Welcome one and all to episode 373 of Signals from Mars. I'm your host Victor and for this episode I bring you the return of our monthly albums review where Mr. Jeremy Weltman and myself discuss the previous month's releases and a lot of good stuff came out in January of 2024. We'll get into that next.
I'm ready. Let's do it.
This is your first step in not becoming a lazy listener. There was more than one person that reached out to me and said, Hey, I didn't check anything out last year. Seriously, we went through the pains taking task of listening to I don't know how many albums throughout the year.
Jeremy and myself and presenting them to you guys on a silver platter. Hey, this is what we recommend.
So let's turn the page. Let's start anew in 2024 and let's do this. Let's make this a habit. So even if you even if you don't like listening on a weekly basis and have some time to kill here and there and want to go back and throw on some of these album reviews or monthly album reviews.
You can go to the bottom of signals from ours.com and you'll find all of the last few episodes that we've done like this group together. And from there you can click on them and check out the entire run of them to be honest.
And listen, I say this a million times. I love talking about new music, whether it's from bands that we love, whether it's from bands that we know of, but maybe have never checked out or newer bands.
And there are some bands that that may be a little off the beaten track for some of you guys.
There's for example, Jeremy and I made a conscious effort of trying not to kind of step on each other's picks. We were now we now set up a sheet where we're a spreadsheet, an Excel sheet where where we keep track of what we've listened to.
And for me it helps me because I try to pick stuff that he hasn't listened to. And then once I'm done listening to stuff that I'm interested in listening to, I'll go back and listen to some of the bigger releases out of the ones that he's enjoyed or some of the ones that he's listened to.
So I think we've got you guys pretty well covered. And this January was a little atypical in the sense that there were a lot of different new albums where in the past, January tends to be a slower month.
So anyway, I hope that this helps you guys out.
Regardless, let me thank my patrons haven't done this in a few episodes and let's go with what's listed oldest to newest on my end here.
I have Stephen Saylor, Stephen Hoeker, Jeremy Weltman who's on this episode, Mike Jones, Brad Doll, Gabriel Ruiz, Jose Ruiz, Metal Dan, Johan in Sweden, Ed Strum, I believe is how you pronounce it. Sure he's laughing and saying no it is wrong Victor.
Ed Ferguson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Espin, Chris Szynsak and Sean Richman. I do want to thank all of you guys for your support.
And yeah, I hope you guys enjoy this episode. I hope that it's worth your while and that it helps you kind of get into the habit of checking out things. Hopefully there are some things that we mentioned that makes you guys say oh yeah that's a cool one I got to check that out or maybe that one slipped through the cracks or wow that album sucked.
What were they thinking of?
There's there's a bunch of different ways to look at this.
In any event, guys I do want to thank you once again for all of your support. I know that there's a million things that you guys could be listening to but you choose to listen to this when you could be listening to other things doing other things.
Hopefully this helps bring a smile to your face or helps you pass the time, whatever. Anyway, thanks again for listening.
Enough of me yammering and let's get on with the episode. Here we go.
Welcome one and all to the February 2nd 2024 episode of signals from Mars. I am Victor. He is Jeremy. How are you sir?
Very well thanks. How are you Victor?
I'm doing good myself.
This time around Jeremy is back for one of our new music discussions where we recap the music that has come out the previous month. This time we're going to be talking about January 2024.
And man January usually starts out as a slow month for music. But there were quite a few new releases that came out this month. I think the only week where there wasn't a lot going on was the first week, January 5th.
And man I'm just realizing that I missed out on a big release that I wanted to listen to. My son brought up which wasn't, I forgot when it came out, but it was in January. Neither one of us listed it. It was the Riley's LA Guns album.
Yes you're right. Yeah, yeah we both missed out on that one. Maybe we should, we'll have a listen and we'll give our verdict on it in February.
There you go.
So anyway on January 5th, you listed two albums that you listened to. I kind of glossed over these. I didn't have enough time to really listen to either one.
But I'll let you be the one that discusses January 5th.
Yeah, I mean, like you say, it's a very slow start to the year sometimes and this was no different. January 5th, there weren't many really that were out and I was probably forcing the issue a little bit.
But you know, listen to Beautiful Illusion by Last World. I thought it was a melodic sort of AOR style rock album, sort of thing that would probably accompany a film.
It all starts off, you know, a little bit bland to be honest, but it does improve. There's some hard hisses on there. A few good songs like I Will Find My Way, A Step Beyond Death, and there was a sort of rocky number, Better Of Me, which I quite enjoyed.
There was a bit of a low production budget on it, but you know, it was okay. It was, you know, listenable.
