Welcome one and all to episode 379 of Signals from Mars. I'm your host Victor. And this time around we have another hour one discussion with some of my patrons. Hot topic, hot button, hot whatever. Just shit that's in the news that we wanna talk about. How about that? Some new releases and some different things to just get around the fire and talk per se. Here we go. I'm ready. Let's do it. Cool, so we're back for another week, another week of just discussing music.
I'm trying to line up some interviews currently and hopefully I'll be bringing you some of that. But in the meantime, just trying to provide you with content that hopefully you guys enjoy. I try to put these out every week. Sometimes it's just impossible. As I like to say, life gets in the way. And I know plenty of, I'm doing air quotes here, big name podcasters that are no longer doing this stuff. So instead of busting out a quick episode, they just decided not to do it anymore.
So I try to do the best that I can. And for a few years they're just due to health and other stuff, family and whatnot. I just couldn't do it on a weekly basis. I try to do this on a weekly basis now. Sometimes it's just impossible. I'm gonna get in the groove of pre-recording things so that on Fridays you do have a live stream to check out.
So even if you don't get this the week after the live stream, which is what I try to do, you can go to YouTube, Facebook, it's on Twitch as well and Twitter or X, however you wanna call it. You can check out those live streams as they're going on or today, I mean the second after it finishes basically because it's up there on the internet for you to check out. So even if you miss out on listening to the podcast, you do have the option to check out the replay of the video version of the show.
It's up on a ton of different platforms. Easiest way to keep up with that is just by going to signalsfromr's.com. You'll find all the links to all the places where you can check out replays of the video version, the audio version. If you're into podcasting 2.0 and wanna throw some Bitcoin my way, you can do that there as well. You can find links to social media, pick up merch.
Anthony Mackey who has helped design the latest iteration of the Signals From R's logo threw something at me the other day. Looks really cool. I just haven't had a chance to work with it yet, but yeah, hopefully we'll have a new piece of merch shortly. And just wanna send a big shout out to all of my patrons. They're all mentioned at the end of the live stream. Yeah, live show, live stream, however you wanna say it.
And there's a bunch of different perks for being patrons, whether it's the music discussions that we do have online. With that, I do post videos daily to Patreon, and we discuss stuff that we like, stuff that we don't like. We've also voted for our next patron special, which will be Top 10 Rush Albums. Well, I'm asking people to vote for their Top 10 Rush Albums. How about that? I'm opening it up to everyone. If you want to vote, send me your 10 favorite Rush Albums
and send them to signalsfromr's at signalsfromr's.com, and your votes will go towards the show that we do on May 11th. And it doesn't matter if you don't have 10 albums, 10 favorites, send me two, send me five. I don't care, whatever you send me, I'll work with it, jerky. So there you go. Hey, another old man reference, how about that? Anyway, I do wanna thank you for checking this episode out. If you're so inclined after listening to or watching this episode, join us, will you?
All right, thanks, see ya. ["Rush Albums"] That's a first. The music played, but I didn't see the video. This guy did. Oh, you did, okay. It didn't show up on my end. All right, no problem. All right, well, anyway, welcome everyone to the April 12th edition of Signals From Mars. We have Metal Dan flashing the Signals From Mars cap. We have Dr. Poison with some Dr. Pepper with a Signals From Mars t-shirt.
We have Ed Ferguson in Lexington looking as if he is sitting in a kingly throne presiding over music, Linux, and all types of different things. That's correct. Ed Ferguson is here in front of me with the masters on this weekend. There you go. And joining us from Ireland, There he is. Anthony. Hi. All right, cool. So as is customary for these Hour One shows, we have a few topics here that I've come up with this week. There are probably other things that will come up along the way.
If anyone wants to chime in and mention any other things, that's cool too. But the first topic that I wanted to discuss is something that Metal Dan actually mentioned after I posted a video of Metallica covering Elton John. And it's something along the lines with a topic that I've thought about, especially in the last 10, 15, 20 years where bands have become kind of lawfish.
