MK ULTRA

Mortiis will be returning to North America for an Era I headline run, supported by avant-garde black metal hybrid T.O.M.B.. The 14-date strong US tour kicks off on 24th January at The Whiskey Junction in Minneapolis and finishes on 8th February at San Francisco’s legendary DNA Lounge.

 
The new album “Spirit Of Rebellion” is penned for release this week, January 24th via Omnipresence Production / Dead Seed Production.

 
On the release Mortiis says:

 
“I had to fend off a lot of demons to get to this point. They’ll be back, they always come back, but at least my vision is no longer clouded…When I was working on re-interpreting my old music for the Cold Meat Industry festival in Stockholm almost two years ago, I had no idea that I´d eventually create an (almost) new record, nor that a section of it would be used for my first Dungeon Synth video since 1996. But here we are.” – Mortiis

On Saturday January 25 Alex Zander and Cassie Balazic will produce an episode of the MKULTRASOUND PodCast with special guest Mortiis.

US tour 2020 w/ avant-garde black metal hybrid T.O.M.B. 

24 Jan The Whiskey Junction, Minneapolis (MN)
25 Jan Reggies, Chicago (IL)
26 Jan Civic Music Hall, Toledo (OH)
27 Jan The Masquerade (Purgatory), Atlanta (GA)
28 Jan The Orpheum, Tampa (FL)
30 Jan White Oak Music Hall, Houston (TX)
31 Jan Come and Take it Live!, Austin (TX)
01 Feb Gas Monkey Bar & Grill, Dallas (TX)
02 Feb The Riot Room, Kansas City (MO)
03 Feb Oriental Theatre, Denver (CO)
05 Feb Club Red, Meza (AZ)
06 Feb Brick by brick, San Diego (CA)
07 Feb Catch One (Underground), Los Angeles (CA)
08 Feb DNA Lounge, San Francisco (CA)

AC/DC is rumored to be close to announcing a world stadium tour. The trek will apparently include singer Brian Johnson, who was forced to leave the band mid-tour nearly four years ago due to a dangerous level of hearing loss. He was eventually replaced on the road by GUNS N’ ROSES vocalist Axl Rose.

On Monday (January 20), Australian radio personality Eddie McGuire discussed the possibility of the legendary hard rockers’ comeback on his Triple M Melbourne breakfast show.

Eddie said (hear audio below): “My mail is there will be a new album released by AC/DC February/March this year, but also that AC/DC will be touring Australia October/November 2020. And after a lot of work and a lot of technical research, they have been able to get a hearing aid for Brian Johnson, who will be out front. And even Phil Rudd [drums] might be back in the group either playing percussion or drums with Angus [Young, guitar] so that they’ve got three of — well, not the originals, but three of the old-timers, if you like, back there. They’ve had a few changes over the journey, but Angus out front, Brian Johnson lead singing, and maybe Phil Rudd, after his issues that he’s had in recent times.”

A year and a half year ago, Johnson and Rudd, along with Angus Young and fellow guitarist Stevie Young, were photographed outside Vancouver’s Warehouse Studios. Based on the pictures, the assumption was that AC/DC was in the midst of making — or at least planning — another album, with Rudd and Johnson both back in the lineup.

 
Ever since AC/DC completed the tour cycle for its 2014 album “Rock Or Bust” three and a half years ago — a turbulent trek that weathered the forced retirement and eventual death of co-founder Malcolm Young, plus the departures of Johnson, Rudd and bassist Cliff Williams — fans have wondered whether sole remaining founding member Angus Young would keep the band going or decide it was time for AC/DC to pack it in.

Last February, a photo surfaced on social media suggesting that Williams has also returned to AC/DC and will appear on the rumored comeback album.

A September 2018 report from JAM! magazine cited a “reliable source inside the AC/DC camp” as indicating that the band was recording a new LP which would utilize previously unreleased guitar tracks from Malcolm Young on all the songs.

Rudd was ousted from AC/DC when he was sentenced to eight months of home detention by a New Zealand court in 2015 after pleading guilty to charges of threatening to kill and drug possession.

Rudd, who has appeared on all but three of AC/DC’s 18 studio albums, recently toured in support of his 2014 solo debut, “Head Job”. It was the release of that album that led indirectly to Rudd’s arrest, with the drummer allegedly so angry at a personal assistant over the way the record was promoted that he threatened to have the man and his daughter killed.