But my pick of the week was an album called Darkness by The Odd Even on Eclipse Records. It was a fairly sort of downtuned hard rock act. Well, they are a downtuned hard rock act from Baltimore.
I would say it was definitely for the, you know, Zach Wild fans. It's sort of, you know, sort of riff heavy grunge influenced on metal, that sort of stuff.
Good songs, decent vocalist too, Chris Foltz, and I thought the production was right on it as well.
They've been going since 2020, and it was, you know, that was a pretty decent good start to the year. So a surprising hit from the off. Give it a listen. I think you'll probably like it, Victor.
Okay, awesome. Yeah, I listened to a little bit of it, and I think you're probably right with the Zach Wild comparison. It reminded me of a little bit of John Petrucci from Dream Theater as well with some of the downtunes playing also.
I'll give that one an extended listen.
Like I said, it isn't that I didn't want to listen to it. I just ran out of time.
Okay, so January 12, we start to pick things up again.
And we have new releases from Magnum, Emil Bowles, Russell Guns, Jim Petrucci and World Stage, the Grandmaster,
Ryogen, I guess that's pronounced, Exit Eden, we had EPs from Greg Pucciato, Alluvial, Escuela Grind, and yeah, those are the main albums that came out. And look, these aren't all the albums that came out. There's a lot of other stuff that came out.
These are just kind of the ones that stood out to us. We got a chance to listen to a lot of these.
Jeremy, what are some of your picks for the 12th?
Yeah, I mean, this week I delved into Black Sun by the Grandmaster. That was a Frontiers album. Very sort of pleasant power metal stuff, strong production again, soaring vocals, you know, the sort of thing you're going to get.
So I quite enjoyed that. I thought Soul Sacrifice had all these sort of elements of a very commercial piece of metal.
And there were some other, you know, good nice listens on it as well.
I listened to Medusa by Jack Russell and Tracy Guns. I liked a few songs on this, but it seemed to lack something. I couldn't put my finger on it. You know, I played it a couple of times.
It didn't persuade me to, you know, play it a third time. So I just, I don't know what it was. Maybe you'll chip in on that one in a minute, I'm sure, and put me right on that. I don't know what it was.
But I suppose there's no surprise that the week belonged to the Birmingham Pump Rock Star Wars Magnum for me. It wasn't really so much the album Here Comes the Rain, which, you know, it's released.
It's their 23rd studio release, I believe. So, you know, they've released a lot of albums. Unfortunately, it was released in the week that the chief songwriter and guitarist, Tony Clarkin, died at the age of 77,
which was very sad. I've seen them a lot over the years. And, you know, I gave this album a good listen. I felt the quality has dropped off quite a bit in the last few years, but, you know, they're aging guys.
But there were some good songs on there. And, you know, I liked the song After the Silence. I liked the closing song Borderline, which I thought, you know, highlighted Clarkin's obsession with war themes, which sort of resonated throughout many of their albums over the years.
So, you know, there's a lot there that I'm sort of giving it the album of the week because of the, because Clarkin has passed away. But there you go. Magnum is my album of the week.
Okay, the Russell Guns. Absolutely. I got to listen to that. I'm a huge Tracy Guns fan.
I think that this album, similar to what you said, there's a few really cool tracks on it.
And there's a lot that just does nothing for me because when they go back to the 70s Hammond, Oregon thing, it's it's boring to me.
I have every LA Guns release.
As much as I like Hollywood vampires, it has very little distortion and it doesn't put Tracy's skills on display the way that they could be or the way that I like them to be.
And I think that the songs where the distortion is kicked up and the keyboards are kind of brought to the to the back end of the tracker, you know, pushed to the background kind of are the ones where they shine, you know, because Tracy and Jack Russell are the stars.
I don't know who the keyboard player is.
He shouldn't be who I'm hearing over top of these two monster legendary artists.
And some of those songs, it just feels like they're foisted on us with okay, we're going to give you a 70s feel but there's really kind of nothing kind of organic about it in places.
The album isn't bad, but and when they're cooking one it's good it's really good. But like you're saying it's it's missing something for a lot of the album.
My pick for this week is the German band a meal bowls with level fix it.
It is a band that I've been hearing about for a long time.
I never really checked them out. And there was a single that I posted which not a lot of people liked on Patreon but I really like the, the chorus because I thought it was melodic and it got stuck in my head and there's a few.
I mean, I'm not going to say that this is, you know, the greatest thing since sliced bread.