And instead of giving us B-sides with covers of songs or something obscure or whatnot, we're getting live tracks of the same songs that we already have like 10 versions of. So at least for me personally, I miss bands releasing quality B-side tracks and kind of something that I wanted to discuss with you guys. Dan, you mentioned it the other day with Metallica doing this, there you go. Anthrax with the Indian single, excuse me. What's the B-side to that? Sabbath, bloody Sabbath and Taint on that.
And then you got the shit like The Maiden that used to do, you know, with the Japanese import that I had to go find somewhere, I don't remember where. And it's got a number of the B-side live, King of Twilight, Rainbow's Gold, and Cross-eyed Mary as a B-side.
Cross-eyed Mary. And then there was like a Maiden one back in the day, somewhere in my catalog, looks a lot like, I see in the background on this video right here, the whole library from Ed, there was a fight, or not a fight, well, there was a discussion between Nico and Steve and Bruce. Yeah, and I listened to that shit, I listened to that shit over and over of this stupid argument and it was so much fun. Mission for Mary. Yeah, it was discovery, go ahead.
That was the night that Nico almost punched Bruce Dickinson out and almost quit Maiden on his first tour because he recorded that whole thing. And apparently Nico had played a drum solo at the time, Maiden, and after this, Nico refused to do drum solos. He decided that he would prefer to just play another song with the band. There was something wrong, I think, with his snare and his tech was trying to swap out snares as he's playing the solo and something had happened.
So he was telling Rod Smallwood or whatever and Bruce. You made me fuck, you made me fuck. Yes. Yeah, and that, which you actually just said, because I know this, because I have that on cassette single and also CD single, those B sides are actually Aces High and Two Minutes to Midnight. So the British version of that, when they were celebrating the 10th anniversary of the band, because I have the CD version of it, it's everything up till 7th Son and they had like a specific seal.
And if you had the vinyl, I have somewhere behind me, I have Sanctuary and Running Free, but it was a double gatefold that opened up. And I mean, here's the thing that annoys me with Maiden. I love Maiden. It's one A and one B, they're one B for me. But they've re-released everything a million fucking times and no one gives them shit over it. The fanboys that follow them have no problem with it. Back to the B sides, back to the B sides, back to the topic, all right. Let's go.
Tell me more, because I haven't heard it in years. It's, and I'm not going to dig it out. It's 10 minutes of gold. Was there, go ahead. Was there more to that? You're educating me. You're educating everybody. You're remembering, go. It's exactly what I mentioned. It was the solo gone wrong. He's bitching about it.
He realizes that Bruce is recording the solo or the discussion that he's having with Ron Smallwood and he's about to beat the piss out of Bruce Dickinson because Nicko was actually a boxer at one point. So he had no issues with beating the shit out of Bruce. And he was almost out of maiden before he became the household name that he ended up being in the band. We still say fuck my old boots. I didn't know what a lot of that slang was.
I was, gosh, 18, 17, and it was all British shit that I'd never heard of. I was like, what do they do? I should listen to it now and I might get more of the references. But it's cool. There was a B-side shit that this should still be happening, you know? And it doesn't have to be that somebody has created the soundbite, but just this stuff, Cross-eyed Mary and Black Bart Blues, whatever. That Indian's 12 inch you just showed, I have that, but it's a mispressing.
It doesn't have that B-side on it. Oh my God. I was hoping to hear them do Sabbath, bloody Sabbath, but I can't remember what's on the B-side of my pressing. It's just another song from Among the Living. Oh wow, is it worth anything more because of that? I don't know. I never thought about it until just now. Yeah. Yeah, because a lot of those misprints, there are people that are out there looking for a lot of that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anthony's sitting on a thousand pound vinyl or a thousand euro vinyl and he doesn't even realize it. Well, look, I was at a record fair there the other day, well, a couple of weeks ago, and you're looking at all these records and you're like, I have that, I have that, I have that. And they're like, 80 euro. Like, what? How the fuck did that get worth 80 euro, you know? Yeah. So I think the key is buy them when they're new. I'm just, you know, in time, they'll be worth something maybe. You hope.
