Check out behind-the-scenes footage of the Lzzy Hale and Grace Perry photo shoot that produced the cover of Revolver's "Hottest Chicks in Metal of All Time" issue, on stands now.

In our never-ending quest to give you the best music available, we present the Revolver Bootleg series. Throughout each month, we’ll post cool, new, and often-exclusive tracks right here for you to hear before anyone else.

This installment is “Black Ice,” the apocalyptic final track on psychedelic sludge-rock group Naam’s self-titled debut (Tee Pee), out now. The recorded the album on a farm in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Bassist-vocalist John Bundy fills us in on the song below.

REVOLVER What’s this song about?
JOHN BUNDY This song is the closer to the record, both literally and figuratively. Since the album is a loosely based concept on the fall of man, “Black Ice” is the final chapter on the road to damnation. You’ve walked through the gates of Hell, and you definitely know where you are, and man it’s a terrifying place.

Which part of it did you come up with first?
This song came at a point when we were writing our second wave of songs as a band. At that point we had actually decided on a concept for the record, so this was more or less our hellsong. Ryan [Lugar, guitars and vocals] had this winding riff that I was able to actually wind in and out of as well, so the beginning half of the song is a deep ’70s metal groove that sets up the latter half, which gives way to more nightmarish feel. The blast beats and buzzsaw guitar and bass at the end were a good way to convey the “Hey man, you’re in Hell” concept we had going. The blast beats and tremolo picking were actually kind of a joke at first, but it starting sounding good, and we got better as a band, so we kept it.

Was this an easy song to write?
As we progressed as a band, the song obviously became easier to play. None of us had really experimented with this style at all, although Eli [Pizzuto, percussion] was more accustomed to playing faster and more aggressive music. Writing it was easy. It just made sense in the grand scheme of creating the record. And believe it or not, recording it was the easiest part. Recording at the farm made everything easy. We just nailed it, and Evan's production made it more punishing than it already was.

What sort of feedback have you gotten on this song so far?
Everybody seems to love this one. It’s got a swirling psych feel leading into straight up black metal with very little transition, so there’s something to grab onto all the way around. The vocals are hypnotizing as well, but live everyone just focuses on Eli. He’s a fuckin’ madman on this one and slays it every time.

You have a long list of gear you used to record your full-length with on your
MySpace page. What was the most unusual instrument you used when creating
the album?
Unfortunately some of the more unusual instruments got cut. There were some synth, noise, and Theremin ideas that didn’t make it, and some weird-ass recordings from the basement involving rocks and machetes—even tons of field recordings from the farm. It wasn’t so much the instrumentation that was weird, it was the means.

We had time to record pretty much everything we could possibly imagine, and trimmed away from there. Since we're just a three-piece live, recording was an opportunity to play everything on the record. I’d say about a third of the record was improv. Track 2 is a live drum circle, and if you listen during the other interludes, you can hear us talking and moving around. We did try to use everything we brought up to the farm. Overkill is fun.

Naam: "Black Ice"

Photo credit: Diane Suarez

In our never-ending quest to give you the best music available, we present the Revolver Bootleg series. Throughout each month, we’ll post cool, new, and often-exclusive tracks right here for you to hear before anyone else.

This installment is the premiere of sludgy hardcore group Gaza’s “Canine Disposal Unit/The Anthropologist,” two songs combined together here off their upcoming full-length, He Is Never Coming Back, due November 10 on Black Market Activities. Vocalist Jon Parkin fills us in on the song below.

REVOLVER What’s this song about?
JON PARKIN I’ve had some conversations with friends where we’ve talked about how the previous generation to ours was the last to affect any substantial social change. Civil rights, women’s rights, etc. And that our generation seems to be aware of issues at hand, but unwilling to sacrifice anything for them. And how the next generation seems to be fully unaware of any issues at all. This song in short is saying we had our chance and gave up. We gave in to indulgence and I hope we have a good time picking up the bones after it all goes to hell.

Which part of it did you come up with first?
I seldom have words written before the music is recorded. I have an idea of rhythm and cadence from hearing it at practice but the actual words don’t come until I can crank it in my car in an abandoned parking lot somewhere. So the music almost always comes first.

Was this an easy song to write?
None of our songs are easy to write, per se. We’re very picky about what we put forward, so there is a lot of refining in the process. Recording the music is the fun part. We love to be able to sit back and listen as an audience for the first time. Vocals are another story. You have to learn to act a little bit. You’re not pissed off every day so if it doesn’t feel like there is heart behind it, I won’t let it go to press.