But there's some pretty cool tracks on this album. And because it's, you know, something different and I like talking about different things when it comes to music if it helps some people check it out and whether that means that they check it out and say oh you're crazy,
or wow you know yeah there are a few really cool songs off of this and I think I've done my work. So that's why I'm going to go with the meal bowls album.
Trying to look at what else I listened to here I listed the Greg Pucci auto EP and that was, it was cool. I mean it's what you could expect from from Greg it's eclectic.
So, anyway, moving on to January 19.
We had probably the biggest release of the week and one of the private biggest release of January is the new Green Day album saviors. We had new albums from Saxon hellfire and damnation, the rods with rattled the cage.
Also go to this metal life Cobra kill sovereign grand abora Lord dying reissue from to share more a kind of compilations from Nick Oliveri there's there's Nick Oliveri hits at all.
Volume eight and nine were released.
We both got to listen to a bunch of different albums here.
Jeremy, what are some of your picks for this week for the 19th.
Yeah, I mean I listened to serpents kiss by Cobra kill, and I listened to expedition one by metal light. Both of those were okay to a fine albums that were listenable, you know, sort of thing you put on in the background, then not necessarily a, you know, an album or would play
again and again but you know they were quite enjoyable and so you know I'd recommend anyone to pick them up and listen to them.
I've moved on to rattle the cage the rods album.
There's something about this I mean I remember them obviously from back in the day.
So, I think that sort of, you know, made me listen to them. And, you know, I don't know what it was it's fairly simple rock and roll you know which which works. And I did play this several times and I thought you know, there's some songs on here that are really
annoying me and yeah, I'm listening to them again and again, what is going on. It's one of those albums that it's almost like an anvil album.
You know, you know, you know that it's, it's a little bit tongue in cheek you know it's a little bit raw it's a little bit old fashioned. It's a little bit this it's a little bit that and yet you know you're singing along to the choruses, and you kind of enjoying it,
and sometimes you just think well metal albums are supposed to be fun. And this was a fun listen. And so I thought, you know, good on them. They've done something that that made me listen to them.
And that's all they needed to do. So I like that but it wasn't my pick of the week.
And of course there's no surprises that it's going to be Hellfire and Damnation, the Barnsley Stormtroopers, the Barnstormers, Saxon.
I got this one on Red Vinyl I played a lot.
It's their 24th studio album since 1979. And it's in my, in my opinion it sort of continues a good run of form that they've had in recent years you know they've never produced an album that you would say is absolutely amazing you know 10 out of 10.
But I think they keep the, they keep the sort of level up you know it's a seven or an eight out of 10 every time and there's always good songs on there to listen to.
This time of course we got Brian Tatler of Diamondhead helping them out. It seems to be sort of like a full time member now.
And I think it's better for that too. I think it's you know he's got good tunes, nice riffs, good lyrics, and all these historical themes.
I know there's some people in the chat group, the Patreon group who thought you know they didn't like the lyrics and they thought the songs were okayish.
But you know, turn it up, play it loud. It's saxophone for God's sake. No, it's great. It's new open.
Yeah, that's interesting because with last week's show a few people mentioned that but Brad was 100% behind the album and actually felt that it's probably their best album that they've released in some time.
Would you feel that that it's their most cohesive album.
In comparison to the last few? I think it's better than the last two. I think the best album they've released in their sort of recent run of form has been Sacrifice.
But the production on Sacrifice was far too in your face. You know it's very overproduced. This one I think they've got the production right.
And I think it's a nice balance of songs. You know it's short and sweet. There's probably only about nine tracks on there really if you take out you know the opener, which is just a minute long or a couple of minutes or whatever.
And I think that they have a nice sort of balance of themes and balance of their. It's kind of like a sort of potpourri of sax and over the years.
You know they do the same sort of stuff. They do stuff about history. They do stuff about transport.
They do stuff about you know those sort of things that Biff likes to write about. And the riffs are there and you know the good tunes that stay in your head.
1066 is a good song on there. So is Madame Guillotine. So is the one about Roswell. And it's just you know it's a very enjoyable seven and a half, eight, eight, ten album.
Yeah.
To echo what you said about the Rods and Saxon I would. I mean I can't argue with either of the things that you mentioned with the Rods mentioning Anvil I think is very apropos because it is that you know what to expect from them.
I'm not the hugest Saxon fan. But I do think that this album is a solid album. I was listening to it today. And for a Saxon album. I mean I can't complain.
You know I can think of contemporaries of theirs that are putting out worse music at the moment. Stuff that would probably bore me a little more.
And the moral of this story is this is what not to do if your bird shits on you.
For example.
So yeah so kudos to them.