Hanzel und Gretyl returns with Hexennacht, a bestial feast of mechanized blast beats, earsplitting guitars & shrieks from the very bowels of heLL! With Hexennacht, HuG continue their dark descent into the forest of an imagined Bavarian Halloween, blending black metal themes & aesthetics with industrial strength power.

Surrender to the dark side of the galactic forest & enjoy the evil madness of Hexennacht! calling you to join them in their glorious damnation from an otherworldly vortex.

Includes unlimited streaming of HEXENNACHT via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Our old friend Athan Maroulis set us up with this interview to talk about the new album. Before he left for NAMM MKULTRASOUND Exec Producer “Too Dark” Mark Williams took a little time for the following Q&A.

The production seems to evolve with each album. This album seems to be a continuation and evolution from the production style of Satanik Germanik. How has the recording process and production style changed for you through the years?

Vas: Yes, you are correct ! The recording process is always different. This time around I recorded all the vocals on my own at home, which made the process easier and faster. Also, Kaizer had most of the songs recorded before I added vocals. He also updated his studio and did mostly everything like a robot. I am sure he will explain!

Kaizer Von Loopy: The production these days is decidedly metal or black metal but infused with industrial elements! it still relies heavily on programming as opposed to conventional metal style recording. I program as much of the album as I can…drums, guitars, etc..and will have titles for songs ready that I think reflect the overall concept while Vas writes pages of dark lyrics. We will then get together and make the pieces fit…or not fit! whatever sounds kool to our ears!

Will there be a tour for this album? If so, what will the live band be comprised of?

Vas: Even though we are biting at the Chomp like Beasts to tour, we’re just unable to commit to it at this moment. We haven’t toured since a little over 2 years now. Our last tour was in Europe and Russia where we hit the stage hard as a 3 piece, bass, guitar and a drummer! This is how we will operate and tour going forward. It’s a bit strange not to tour, but we’re all gonna have to wait for it. There is no need to be alarmed though, we are all in good health and stamina and ready to rock like beasts when the time comes.

Kaizer Von Loopy: We are currently sidelined by a family care matter but the upside is that we have some time to prepare a live show that we believe will be a marked upgrade when we are ready to tour. I am looking to add a couple more people to the live show to handle technical aspects but to also enhance the visual! That will be determined when the time comes.

Your album art and merch is always top notch and very original. Who does the art and how it evolved?

Vas: Thank you! We’ve been working with our graphic artist and spiritual guru, William Boyd since we met him outside our tour bus in Seattle during the Ministry tour in 2004. He gave us some artwork he did which was killer!! and then disappeared into the night. We later found him and asked him to collaborate art with us and the rest is history! The art process usually starts with a lot of insane conference calls where we discuss what we want and then Will goes off to create the chaos through his vision. It’s a back and forth thing.

Kaizer Von Loopy: As a lifelong obsessed Kraftwerk fan, I’ve always taken note of how they integrated their artist Emil Schult in to the band in some manner and that they were adamant about expressing his importance to the overall product and Will is exactly that!! a remarkable talent and an integral part of the process!! We talk endlessly during the recording process and it can be a very rewarding and symbiotic experience!!

Have you had to change or adjust your artwork (printed: shirts, album art etc) with the change/shift in the overall “sensitivity” of the general public?

Vas: No, we do what we want to do. But, back in the early days we did raise a few eyebrows here and there, but they all eventually understood what HUG is all about! Good Art and Music tends to be provocative in order to be interesting. We haven’t toured in the US now for over 5 years or so. We have no idea what to expect, but I doubt anyone who comes to a HUG show is of a sensitive type. Our fans know better what we’re all about. We’re just out there to be loud and uber!

Kaizer Von Loopy: No, never, When I write songs, I’m almost always thinking of the t-shirt. I’ve said it many times, “I write t-shirts, not songs!” or “I write soundtrack for t-shirts!! ” I don’t think a simply offensive song or t-shirt will sell if it feels like garden variety shock value. I like to think our stuff requires at least some degree of worldly knowledge to consume and is arguably sophisticatedly offensive!! lol

What is the reaction to your overall image and sound in the US vs overseas (ex: Europe)? Do you see a difference in the reception?

VAS: Well, there’s a difference in culture between USA and Europe. In Europe, i believe we’re considered more as a heavy metal dark band and stateside I think we’re just considered industrial. I don’t know, I could be wrong, that’s just my opinion. Hard to tell, everyone has their own ideas. I always feel like i’m in a metal band, but Kaizer and i disagree on this all the time. Viva la difference!! ! Anyways, getting back to the question !! The reception is always different from city to city, but we never fail to attract that special core of insane uber fans! They don’t care if we’re considered metal or industrial, they just want to head bang and destroy ALLES!