There's, well, let's discuss this a little more. There's something else that I'm gonna add to this list of questions, which reminds me of something that came up earlier this week along the lines of what you just mentioned, Anthony. Ed, your opinion on bands releasing B-sides. Yeah, I kind of miss it. I remember enjoying all the anthrax stuff that you all mentioned, especially, you know, Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, that was really cool. And then, you know, Slayer did a bit of that.
You remember they released Postmortem. And then on the flip side, they did a reworked version of Criminally Insane, where they did a different introduction to it. And, you know, my mind's kind of slipping on what all was out back then, but that was always cool. I remember, you know, back when we still had 45s, a lot of times they'd have different songs on the B-side.
I remember Joan Jett. I remember back when I was listening to I Love Rock and Roll, on the flip side of that, she had, you don't know what you've got till it's gone, which is off the first record, although they did a little bit faster, kind of more like they did a, like they pumped it out in the garage for a sec. Right. It was like a better recording of the song that was on the first record. So stuff like that, I think, is fun.
And I wish, yeah, it's, I don't know, I think maybe CDs and streaming have kind of erased all of that. You would think that streaming would make it easier to do though. I know. Although it just makes it, it's not as, you know, it's not the same as when you're buying a physical copy, I don't think. Like you're not really recognizing it as something separate from the rest of the catalog. It's like a digital single now is just one song.
Yeah, it's just another song in that big list of- You don't get like, well, you do get, but you're rare enough to get like an A and a B side digital single. Right.
The two kiddie songs that I posted, for example, recently, they're on Apple Music at least as a single, both of them together, which surprised me for that very reason, because most of the time you get just the one song as the digital single or it'll just be the album and you're getting the, you know, a track that's released ahead of time. So yeah, that kind of caught me off guard. Brad, how about you? Do you miss bands doing this kind of stuff?
First of all, right out of the gate, I think we set a new indoor, albeit wind aided record. For F-bombs dropped on signals from Mars. I'm pretty sure we had the over under at 10 and we busted that within the first 90 seconds. So, well, that means YouTube will not be ranking this video very high. It will not be suggesting it to a lot of people. And I'll probably lose some sponsors that I don't have.
And the algorithm that I use is called the the algorithms will poo poo this show for, you know, whatever discussions you shouldn't swear algorithm. I'm like, okay, so the two people that weren't watching will stop watching all of a sudden. All of a sudden now you've made this show much rarer. So like those coveted B sides, there you go. Really look for this show to be able to watch it now.
So, and kids, let me tell you, even though we got a lot to go here, this is well worth you finding this show and watching it.
All right, B sides, here's the, you know, and yeah, I'm gonna sound like an old man here because I am an old man, but guys, I mean, the days when you would drive like from this record store to this record store, to that record store, looking for a specific record that you heard about and trying to find it, and then when you did find it, it was just like, oh, this is like the best thing ever. And, you know, the hurry to get it home and listen to it.
Yeah, now it's like, oh, well, here, let me get on my phone and oh, there we go, I got all the B sides right here. Yeah, it's awesome, but yet it takes some of the magic of the discovery and the adventure of finding music. So many memories flooding back with you saying that. I told my, and Dan is showing the, Jesus, I keep saying signal now, single. I just got my driver's license, I had inherited my brother's old 79 Volkswagen Rabbit, it had snowed out and my parents were at a Christmas party.
So I wasn't supposed to be driving anywhere, but we were gonna go get those Maiden cassette singles and I was gonna get one, my cousin was gonna get one, and my two friends were each gonna get one. So we were gonna cover Power Slave and Somewhere in Time, we were gonna split all the different tracks and all the different singles between us. So I'm taking these back roads, there were snow and ice everywhere. We got to this turn and my car just went straight into a snowbank.