I do want to point out the Green Day album Saviors. I know it's a little bit off the beaten track for people that are in Patreon or listen to the podcast. But I do think that this is them kind of going full circle to what they were like in their early years.
It's a lot closer to something like Dookie with some of the political message that they've that they've brought about over the years kind of mixed in. And yes they've been a political band for some time. So any Yahoo that say stick to the music and forget about the political stuff.
Kind of been doing that for almost 30 years now anyway. So again just to pick something off the beaten track and something that wasn't mentioned. I bring that up.
Real quickly here I do want to say hello to Tony who is in the chat who's saying hello to both Jeremy and myself. Also want to remind you guys that you can help the show out by going to Amazon. You have that Amazon link up there.
I get a small kickback for you purchasing anything from that. That is the US store.
The UK store.
Canadian store.
You can also
go to Patreon.
And you can also this is I guess the buy me a coffee. What else I have here. Well, you can go to signals from ours.com to check out all these links that I'm mentioning and oh by the way, Jeremy is wearing a few different items here.
It's showing up backwards actually on my end.
All right. I don't know what's going on here. Okay. So we've got the T shirt.
We have got the hoodie which
Jeremy is wearing got a windbreaker jacket.
We've got a bomber jacket.
We've got the signals from Mars Jeremy cap.
We've got the beanie.
And we've got the signals from Mars Brad bucket hat.
So there you go.
Anyone that so chooses to pick any one of these up. I am gratefully appreciate you shipping in and once again you go to signals from Mars.com to check out any of these items you just go to March, you can go to follow.
To follow us on social media.
You could watch replace the live stream. You can go to any of the new value for value podcasting apps. And if you so choose to throw some crypto my way you can do that as well.
Brad says he has something new to show off. So good thing it isn't the same old same old he has to show off.
All right.
Anyway, getting back to the discussion here.
We move things forward and also January really only had three weeks of new releases so moving on to the last week of new releases here on January 26.
We had static acts with project regeneration volume to Lucifer with Lucifer five alkaline trio of Frank Carter and the rattlesnakes new model army.
Eddie, Demetri, any given day, high risk mega colossal Caligula's horse kill the thrill live albums from thunder oh yeah to live albums from thunder is live at Islington.
Am I saying that right.
Islington is LinkedIn Academy.
So live at Leeds that one's a little easier for me. Whitechapel with live in the valley and then compilations from Alcatraz and another various artists mesmerize attribute to Celtic frost.
Jeremy, what are some of the things that you listen to that came out on the 26th. Yeah, it's a trickier week for me this one I think I mean I started out with a sort of brief dip into live in the valley by Whitechapel.
And that's a shocker to you know, I couldn't stand, I couldn't stand the incessant growling to be fair, but it was, you know, better when we did some proper singing the song Hickory Creek was good.
And it gave a you know good powerful impression of what a Whitechapel gig is so it's worthy of a listen. Not my favorite band, but Phoenix by the female trio the gems was much better they're sort of up tempo old style rock and roll.
I didn't really like the pop really with me and despite you know the vocals being a little bit too forward in the mix which can happen now and again.
So I kind of like that. I also kind of enjoyed limitless by a band called Any Given Day.
I thought again this is a band that relied too much on growling, and there was a little bit of a sort of fairly generic style to it.
It was good. It was something you could put on while I was working for the week and that was okay. My album of the week is one of those live albums by Thunder I didn't listen to both, because for obvious reasons I thought that maybe the setlist would be pretty similar.
And I'm guessing that people were just going to buy the one that they went to in that year, or that you know, I listened to the one live at Leeds obviously it was up north and I nearly went to the gig actually in 2015.
And so, the reason why I gave this, the album of the week because I don't normally do it for a live album.
It's a real sort of true reflection of a Thunder gig. I mean I've been to several of them.
And it's a band that actually plays live.
Now just listen to what I just said then a band that actually plays live.
Yeah, I mean, you know, that's what you're getting on on that and it's brilliant. It sounds a little tinier. It sounds you know it sounds as if the band has separate instruments that the only instruments that playing are the ones that are in front of them.
And it's great. You know that's that's what a band should sound like, you know that it's, it's fantastic and it goes through all the showcases all these sort of catalog of the band. And, you know, thunder have got some great songs and there isn't a filler amongst it.
So yeah, worthy, worthy album of the week for me.
Maybe I'll even purchase it one day.
I've got a lot of thunder albums already.
So, I listened to a lot of different things. I listened to the static X, which is a combination of a compilation and some new stuff thrown in there as well someone released stuff.
Listen to the Lucifer five album, which is along the lines of what you could expect from a Lucifer album, it is a throwback to a 70s feel.
