full list here.

If you want to see if any record stores in your area are participating, click or tap here to find out.

The Amity Affliction Improve On Past Mistakes On “Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them”

Let’s face it, Misery was shit.

Sounding like a mish-mash of Memphis May Fire and Beartooth meets Imagine Dragons and Bring Me The Horizon, The Amity Affliction’s sixth album raised the brows of several fans, praying they weren’t going for the same pie that BMTH were after. It was too pop for metal fans and too metal for pop fans. Simply put, the band face planted hard and fans were worried that they would never recover.

Let me rest assure you that they did recover.

On Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them, the band are still on their pop-metal vibes, but they turned it down a notch and pumped up the heaviness. They finally found the perfect balance. So yes, Everyone Loves You… > Misery.

Recruiting Misery producer Matt Squire (All Time Low, Underoath, The Wild & Free,) the Australian metalcore quartet try and correct their errors by making a record that’s actually presentable. The Amity Affliction sing about suicide, drug abuse, bipolar disorder, death, and sadness, while teetering between pop rock and metalcore.

Immediately you can tell that things sound a whole lot better with the nearly two minute long intro “Coffin.” The track reminds me of killer intros like Asking Alexandria’s “Alerion” and blessthefall’s “2.0.” Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them continues the heavy streak with tracks like “Forever,” “All My Friends Are Dead,” and the album’s closing number “Catatonia.”

But there are some songs that throw the heaviness off-kilter like “Aloneliness,” a track that deals with bipolar depression that gets mixed up in the poppiness, “Fever Dream,” which feels like a discount Linkin Park song, and “Just Like Me,” the heaviest song Imagine Dragons ever made. And that fucking chorus, and the whistling, the whistling. 

Overall, Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them bounces around the place, being good one moment and subpar the next. For a band that used to create fantastic metalcore albums, Everyone Loves You… makes you long for the old days.