We had to all get out of the car, push the car out of the snowbank and I'm thinking, my parents are killing me and my cousin saying, we're going home now, we're going home, right? We're going home and I said, fuck that, we've been this far, we're going to the record store. So we went and we picked those up and my parents found out about this story like four or five years later, I was crapping myself thick and oh, we're getting caught, but at least we got the stuff we wanted to get.
So I'll withstand the punishment so long as I got those V-sides that I wanted. Some of these things weren't even available in the US. I had to ask somebody in the UK one time to give me something for Armored Saint that I saw coming out that I had to have and I had her get me three of them just so I had a backup and you'd read that shit in Kerrang and Kerrang isn't a US thing, you have to go, that was hard to get in the US as it was too.
It was a constant going back to the record store and then asking the guy, hey, I know this is coming out because Kerrang tells me, will you please get me a copy of this? Will you? It was fun. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the other one too is being able to travel to Europe in the summers, I remember getting, for example, the Anthrax EP, Pentecufcin, which backwards is nice fucking EP.
Yeah. And there were tracks on that similar to what you have with Indians where Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath ended up on the I'm the man EP. There were tracks off of that, which ended up on Attack of the Killer Beasts. Yeah, it was good shit. And I remember being so pissed that I wasn't the only one that had a physical copy. I got one too. You know, it was like, damn it. It was gold. It's to me. You know, I could go around and say, see, I have this. You don't. It was one of those things.
You know, we all bought what I bet they made a lot. They did a killing on that release and we all bought them. Yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely. The other thing that came up with what Anthony was talking about, the record store or record store day is next week in the entire world. So a lot of unique stuff is going to be released.
But here's my axe to grind with labels and with bands, because now there's actually a there's an Irish record store, which is where I ordered the trick or treat soundtrack from. And they're already advertising. You can get US imports for record store day, but they cost like 80 euros a pop as opposed to the 30 that the other vinyls are going to be worth. Three years ago, they released the fight album War of Words in the US. White vinyl wasn't released in Europe until three, four years later.
It annoys me that they do that nowadays, nowadays, because if it's record store day, shouldn't it be the same everywhere in the world? Yeah. What do you guys think of that? I mean, is it do you guys think it's fine that the UK gets their own record store day, Canada gets a different one, US gets a different one?
We don't think it's actually kind of like that from store to store, because from what I was told by my local record store, you know, of course, you can go online and see the big list, but they don't actually know everything they're going to receive, I don't think. And they're not like just by default, getting a little bit of everything. So that would make sense even more so probably compared from here to over in the UK, maybe. But it totally makes sense.
Like, why why would it be the same everywhere? Like, the whole point is they're all limited editions. You know, if they're everywhere on the same day, then they're hardly limited. And I know it's a pain in the arse because you can't get the one you want, but right. That's that's probably part of it. My biggest issue here in Spain is that rock releases on record store day are slim to none. So anything remotely rock based. Isn't available.
The only thing that I'm getting, for example, and because I preordered it, I was able to get them to a store that's about an hour away for me. I got they preordered Life of Agony's second album for me, Ugly, which is being released in Europe for the first time on vinyl. So I saw that somewhere else, asked them and they're they're actually getting it for me ahead of time. But that's that's my biggest issue is, for example, that fight album. It took years to come out here.
Of course, you can go on Discogs. You can pay 60 euros shipping from the US to Europe. And, you know, you're paying a hundred and something for vinyl, which is. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. The Anthrax, the Bush era albums, they re-released them two years ago on vinyl in the US. They earlier this week, they finally announced that Sound of White Noise and Stomp 442 are coming out on splatter vinyl. But two years later, two years after the fact, and it's not the entire not the entire Bush era catalog.
I mean, they had already done. We've come for you all and greater of two evils, but they're still missing one vinyl, the one that I want the most. I've had I've actually had Sound of White Noise on vinyl for like 10 years now because there was a Spanish label that licensed it from Electra. And that's actually a topic that I brought up to John Bush one of the times that I interviewed him. But so which one is it you want the most? Volume eight. And you don't have that one. Do not have it.