Why is the following track, “The Anthropologist,” so important to this piece of music? And why did you decide to separate it on the CD?
Honestly we only separated it for the iPod generation. That shit can be annoying when you’ve got your metal genre on random. It’s an important piece to follow because it gives the listener time to think things over. It’s a break for your ears and brain before moving on to the next noise.

Gaza: "Canine Disposal Unit/The Anthroplogist"

Photo credit: Amelia Prime

Metalcore group Eyes Set to Kill sent us this video from the first few days of their current tour. Now you can see first-hand what van life is like from the band’s perspective.

Didn’t get enough of Lzzy and Grace in Revolver’s “Hottest Chicks in Metal of All Time” issue? Neither did we. Which is why we've posted these exclusive outtakes from the photo shoot. Enjoy.

LZZY HALE
of Halestorm

GRACE PERRY
of Landmine Marathon

LZZY HALE
of Halestorm

GRACE PERRY
of Landmine Marathon

LZZY HALE
of Halestorm

GRACE PERRY
of Landmine Marathon

In our never-ending quest to give you the best music available, we present the Revolver Bootleg series. Throughout each month, we’ll post cool, new, and often-exclusive tracks right here for you to hear before anyone else.

This installment is the premiere of A Wilhelm Scream’s “Bullet Proof Tiger,” off their upcoming self-titled 12-inch EP, due later this fall. Guitarist-vocalist Trevor Reilly fills us in on the song below.

REVOLVER What’s this song about?
TREVOR REILLY The song was originally inspired by an incident that occurred in my neighborhood years back when a teenage boy murdered his mom in the middle of the afternoon with a kitchen knife. As I was writing and researching, it morphed into a story about a family member fighting his demons and drug addiction, told from his perspective with hopefully a look up to the future with determined eyes…

Which part of it did you come up with first?
Mike Supina, our new guitarist, actually came up with the musical arrangement first, and we tinkered with it from there. It was the first thing Mike brought to the band alone, and that was inspiring in and of itself. I was originally gonna base the lyrics on the character McNulty from The Wire, incidentally, but that didn’t quite pan out, thankfully. [Laughs]

Was this an easy song to write?
The good ones are easy to write; they just flow and before you know it you're onto the next song already. “Bullet Proof Tiger” was no different, and the tuning on the song was new to the band, which opens up more possibilities for fun shit to go down

Why did you choose to include this song on your EP?
We needed a banger, and this is a banger. In addition to it being one of the very first and best this lineup has written together, it is a definite fucking banger.

What can we expect from your next full-length album?
Expect more progressive songs, some thrash, some sing-alongs, some solos, some wacky shit, some melody, basically some new Wilhelm bangers, son!

A Wilhelm Scream: "Bullet Proof Tiger"

Watch thrash titans Slayer talk about “Snuff,” the third song on their new album World Painted Blood, in the part three of the track-by-track breakdown they’ve started on their website.

In Revolver’s December issue, we interview Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington on new project Dead by Sunrise’s debut album Out of Ashes (WEA/Reprise), which trails the extremes of his emotions from divorce and alcoholism to the joy of marrying again. For those of you who didn’t get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here’s the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.

REVOLVER The hiatus in 2005 was the first time Linkin Park has taken a break in 10 years…
CHESTER BENNINGTON Meteora and Hybrid Theory both had 24-month touring cycles, so we were on the road for a really long time. We weren’t really happy with how Warner Bros. had treated us at that point. It was a pretty frustrating time. It was like, “Here we are, we sold 20 million albums” and they’re still telling us, “You’re a fluke.” We sold 10 million records, how much do we have to prove?

In the print interview, you talk about your divorce. Is this when you started losing your shit?
I just completely lost my mind. Over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, I was just a trainwreck.

Did it start on one day or was a crescendo?
The day it started was the day I knew I was gonna move out.

In our interview you talk about partying hard. What do you mean by that?
It could have meant going to a strip club and having a few drinks. It could have meant staying at home and watching the waves break and drinking Jack and Cokes all day. Or it could have turned into a four- or five-day drug-and-alcohol binge, pushing yourself to the limits of your mind. I think the one common denominator in all that stuff is no matter what I was doing, there was always alcohol…and there was a lot of it. I would sit there with my guitar all day and write songs and get drunk. And when you’re drunk, if somebody said, “Hey let’s go do this particular drug, or that particular drug, or a combination of all of them,” you’re like, “OK.”