Kaizer Von Loopy: There really isn’t a difference! when the place is packed and the crowd is ready for action, it gets insane wherever we are!!

What’s next for HUG?

Vas: We’re trying to get our older CD’s released along with the never heard Oz Factor. It’s been strangely difficult to find the people involved. We’ve been at it for a couple of years now, so not sure if it can legally happen. Besides that, we will celebrate the 25th year since Ausgeflippt was first released in May of 1995! CRAZY how that time flies.

Kaizer Von Loopy: simply preparing for our triumphant return to stage!! We would love to perform a comprehensive history of our entire catalog!! We have three distinct eras stylistically as a band, futuristic in the 90’s, war-faring and propaganda-based in the early 2000’s, and occultist over the last years! We are working on how to articulate all this into a live event for our next tour!!

SOURCE: Yahoo Music – Lyndsey ParkerEditor-in-Chief, Music

Rock fans were rightfully outraged this week when Pat Benatar was passed over by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This was an especially egregious omission considering that just last year inductee Janet Jackson begged the Hall in her acceptance speech to “induct more women,” that only three female artists were on this year’s Hall ballot, and that women make up less than 8 percent of all Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees to date.

But at least Benatar was nominated. Sitting with Yahoo Entertainment/SiriusXM Volume the day after the Hall’s Class of 2020 announcement, bass-playing glam-rock pioneer Suzi Quatro — who has been very vocal about her displeasure with being overlooked by the Hall — asserts once again, “If you’re an organization that prides itself on doing the right thing by the right people, what more can be right than the fact that I was the first? Shouldn’t that be honored? To me, it’s a no-brainer. I don’t begrudge anybody who’s in [the Hall] whatsoever; whoever gets it, I applaud you, and I am proud of you. But how can you ignore the first? This is not right.”

Perhaps the snub is because Quatro, the first female bass-playing rock star, had a much higher profile overseas, and Hall voters have traditionally been extremely U.S.-focused. While Quatro was a quintessentially all-American rock ‘n’ roll girl, born and raised in Detroit, she racked up many more hits in the U.K. (including two No. 1’s, “Can the Can” and “Devil Gate Drive”) and Australia (five top 10 singles, including three No. 1’s).

“But don’t forget, ‘Stumblin’ In’ was a million-seller here,” Quatro points out. (That single, a duet with Smokie’s Chris Norman, peaked at No. 4 in the States.) “I did lots and lots of tours here. I was in Happy Days for three years [in the art-imitating-life role as badass band leader Leather Tuscadero]. Talk about household name! Give me a break. It’s just plain stupid. Sorry, that’s all I can say.”

Lest she seem bitter, though, 69-year-old Quatro then adds more lightheartedly, with an exasperated chuckle: “How many years before I get too old to walk up and accept my award? Give it to me!”

Quatro may or may not ever get that Rock Hall award, though her new “warts and all” Quatro documentary, Suzi Q, may put a bigger Stateside spotlight on her legacy and increase her chances. Regardless, this weekend she will receive the much-deserved Icon Award at the She Rocks Awards, presented by her devout follower and an icon in her own right, ex-Runaways frontwoman Cherie Currie. An excited Quatro says, “Any honor is an honor. I’m very humble that way. I never take anything for granted, even though I’ve been in the business so long, 55 years.”

But Currie, who contributes the original end-credits song “Rock ‘n’ Roll Rosie” to Suzi Q and whose former Runaways bandmate Joan Jett entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, still desperately wants Quatro in the Hall. Last year, Currie griped to Yahoo Entertainment/SiriusXM Volume, “You know what? I have to say this: Suzi Quatro is not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I cannot take it seriously, and I don’t want to be a part of it, unless she’s in. Suzi Quatro’s the first. There wouldn’t have been a Joan Jett, and I don’t think there would have been myself, or anybody else in the Runaways, if it wouldn’t have been for Suzi.”