OK, we're going to have to find it for you somewhere. It's it was re-released in the States. I intend on picking it up this summer. Oh, that's right. You're making a trip here. Yeah, yeah. So the the my biggest issue will be I know what it's like traveling with vinyl is making sure that. It doesn't come back here with the corners all bent up and everything, so I'm going to be asking for cardboard boxes to to put the stuff in the suitcases. So. That's doable.
Yeah, or disappears from your luggage by the goddamn. Luggage people. Yeah, that's that's that's another one. But believe me, as a kid, as a kid coming back from here, when when they were getting rid of vinyl from stores and now thinking of of the conversion rate, it was like four bucks a vinyl. So I remember one year I came back with.
Everything everything that I didn't have from the police on vinyl, a bunch of in-veh albums, a bunch of rainbow albums, there's a hodgepodge of things that I didn't have on vinyl. I was like, OK, four bucks. Sure, I'll load up. I had I had a stack like like this big. It's heavy. OK, so the suitcase was mostly vinyl and just clothes around it. It was heavy as fuck, but luckily nothing got stolen.
All right. So moving on here, speaking of John Bush, earlier this week, Metal Blade announced that they had signed a new band called Category 7. Category 7 has John Bush on vocals. Jack Gibson of Exodus on bass, Jason Bittner of Overkill on drums. Phil Demel of Machine Gun Machine Gun. Yeah, Machine Head fame and Kerry King's new solo band. Machine Head Kelly. Machine Gun Kelly. Yeah, Machine Head Kelly. Machine Head Kerry. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, you can't carry.
There you go. And the other guitarist is Mike Orlando. Holy shit. Yeah. Metal Dan, since you're giving us the holy shit, Mark, that this now, what did they think? There is an animal, man. Bittner is what an amazing drummer. I met him. Nice guy. A little different, but we're all different. He he was calm. I think he wanted to mess with me. I didn't have time for it, but I'm glad that I got a I didn't know about this. I don't know why John needs it, but this is the first I've heard of it.
I'll tell you why John needs this. Because they can now go out and tour this album and play Bush era anthrax. He's been trying in a way because Eddie pushed him on it and stupid Eddie would ask him, you know, why are you in your armor? Say, why aren't you playing anthrax songs? And I was like, shut up, Eddie. There's nothing wrong with armored saint. Yeah. You're putting into yourself. And, you know, he so wants to break up armored saint and have John go off.
Well, armor saint has are working in the studio on a new album, but that's a separate topic. Here's here's the thing, though, John. The last time I spoke to him was when Punching the Sky came out. At this point, that's what three years ago? John's kids are now late teens. John is back at a stage where he can now tour for half of the year. Most of armored saint has day jobs. John does, too, but it's a business that he has with his wife, so it's kind of a little different.
John has been trying to play Bush era anthrax for years. This band can do it. And this will allow him to go out for with armored saint for three months a year, and it will allow him to go out with this band for another two to three months. And you'll be able to see is, you know, test the waters. Do people want to see this? And let's be honest, this will help anthrax as well, because, you know, Charlie's now in Pantera. Scott's and Mr. Bungle. Scott also has a motor sister.
And this will mean that anthrax doesn't have to go out for 10 months with Testament and Death Angel and play the same set list all the time. If John is pushing is John is pulling people in to see him play these songs. This will give anthrax a reason to do dates with him, whether it's with Joey doing half the show or whether it's a few a few tours here and there as sound of white noise or something different to separate the two, much like Heaven and Hell and Black Sabbath.
But we all know it was all basically Sabbath. I think that there the anthrax camp is waiting to see what's going to happen with this. That's a great thing. You know, that's a that's a hell of a bill for anywhere touring with anthrax with them opening up and you get Scott coming on and sharing if they're all going to collaborate. It's great. And Europe, Europe, you guys are going to do great because this is going to be on your bills for your festivals.