And in the middle of this you had to go play Live 8? What was that like?
Live 8 felt like this thing that was way bigger than me. It was important and getting a message out. But at the same time my brain was firing all kinds of electrical signals into the wrong places. Another thing I had to do because it was important and bigger than me [was a Music for Relief show]… I had no idea what my money situation was like. I was living in this little apartment. And it was like, “Hey, we need you to go to Thailand to go for Music For Relief to talk about all the stuff that’s going on over there with the tsunamis.” You guys can’t think of a-fuckin’-nother person that might be better suited for this right now? I don’t have any fucking clothes! All my stuff’s at my ex-wife’s house! She’s not letting me in! You want me to go? I don’t have a couch! … Life doesn’t fucking stop going because you decided you’re having a bad day—or a bad year.

What happened?
Unless you’ve had it happen to you, it’s kind of difficult to grasp. They started prescribing me Klonopin for anxiety. Taking that and drinking as much as I was drinking, it’s a combination of the two things that will kill you if you stop doing them suddenly.

My left arm would start to bounce, and then my head would start to twitch. I was embarrassed by it. There was only a few people who had seen me like that. Talinda [Bentley, Bennington’s current wife] would have to come in and comfort me and talk me out of it, and I would have to get something to drink to bring myself down. It was crazy. I got hospitalized a couple times. Finally I sat down with her and a couple of my friends in Dead by Sunrise and said, “I need to go into treatment.” On the way to treatment the night before, I was like, “Let’s get fucking hammered! This is my last time.” No one else got hammered with me. They just sat in a room and watched me. It was pretty pathetic. Went into treatment, was there for 30 days, got out. Three weeks later I was drinking again. I drank more. That was when my wife pretty much had a complete nervous breakdown over it, called everybody in Linkin Park. Couple hours later they were all at my house. Told me how much they loved me. I got on the plane and went back to treatment again.

It was a real intervention?
Yeah! I was sitting there going, Fuck… If I had just not picked up that first drink again. Went back to treatment. Came out in a much better place. Stayed sober for about a year. Relapsed. Went right back into hitting the program hard. Seven months later relapsed. That’s been the case for me.

You had demoed much of the Dead by Sunrise album in 2005. But when you re-recorded the vocals in 2008, were any of the songs hard to record?
“Let Down,” for example. That was in the middle of the divorce and that’s what that song was about. When I wrote the demo, it was really fucking good. That was harder to redo in the studio when I’m happily married and got a lot of success and I’ve got stuff again. It was hard for me to go back to that place because I didn’t feel that way; I didn’t feel that desperation. It was harder for me to do the final recording for that song because it was hard for me to tap into those emotions.

When you listen to the record now, do you feel like a different person?
I know I talk a lot about it, but the reality is, I came out on the other side. I made a great record with Linkin Park, made a good record with Dead by Sunrise. I’m good dad, I’m a good husband, I have a lot of friends. The bad thing would had been if I had died or continued to do that to myself. And ended up somewhere in the shithole. The good story is that didn’t happen. I get to keep making music.

Interview by Christopher R. Weingarten

In Revolver’s December issue, we interview Converge vocalist Jake Bannon about the band’s new album Axe to Fall (Epitaph). For those of you who didn’t get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here’s the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.

Photo: Matt Miller

REVOLVER How long did it take you to write this album?
JACOB BANNON There are some songs that we’ve had skeletons of since 2005, but we really sat down and started concentrating on writing for like a six-month period leading up to recording… Some people look at it as this sort of long arduous process that can take forever. But basically the day you finish the previous album, the clock starts ticking for the next album.

Is that what the writing process is like for Converge?
Not necessarily. Every album has songs that take forever to write and certain songs that come together in a matter of hours. It really depends on the song. It really depends on where you’re at psychologically when you’re working on a record. Sometimes a solution to a musical problem comes together so much easier a couple of years after the fact, or things just run really smooth. It really varies. It’s tough to really describe without getting into too much detail.

What’s the story behind the album title, Axe to Fall?
It’s one of the songs on the album and we felt that sonically, musically, lyrically—it just worked for the album. We had a variety of titles that we were playing with for months on end leading up to the release of the record. In the end it felt like it was the best one for a bunch of reasons.

On the song “Effigy,” Steve Brodsky, Adam McGrath and JR Connors of Cave In all make appearances. How did they get involved?
Yeah, that song is from those sessions, as well.

And you guys revisited it and reworked it?
Yeah, we reworked it. We’re recorded a lot of it and certain elements of it. The only thing we kept from the original session was all of the drum tracking. The original project wasn’t recorded on a boom box or anything like that. It was written and recorded in a studio. A lot of the base tracks existed. Those songs were there, so we didn’t have to wholly re-record them and start from scratch. The base was there so we recorded over it.

Adam McGrath of Cave In appeared on No Heroes, too.
I believe Adam played a solo or something on No Heroes. I wasn’t there that day but I’m pretty sure he did.