There is some 80s influence thrown in there as well.
The Frank Carter and the rattlesnakes, which is kind of all over the place some of the things on there sounds like Queens of the Stone Age. Some of it is very radio friendly as well some ballad II also dead poet society dead poet society's new album.
Fission is kind of
borders or saddles
kind of pop radio friendly rock at times royal blood ish.
And I mean it's an okay album.
The HeLa's Horse is a band that I reviewed way back when they're on inside out records, which is an album or which is a label which is known to put out progressive stuff and yeah this is kind of a mix between Prague metal and some sludgy do me metal.
And the last thing that I checked out was mega colossus the album is showdown it is on. If you pronounce in Spanish it is crude that should, which is Southern Cross and very, very, very
trash influenced very new wave of British heavy metal influence. It was a really cool album because it was like mixing rust and peace rust and peace mega death with Iron Maiden.
And, and it was an interesting mix they're not reinventing anything.
But it is a cool album to listen to. This is a hard pick for me because I really enjoyed the Lucifer album as well because I think that they've kind of turned it up a notch and the interesting thing is, is that I don't know if she's still with the guy from the helicopters
because I haven't seen him featured in any of the images, but it seems as if they've kind of like I said it seems like it's still a retro sound but they've kind of moved it forward another decade.
So, for me it's kind of going to be a tie between the Lucifer and the mega colossus album so checking out both of them.
We've never had a time showing that had a time, but we've got a week where we've had no pics. So why not.
We kind of set these rules as we go as well.
We're, we're, we're, we're kids playing in the park saying next goal wins.
There's that.
Yeah, at the end of the day, listen.
Me and Jeremy have been doing this for a year now.
There is no excuse for you guys at the end of the year now because on the homepage, I have these episodes separated from the other episodes you have all the newest episodes together, then you have interviews, then you have just straight up music discussions.
And then you have our monthly album reviews.
And when it comes to the end of the year, and if any of you says, I didn't really get to listen to anything well when it, when you get to October, November start listening back to these episodes and say what did I miss out on what oh yeah wow okay so Jeremy has recommended
this album from the odd even.
What's that album all about let me check it out. What's that Magnum album all about how about that saxon album.
You know what about that thunder live out. I like thunder but I'm not sure if I really really like them.
Oh wow this live album is really what I needed by the band it's got everything that I love by them. And it's introduced me some to some additional stuff so guys we do these episodes for you to check music out.
New and old kind of mix things up there and give you kind of a cross section of different things to check out so hopefully you guys enjoy this.
We do have some other topics to talk about as well.
So we don't want to leave you guys here just at the 30 minute mark there there are a few other things that we can discuss.
The first thing that Jeremy you brought up.
You brought to my attention is the whole thing with Ozzy doing two more shows.
Which is what Sharon has said.
What are your thoughts on this.
Yeah, so two shows at Villa Park, Aston Villa's home ground.
Apparently, we don't know when yet but we would imagine it's going to be over in the summertime, because it's out it's going to be outdoors and you know on the pitch.
I think it's well it's his way of saying farewell apparently obviously he's always wanted to play live and he's been unable to because he's been so unwell.
And he doesn't really want to tour either so you know to do a couple of shows in Birmingham you know we can he can settle around there for a while before he does the two shows are probably be one one day after the other or the night be a day in between I guess for a rest day.
I mean, you know, he's not a well man let's put it that way. You know we know what we're going to get with it, there's going to be a lot of help.
He's going to be helped to stand up in some way, his voice is going to be helped a lot.
But it's the last chance we're ever going to see Ozzy live and you know I'm tempted to go myself because it's not too far away from me.
And you know getting a ticket should be okay because you know it's just what 40,000 50,000 each night.
So yeah, it should be able to get there there'll be a good bill it probably put on some good support acts as well.
He wants to do it. Obviously Sharon wants him to do it.
I also think that there's a good chance that Tony I only is going to turn up, because it's also his own patch us to you know Aston Villa.
You may even see Giza Butler turning up. You never know. But definitely Tony, because we know Tony's played live with him recently.
They've done a bit of Black Sabbath together. So there's no reason why they wouldn't want to do it again.
Just maybe come on for a couple of songs near the end, play Paranoid, play another one.
And that's it. You know, nice hug at the end, sign off.
And I think Tony would really appreciate that as well, you know, because he's never played really at Villa Parve, which again, as I say, is where they're from.
It's their home. So in many respects, you know, I know what I'm going to get with this.
I think it's going to be I wouldn't say it's not going to be a car crash at all.
I think it's going to be very much helped. It's going to be a slightly artificial show, but it's going to be okay.