Currie isn’t the only one championing the Wild One. Along with Currie, Jett (who confesses that her bedroom walls were plastered with Quatro posters and pinups), and another former Runaway, Lita Ford, other celebrities who testify in Suzi Q include Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Clem Burke, Alice Cooper, Go-Go’s bassists Kathy Valentine and Abby Travis, Fishbone’s Norwood Fisher, Talking Heads’ Tina Weymouth (who was inspired by Quatro to take up the bass), L7’s Donita Sparks, Quatro’s Happy Days co-star Henry “The Fonz” Winkler, late Happy Days creator Garry Marshall (who once offered Quatro her own Leather Tuscadero sitcom spinoff, which she turned down out of fear of being typecast), and KT Tunstall.

Quatro reveals that she and Tunstall have recorded an entire album together, and that she has another dream collaborator in mind, a dream that actually seems quite plausible: “Wouldn’t it be great for Joan [Jett] and I to do a record together? You know what? I’m putting that out there.”

While Suzi Q will no doubt be viewed in Europe and Australia as a tribute to a chart-topping household name, in America it will likely play very differently, as more of a rediscovery film about an oddly forgotten ‘70s star. Quatro, who says “there was no blueprint” for her career when, as a teenager in 1964, she began playing alongside her sisters in garage-rock girl group the Pleasure Seekers, muses: “When I was first starting to [tour America], it was Eagle country. They weren’t quite ready for me. Then I did Happy Days and introduced a female rock chick to the world on a No. 1 show, which paved the way for it to be OK for a rock ‘n’ roll chick to have a hit. … In my view, everything has its place and its time and its path. I was supposed to open the doors, and I did, and it’s fine. It is what I did.”

While Quatro opened doors for female rockers ranging from Joan Jett to, yes, Pat Benatar, interestingly, she insists she “never did gender.” She credits this attitude to her father, who bought her her first bass (a 1957 Fender Precision, “the Rolls Royce of bass guitars”), encouraged all of his daughters to play music, and never told her “You can’t do that” when as a little girl she declared that she wanted to be the next Elvis.

“My father had four daughters, and I think he wanted not to have four dependent daughters, so he brought us up to be very free-thinking,” Quatro says. “I never did gender. I don’t do gender now. It’s hard for me to even say I was a ‘female rocker.’ I didn’t see myself that way. I always say I’d kick the door down, because I didn’t see the damn door. I just didn’t see it.”

Quatro is still making music, and she’s still keeping it in the family — her latest album No Control, a return to form after an eight-year recording hiatus, is a collaboration with her guitarist son, Richard Tuckey. The album’s “Macho Man” is a timely yet timeless ode to toxic masculinity set to some hard-charging guitar riffage, though a brand-new standalone single, the ballad “Heart on the Line,” showcases her unexpected softer side. “I am so surprised that every time [I perform it], I get emotional, because it’s so deep in me,” Quatro says of the latter track.

It could be said that Quatro, after all she has been through, is ballsy — though that adjective may be inappropriate in this context. “I do have balls. Most women do,” she laughs, before adding more profoundly: “We women, we just keep our balls in our heads — so they don’t kicked.”

The official trailer for Glenn Danzig’s feature film directorial debut, “Verotika”, can be seen below. The title will be released as a three-disc Blu-ray/DVD set on February 25. According to the product’s Amazon listing, the Cleopatra release will include both Blu-ray and DVD discs, along with a third disc featuring the anthology film’s soundtrack.

When it debuted at the Cinepocalypse festival in Chicago last year, “Verotika” was compared by some reviewers to Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room”, the so-bad-it’s-amazing drama which is considered one of the worst movies ever made.

“If you do something you love, it’s difficult,” Danzig said at Cinepocalypse. “On a movie set, there are tons of problems that happen that you would never foresee. So, you have to hit the ground running… Right from the start, it was very clear we’re not making a Hollywood movie. A lot of my influences and the different films I like, especially European films, you can see them in here, and, lighting, colors, it’s much different from a movie you will see nowadays.”

“Verotika”, which as originally supposed to come out on VOD this past Halloween, stars Ashley Wisdom, Scotch Hopkins, Alice Haig, Kayden Kross, Natalia Borowsky, Rachel Alig and Sean Kanan. The film also features a cameo appearance from Caroline Williams of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” fame.

 
As previously reported, Danzig has set “Death Rider In The House Of Vampires” as the title of his next movie. Acording to the film’s official entry on IMDB, it was written and directed by Danzig, with Glenn also acting as the executive producer, along with James Cullen Bresack. The cinematography is by Danzig and Pedja Radenkovic. The film stars Devon Sawa, Danny Trejo, Julian Sands and Kim Director, among others.