So, you guys have been involved together creatively before.
Well, we were the first show that those guys ever went to. We grew up not in the same town, but it was the same general area that we grew up in and went to high school. We were always just around each other. When we moved to the city they followed suit. Things just kind of progressed, and we all stayed close.

I think the only time we drifted apart was when they had a lot of major-label experimentation and stuff like that. Their schedule got really busy and they made a lot of business-style decisions that took them away from the original hardcore and punk community that we were a part of. Once that died down and they kind of leveled out as people we all came back to the same place. It was actually a really great experience.

One day I was sitting in our old office at Deathwish, working away at some random record, and I look up and some long-haired guy is standing in front of me. He sits in a chair next to me and is like, “Hey, what’s up?” And it took me a second, you know. I had headphones in and I was in a different world, so I kind of looked at him for a second and I was like, Oh, it’s Adam. This was maybe in like 2003. Adam came in the office and just kind of wanted to talk to me about some stuff and just set the record straight… I respected that. I was really appreciative of his honesty and his friendship, just putting it out there and talking to an old friend about stuff that he needed to talk about. It was a really positive thing. At that point our friendship sort of kicked off again and it’s been that way ever since. We don’t see each other much. I think we see JR [Connors] the most because he lives a couple of blocks from the studio and he’s also in [Converge bassist Nate Newton’s side project] Doomriders, so we see him pretty often. But the other guys, we all just live our lives. Our paths crossover. It’s great and we’re still friends but we’re just happy to be working with them in some way. They’re great people. They really are.

Steve Von Till guests on “Cruel Bloom.” It’s got a less aggressive sound than the rest of the record but still sounds really dark and heavy. Can you tell me about writing that track?
That was another song that was kicking around for a while with some different instrumentation and stuff. Kurt just had this vision of taking it to a different place. He took a few days and recorded some piano and some raw drum tracks just to see where we could take the song. He did that and presented it to us before we started fully recording the record. It was sort of interesting so we were like hey, let’s try it...I’ve known Neurosis casually for years. They were like one of the most influential bands for me as a kid.

Their third album, Souls at Zero, really changed my life when I was like 14, 15 years old. I wore out two cassette copies of that record. I remember walking home on the train tracks from work when I was a kid listening to that record over and over again. It was one of the most powerful things to me. I still listen to it at least monthly. It’s still a huge part of my life. I was lucky enough to start seeing them around then. I’ve essentially been their follower and sort of fanatical supporter since I was a teenager.

We officially met them and spent some time with them in France a few years ago, and it was funny because Scott Kelly mentioned that he remembered meeting me at like 1994 or ’95 at the Middle East. It was, like, their second Enemy of the Sun tour. They were touring with Buzzov-en and a bunch of other bands there. He actually brought it up, which I thought was really interesting, because I thought it was, like, something that I had invented in my head. It’s one of those things where so much time passes that you’re like, Did I actually have a conversation with these people?

We just kind of hit it off and became friends. We realized that in some ways we’re different animals but we’re related to each other in a lot of the same ways. We definitely have a mutual respect for each other and they realize just how important their band has been to us. Then a few months later they invited us out to play two shows in Seattle with them, and we just kind of stayed in touch since then. Kurt [Ballou, Converge’s guitarist] stayed in touch with Steve, and I’ve stayed more in touch with Scott. Steve was totally available and he was like, “Hey, I’ll be happy to contribute to that.” I gave him some rough lyrics just to give him an idea that I had for the song. He contributed a few things, changed a few things so that he’d feel more comfortable with singing it. It worked really well. I’m really happy with how the song came out.

You did the cover art for this album as you’ve done for all previous albums. What’s the concept behind the image?
I was pretty free with my overall concept with the record. I wanted to create a visual for each song that encapsulated some of the emotion of each song. I don’t want to be too literal. For example, if a song is called “Axe to Fall” I don’t like creating a literal axe falling. That does nothing for me emotionally. I experimented a lot with the repetition of imagery on this record, sort of in breaking things down in repetition, telling a story through the use of the same image and distressing it and using it in such a manner that it’s just different. Things have a kinetic feel. They feel explosive. They feel powerful. The cover itself, I just wanted to have something that felt timeless and sort of embodied the whole emotional gamut of the record, something that was explosive and powerful but also something that felt poetic and soft at the same time. It could look violent and beautiful at the same time. In a very general way I was going for that. It was also difficult because we were really trying to find an album title that worked well for us up to the last days of finishing the record, so I still had to work in a general way. I didn’t want to wind up creating something that was too literal or too specific to a title that I didn’t want to use. So, with all of that said, the balance was nice and I’m happy with how it all came out.