You'll get a good band on. I'm very much in favor of it overall, I think.
With that in mind, because that's the intro to Bark at the Moon
from a bootleg from Japan that I have.
Do they invite Jakey Lee to play with him?
Well, is that a rhetorical question?
I'm asking you.
Do you think that happens?
Do we see and asking the people in the chat, do we see Jakey Lee play with Ozzy during his final two shows?
Well, it's a good question.
We've seen many of these bands before and artists who they play their final shows and whether they invite people back.
I mean, we've seen I mean, the Scorpions have been on their final shows now for a long time.
They're not really final, but they have they did invite back early John Roth to play with them.
So, you know, it's always possible.
Whoever Ozzy gets on with, whoever Sharon can probably pay half the price that she wants to pay for them.
And they accept it because they want to play in the last show.
It's going to happen. So, you know, there could be a few guest appearances.
This is this is what I'm saying. You know, I think there's a very high chance of Tony playing.
Yeah. Whether whether there's anyone else we shall see.
But, yeah, it's possible. And, you know, will it be all the better for it?
It will be, won't it? You know, the more the more stars are out there and the more, you know, his old band members are there, the better, really.
OK, so let me let me throw this out to you this way.
I'm going to name people and you're going to give me from one to five probability of them being on either one of these final two shows.
Tony Iommi. Tony Iommi, I think is a five. I think it's almost certain he'll be there. OK, Gieser Butler.
I think that's more of a three, two or three, because I'm not sure whether Gieser actually wants to play live anymore himself.
OK, Bill Ward. Oh, well, they are friends, aren't they?
Yeah, that's a good question. Good question.
Oh, I can't answer that one. I'm going to have to go plump down the middle and say maybe a three, maybe a two. OK.
Yeah. Slash.
Well, Slash is a guest appearance could. Yeah, I mean, he would do it. He would do it later than in the past.
Yeah, you would say it's a four if he's asked. Yeah. OK.
Gus G. Gus G. Gus G. Gus G does play over here in the UK.
Whether he wants to. Yeah, a three. OK.
Oh, shit, I forgot his name now.
And I was thinking of it a second ago. I was about to say Bobby Rondinelli, but that's not right.
A bass player of the first two Ozzy and a bass player of a bunch of different Ozzy albums and lyric writer.
I can see him in my head as well.
Blizzard of Oz. Of course, we don't know who's actually going to be in the band on the day as well.
That's the other thing. Right. That's well. Are we assuming Zed Wiles?
Bob Daisley. Oh, Bob Daisley. Is Bob Daisley still actually playing anything?
Yeah, but he's in Australia. He's in Australia.
I think that's a low one. I don't know. I mean, there was some falling out, wasn't there?
I'd say that's a two. OK.
Rudy Sarzo. Oh, Rudy Sarzo. That's a good question.
We'll have to go down the middle for that one. We'll say that's a three.
Tommy Aldridge. Well, Tommy Aldridge would be a high probability.
We know Tommy plays around a bit with a lot of bands and he loves playing.
I think that's a higher one. I'd go for a four. OK.
Here's one that a lot of people don't remember were in his band.
Dean Castronovo. Yeah.
Are they going to have time to play all these songs?
No, I think Dean said no. He's got other things on. He's not interested.
So we're going to go. I wonder if Dean can leave the country.
Yeah, that's a good point. We're going to have to put him down as a one there.
OK. Joe Holmes. Joe Holmes.
Surely that's a one. What do you think?
Yeah, we've been waiting for the longest time for him to release a solo album for like two years now.
And all the clips that we've heard have sounded great. His Pharmacose album was awesome.
I love that album. There's still stuff off of that that I that I listen to.
Yeah, but I would say that's a one. He's kind of a recluse, you know.
Yeah, I think so. One. OK.
And I'm assuming and although we've been seeing members of his band, we've been seeing Zach announcing a festival of his own.
We've seen that Blasco is now going back to Rob Zombie as well.
I'm assuming that those two are probably still going to be there.
I'm assuming that his backing band will probably be Tommy Clu Fettis on drums, Blasco on bass and Zach on guitar.
Yeah, I think you're probably right. It's going to be.
Will we see John Sykes? No. Zero.
So I think I think the biggest question out of anybody, I mean, Bob Daisley aside, I think Bob Daisley would be the other.
I mean, just for us music nerds, not so much for the casual fan.
But I think the big get that a lot of people would really, really, really dig would be Jakey Lee.
What do you think? Probability one to five.
I think that's I'm not sure whether he's going to be asked, but if he was asked, I think that he probably would play things.