And Bittner doesn't get to play enough as it is with Overkill. They don't tour enough, in my opinion, and they got deedies on arm problems, shoulder problems. So Bittner needs a job anyways. Yes. Fucking great. Yeah. Ed, what do you what do you think about this band? I don't know yet. It sounds interesting. I look forward to hearing it. But you mentioning it today is the first time I've heard about it. OK. I didn't see the headline for Metal Blade.
Yeah, it's it's been on the all the usual sites have been posting about it. I received the press release as well. And John obviously has the whole Metal Blade connection. So it makes sense. He's, you know, been a friend of of Brian from Metal Blade since the label started with Brian Slagle. So it just makes sense. Anthony, I know that you're you've always been big on Bush era anthrax and we've talked about it. So would you be looking forward to these guys doing some music from that era?
It's hard to say, you know, I have to wait and see what they sound like. I haven't. Are they doing original music? I'm sure they are. Yeah, they're doing original music. And the way that they've described it is that they're picking up where Thin Lizzy left things off is how they're billing it. OK, well, yeah, that's be interested to hear that. Yeah. But, you know, I don't know. Easy to say that.
This stuff doesn't really excite me like, you know, I'm not going to be talking about the new Kerry King song, but, you know, these new kind of super groups. They're grand. Yeah. And that and that's the whole thing, because Mike Orlando, for example, who's in this band, is in a band with Corey Glover from Living Color. And the songs that I've posted have sounded have sounded neat, have sounded better than the stuff that Corey did with George Lynch, for example. But it's what you're saying.
We have so many of these bands thrown together where. Where's the investment on our end? You know, is the music going to grab us enough to say, you know, wow, that was cool, I'd like to hear more, I'd like to see more. Sons of Apollo, for example, is a band that kind of did that for me in the sense that I like Bumblefoot. I'm not a huge fan of Jeff Scott's Soto, but I thought that the music was better than what I had expected. Earlier this week, I posted a track from Black Country Communion.
Band has never done anything for me. Because I think that Glenn Hughes on his own, his solo stuff is better. The. The sum is never greater than the parts for a lot of these bands. And for example, that Black Country Communion or whatever the band is called. It's got one riff that gets boring. You get to the solo, you have a monster player like Joe, Bonamasa, and you're thinking, OK, it's time for him really to kick this song into another gear. And it's oh, wow, he's noodling on the guitar
with no distortion. That kind of is a mood killer. You know, I don't know. But, um, Brad, what are your thoughts both on this band and some of these thrown together supergroups? Wow. I think that's a great question. Wow. I'll agree this with as I do with all of these type of projects is that I think this could be really awesome. And then usually I'm somewhat disappointed. So I'm going to I'm really excited to hear what they're doing. And I hope it's going to be really cool.
And I hope they do something more than just an album. It'd be cool if they would get out there and play. So I would I would go see that. And if they do the Bush Air Anthrax, I'd love to see that. So, yeah, bring it, boys. Now, all these other supergroup bands. You know, at least like Sons of Apollo, they were they were a real band. I mean, they toured. They toured twice. It was the last band I saw before COVID shut things down.
And I I thought live, they were better than on the record as far as the songs. I thought the songs really came across to me live. I enjoyed it. And I think it was the best vehicle I've ever seen for Jeff Scott Soto. You know, where he he he sounded he sounded great in that band. He wasn't obnoxious or annoying. You know, trying to, you know, trying to look like a gangster or something. He was just a great rock singer when with with those guys. So. But now that's gone. So, yeah.
And I haven't listened to the new the new what is it? Nephews of Apollo. So about gods of war. Yeah. War. Yeah, I haven't listened to it either. Yeah, I haven't listened to it yet. I just bought it, actually. So I need I need to give it a listen. But the stuff I've heard so far, I've heard it. It's just it's it's. Yeah, it's not like. Stuff you'd want to just put on to relax, that's for sure. But none of this music is, is it?