Interview by Valerie McQueen

In Revolver’s December issue, we interview Shadows Fall vocalist Brian Flair about the band’s new album Retribution (Everdark). For those of you who didn’t get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here’s the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.

REVOLVER Retribution is also the name of a Malevolent Creation album. Did that come up at all when you were deciding on a title?
BRIAN FAIR It didn’t, but I’m sure if you look there’s a few more Retribution album titles out there. Intense one-word titles that aren’t already taken are few and far between these days. For us, that was the last thought on our mind. The title just represented what the songs are about and kinda had the vibe we wanted, so we went with it. I saw some of the comments about that on Blabbermouth, and you know, you can’t please every death-metal purist. Most of the kids who were complaining about it probably weren’t gonna buy our record anyway. [Laughs]

On the deluxe version of the album, you included Cro Mags, Ozzy, and Nuclear Assault covers, which is such a weird cross-section. How did you decide on those particular tracks?
Everyone in the band will usually email suggestions to each other. To me, those three are such a great cross-section of our influences. We’ve covered Only Living Witness and Leeway in the past, and when we do those kinds of things, it’s to show influence, maybe turn our fans onto our favorite bands, and have some fun. Doing “Bark At The Moon,” I mean—all our fans know who Ozzy is, so it’s not like we’re turning them onto something new. That was just straight up about having fun. I get to do a fake howl, you know, and those lyrics are just unstoppable. As far as the Cro-Mags, they’re one of the most influential bands on my life, and I know Paul [Romanko, bass] feels that way, too, so we just wanted shine a light there. And that song [“Age of Quarrel”] really shows the beginning of the metal crossover period in the late ’80s. Nuclear Assault was [guitarist] Matt [Blanchard]’s idea, and “Critical Mass” has such great thrash riffs and the environmental message of the lyrics really stands the test of time, I think. But there’s no way I could sing [Nuclear Assault vocalist] John Connelly-high and make it sound even sorta normal, so I just did it in my own voice. But to keep it true to the original recording, I did the whole song in one take, so I’d be out of breath at the end to give it that real raw feel. I mean, you can’t over-produce the Nuclear Assault tune, you know? [Laughs] That’s just counterproductive.

It’s probably safe to say that Shadows Fall will be the only band to ever cover Cro-Mags and Dangerous Toys.
[Laughs] Yeah, I think that’s a pretty safe bet. To confuse people even more, we should probably do a Jeff Buckley tune and an Assück song next time.

Matt and your lead guitarist, Jon Donais, have an ’80s cover band called Kobra Kai. I figured you’d be involved in that.
They play serious ’80s metal, like Maiden and Priest covers. They really take it to another level—it’s not just doing glam tunes like Dangerous Toys. They’ve got a great singer with them, anyway. I’m thinking Matt and Jon came up with the idea for that band after a drunken night at the bar—one of those things that never actually happens. Next thing you know, they’ve got Frank [Aresti] from Fates Warning playing guitar and the ex-drummer from All That Remains. [Laughs] They actually play almost every weekend know.

Shadows Fall have been nominated for a Grammy for Best Metal Performance twice. Do you think it’s time you won this year?
[Laughs] We never thought we’d be nominated, so winning would just be ridiculous. The first time we were nominated, we were up against Slipknot, who had been nominated, like, five times and never won, so we knew they were gonna get it. The next time we were up against Slayer, so it was like, no way. You always see that one band on the list that you know is guaranteed to take it home. But you get to go hang out at the awards show anyway, which is always a good time.

If you’re nominated this year, you’ll probably be going up against Slayer again.
Yeah, exactly. There’s always that legacy band that deserves it just for being who they are. And you know, as far as metal bands and Grammies, I think the first one they handed out was to Jethro Tull, so it’s not like they’re thinking too hard about it.

You’ve been in a professional touring band for a long time now. Have you learned any major life lessons from your experiences?
I don’t know, because I don’t know anything else. Traveling in a bus or a van has been my reality for so long that I think I probably need to learn about what to do when it’s over. I’ve been on tour forever. But I wouldn’t rather do anything else. I think we’re really lucky to have had the opportunities we’ve had and been as consistently busy as we’ve been. Afterwards, I don’t even know what I’d do. I’d probably end up tour managing so I could stay out on the road. I guess at that point it would be a job, though.

Are you still rehearsing above that titty bar in Springfield?
No, Matt built a home studio maybe two years ago, so that’s where we practice now. It’s pretty amazing and we can record anytime we want, so it makes sense to be there. Plus, it’s only like 20 minutes from the other spot. We miss the Mardi Gras, though. It was fun while it lasted.

Interview by J. Bennett