It's his farewell. So we're looking at maybe a three stroke for.
Yeah, I agree with you.
I think that Jake has said that when Gus came into the band, he was asked to join and he you know, he asked just to not get paid, but to be recognized for his writing contribution for Bark at the Moon.
And with the last Red Dragon cartel.
Brad, that's just Tom Foolery now. You're being too cavalier on us.
With the last Red Dragon cartel tour, he flat out said, I'm no longer going to play any Ozzy material unless it's with Ozzy.
Right. Yeah.
So does that make Jake say, you know, it's screw it. I don't care about the you know, I don't care about that anymore.
I just want to do these last two shows with Ozzy. I want to go out there. I want to play Bark at the Moon.
I want to play shot in the dark or whatever else they could possibly play from that era.
You know, two big hits, two big staples. So I'm assuming it would be those.
Yeah, that'd be great if there's a you know, a selection of guests on each show. And yeah, that would make it a big thing.
And don't forget that, you know, Ozzy's not going to be able to sing a lot of songs himself and be up there on his own.
He's going to need a fair few soloists up there who are going to be happy to take over and play and, you know, fill in a little bit for him.
So, you know, I think there's going to be there's definitely going to be some extensive two guitar at least two or three guitar solo slots.
And there's going to be a drum solo.
So so here is my setup for this. And I do want to say hello to Sean, who I don't think I mentioned he is in here as well.
This is what I would do. And I know this is never going to happen, but.
I would have Red Dragon Cartel play. I would have Black Label Society play.
I would have Ozzy solo come out and do some songs.
And I would close the night with Sabbath.
I think that is is exactly what will happen.
Because it's so perfect. It's it's you're thinking along the exact same lines as everyone should be thinking.
Right. It's perfect. Yeah. You get Sabbath to do Paranoid, Iron Man.
War Pigs. Yeah.
You get Sabbath to do five songs tops.
What else can we throw in there? Sweet Leaf.
Yeah, that's what you need. Just a few. And yeah. And you just know as well, you know, Crazy Train will be on the backdrop will be Randy Rhodes shown all the time.
If they're thinking about it the right way, they can make this a really good show.
It'd be show of the year, really. Yeah.
And at the end of the night, you know, it's going to close the show actually is going to be the Ozzy Avatar.
And they will say coming in two years, we're still working on it.
Yeah, it's possible.
And you'll all walk out with a free bat.
There you go.
Other thing that you wanted to discuss.
Looks like Testament all of a sudden are in a rush to release a new album.
If you checked out my latest episode, episode 145 of the Victor Amorou's podcast, I read the story.
Or read the excerpts of the interview that Chuck Billy did recently where he says that they want to have the album out or at least done by July.
They're going to be touring Europe after that with Anthrax and Death Angel if I'm not mistaken.
No, Create. Yeah. Okay.
They've been waiting what six years since since the other album or has it been less than that?
Yeah, it seems less.
I can't remember now.
But here's here's the other odd thing that kind of there's two things that are kind of catching me off guard here.
One Titans of Creation. It's going to be four years.
So, okay.
Yeah, they seem to go every every four years. They've they've gone since Formation of Damnation 2008 Dark Roots of Earth.
2012 Brotherhood of the Snake 2016 Titans of Creation 2020.
But so here's the thing that's kind of throwing me off here.
So they released first strike still deadly in 2001, which is essentially all the stuff off of their first two albums.
When I had Chuck Billy on he mentioned that they didn't like the production on those first two albums.
So they went back in and recorded them to sound like they did at that time how they were playing them at that time.
They're now going to go in and rerecord those two albums for Nuclear Blast.
It will essentially be the third time they're recording some of these songs.
And this is something that we've discussed within the last few months.
This is a topic that you've brought up several times.
But I don't know. It just seems like they're going to be flooding the market with material. And is this something that the label wants?
Because that was released on Megaforce and Atlantic and Nuclear Blast kind of doesn't have the licensing for that.
Is that why they want to do that?
I can't imagine a lot of diehards running out and picking that up. I don't know. I could be wrong.
But they're going to be releasing that plus the new album. Doesn't that kind of dilute the market for what people are going to be spending on Testament this year?
Or is it something where they're saying, you know what? Fuck it. This is only going to be for streaming purposes.
People are going to love this on streaming. And I don't know. Maybe the songs aren't available on streaming.
Maybe First Strike Still Deadly isn't available on streaming. And that's why they're doing this.
So that Nuclear Blast has it and they'll maintain it on the streaming services. I'm not sure.
I mean, I'm not sure what the ins and outs are about this. But what do you think about both of those items?
