Monday, January 22, 2007

Rage Against the Machine, Heaven and Hell, Down, and Megadeth, metal geeks rejoice!!

I am a huge music fan as some of you have already guessed and I just saw two news items that made me salivate. Let me wipe my keyboard down.

I saw this on Yahoo! and I will admit that I was misled at first. The article is about the reuniting of one of my very favorite bands, Rage Against the Machine. Good googly-moogly, I thought this is it, Zach de la Rocha realized he screwed up when he left and now he has come home. Well, not quite. As I read the article, it said that Rage will be getting back together for one gig and that will be at the huge Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival near L.A. Actually it is about 130 miles from L.A. and in the desert.

The article also talks about the formation of Audioslave and also about the resumation or resumption, if those are words, of Chris Cornell’s solo career. I have been hearing rumors that Audioslave is breaking up. I do know that Zach de la Rocha has never put out any music since he left Rage. Could this supposed one off gig turn into a full blown reunion or at least a reunion tour? I would doubt a reunion tour with no new music; those guys don’t seem to be the kinds of guys who would do that. But maybe the juices get flowing again. If Jack White can have two great bands, why can’t Rage and Audioslave coexist? That would be great.

In other rock news, I saw this on Blabbermouth.com. A few months ago I heard that members of Black Sabbath would be reuniting with Ronnie James Dio and touring under the name Heaven and Hell. I am not sure if they have recorded new material or if this will be purely off the two Sabbath albums on which Dio performed. Whatever the case tour dates for Canada have been announced and this looks like my concert of the year, especially if the openers stay the same in the U.S.

Opening for Heaven and Hell in Canada will be a band called Down. You may have not heard of them, but if you love Sabbath you will dig them. They have a sludgy, southern rock feel and Down contains members of Pantera (Phil Anselmo and Rex Brown) and Corrosion of Conformity (Pepper Keenan), so you know it has to be good. On top of that, Megadeth will also be on this tour. That is a metal head’s dream and once upon a time I was a huge metal head. Besides the fact that I still love this music, I think it would be interesting to see what kind of fans will be drawn to this show. Twenty years ago I might have been afraid to see it, now I believe that most of the crowd will be in their 40’s and 50’s. I will probably be the youngest there.

So this post has been a peek into my metal head past. A past that has seemed to rise to the front. I hope I have the possibility to see all these bands in concert either this year or down the road. And if you have never heard some of the bands and like hard rock or heavy metal, I suggest you check them out. Just another tip for your friendly neighborhood Piccu.

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