Yeah, well, I think rerecording stuff is useful if first of all, if you haven't got copies of them or secondly, if you thought that the originals were great songs, but they were very well produced.
Right. I bought the three Bonfire albums that were rerecorded and I think they're fantastic.
They've got great sound, great energy, and I didn't get them the first time around. Now with the Testament album, I've got it on CD, the first album.
But I really do want that reproduced, redone by the band now because I think that that could be an absolute killer album if they really get it right with the production.
So I'm going to think about buying a physical copy of it because of that, obviously vinyl.
But there will be a lot of people out there, like you say, will want to download stuff.
And if they can't get a good sounding copy, then it'd be great to download that because it's not going to cost someone that much to do it.
And like you say, maybe the band themselves have been asked to do it or they're sort of they have to do it.
They're contractually obliged to do it. So there's all that sort of issue in the background going on.
Whether they're flooding the market with a new album and old albums. Well, a lot of bands kind of flooding the market at the moment anyway,
because you know there's a lot of people out there who want to buy stuff, want to listen to stuff.
We've got quite a renaissance with metal and rock. And it's up to the listener really what you want to buy.
You're going to buy your favorite band and your favorite albums.
Coming on to the new album, they seem to be sort of rushing their way through it a little bit because I heard that they want to find a bit of a space to do some recording and get the songs in the right way they want them.
And I felt that the last album had five songs on there were absolute killer. And there were four or five on there that I thought were terrible.
They're very boring. So they're a bit like that testament.
They can come out with killer tunes, but they can also come out with stuff that you just think I don't really want to listen to that again.
It's just, you know, thrash for thrash sake without going anywhere. There's no direction.
So sometimes they just need to think about it. You know, what put the best stuff out and even just release a smaller album.
They don't need to release an album that's got, you know, 12, 13 tracks on or whatever. Just release an album with seven tracks on and just buy out the very best.
Yeah, I think out of the album, since Alex Skolnick has come out, come back, I should say, Titans of Creation is probably my least favorite.
Formation of Damnation, I listened to a lot and for the subsequent years after that, Dark Roots of the Earth, which I actually have behind me over here.
That's my favorite.
Hard to see. It's got some really good stuff on it. Even Brotherhood of the Snake has stuff that I listen to a lot.
Those those three albums have listened to a ton. So when Titans of Creation came out,
the kind of think of what the lead off single was. Children of the Next Level. I was like, oh, wow. Yeah, this they're back.
But I think Dream Deceivers are really good song off of that. Star's Gate is really good. But similar to what you're saying, I think that it's probably
out of all of them, possibly the one that caught my attention the least. How about that?
I think the problem is that Peterson does most of the songwriting, doesn't he? You know, all the guitar stuff. And he is an absolute heavy metal nerd.
You know, he's what he is. I mean, he's one of these guys who will just sit in there.
He's probably a guy in his teenage who sat in his bedroom through, you know, all day, all night just playing a guitar.
And he doesn't really sort of distance himself from what he's doing. He's absolutely fantastic at playing and he comes up with fantastic stuff.
But, you know, sometimes you just you just need someone just to shake him a little bit and say, you know, that song that you've done that is is unbelievably good.
That song, it's sticking in the bin and do another one. And that's the problem with Testament, I find sometimes.
But, you know, going back to the original thing, you know, if they want to rerecord the first couple of albums, yeah, go ahead and do it as well at the same time.
Because, you know, how long are these bands going to be going on for? This is the thing that Brad mentions a lot. I mean, Tesmo a bit younger.
But how long do they want to do it for? You know, they're doing an album every four years. So, you know, it's a long time before, you know, it's only a couple of albums and you've almost got another decade down the line.
Yeah, you're saying they're a little younger, but I don't know how much.
Don't be in the back. Yeah, maybe what the 50s, maybe come out 60.
I'm thinking that they're all close to 60. Eric Peterson is 59.
Yeah. So, you know, another couple of albums and he's going to be set. He's going to be 69, isn't it? Yeah.
Clocking on 70. I mean, who wants to thrash at 70? Chuck Billy's 61. Yeah.
And it's not just wanting to thrash. It's being able to do it. It's a it's a it's a quite a skill to be able to do when you're young, never mind when you're approaching old age.
Alex Skolnick is 55. Steve DiGiorgio is 56. Their new drummer, I think, is in his 30s.
Not mistaken. Yeah.
So cool. Great discussion tonight. Do want to thank Jeremy for coming on once again. I do want to thank Brad and Tony and Sean for joining us in the chat.
I want to thank anyone who's checking out the replay of this, whether it's just the audio or the video version.
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