Yeah, so I'm I'm all in, you know, people doing new music, bring it out. But I want bands I can go see. That's kind of a priority for me, even though nobody comes anywhere near where I live now. But I'm willing to travel. Yeah, I will go. I will go. That's it. You live in a nice, quiet, nice area. Nothing wrong with that. And you're willing to go. So and you're probably going to go to M three. So you got the right. Yeah. Yeah, I'll be in the right lifestyle. Three weeks.
I'll be in. I'll be in Baltimore in three weeks. And it's the people that say, hey, you got to come to my town. You got to come right to me. I'm going to be in Baltimore. You got to come right to me. And I don't want to make any effort. Fuck those people. I've traveled across the country to go see Armored Saint. I've gone to Phoenix and New Mexico and to go chase kicks and all that shit. What you got to do?
You know, I tell you, as well, especially when I was working, going on a destination concert thing was a lot more fun because then you know, that's all you had to that was your plan. You know, that's that was it for the day. It's not like I got to get to work. I got to get home from work. I got to get, you know, this that I got to get this person here. And, you know, you like spinning plates to make it to a show and you get there.
You just like mentally exasperated, you know, and then it's like, well, now I got to get home and get ready to go to work again in the morning. Like you go somewhere to a show. You you fly out. You're there for a day or so. You all day. You're looking forward to the show. You go to the show. You go back to the hotel. You're you know, it's like, this is this is fantastic. So I'm all about hitting the road for a good rock show.
Yeah, I love when people make, you know, they have posts about whatever show they just played on their tour. An artist has posted something and you get underneath. Come play Topeka, man. You haven't been here in 25 years. Yeah, because it's the middle of fucking Kansas. Nobody's there. You had to get Kansas in there, didn't you? Before I forget, Sean Richmond has joined us in the chat. Hello, Sean. Hope you're having a great day. Hope your week went well.
And Sean, you got to go back to the beginning so you can catch all the bombs. We've we've continued throughout. We've we've kind of sown the seeds and we've been picking. You're kind of like sprinkling now this here here and there before. It was like it was like the Dan burst and it was all full of you know, destroying everything in its path. It was awesome. Yeah. All right. Next, next thing here, Slash has released a second song off of his upcoming. Blues album.
And my question to you guys is, who's clamoring for a slash blues album? Dan, what are your thoughts? Have you heard either one of the two tracks? You just posted the one today and it's not needed. The Fleetwood Mac tune, but it's a great song. I'm willing to listen to it. I like the blues music. It sounds so far like at least it's well produced and it's probably all classics, not necessarily the slash Rotem. So it seems like he's going to have good collaboration with other members.
I'm willing to give it a shot. I think it's going to be OK for me. OK. And your thoughts. Yeah, I don't know. I'm very picky about blues. You know, I love that genre, especially older Delta blues and. You know, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and all those players. Stevie Ray Vaughn, of course, is the modern god on. Blues Buddy Guy. Yeah, all those guys. But, you know, I know I know slash.
I don't know if slash is fully a white boy or not, but I sometimes have a hard time watching white people do the blues because that's something that, you know, there's a spirit and a soul that it takes to make really good, authentic blues music. And, you know, that's something that only a select amount of people have. And so, you know, a lot of people, you know, like to do that. But it's not often I hear something that's that exciting to me.
But I don't know that people can surprise you, though, too. I guess, you know, you never know until you. Hear them a lot of times, it helps to when you see them in a live setting to see how their personality matches the blues that they're trying to play. But. Yeah, I don't know. I can be kind of weird when it comes to my opinions on blues, I think. That's that's interesting. Getting back to what Brad mentioned about these super groups playing together. Now he's releasing this.
Is he going to tour it because everything has guests on it? Kind of like his first, not his first solo, his third solo album, which had Fergie and Dave Grohl and all these different people on it. And he ended up bringing Miles Kennedy into the band and. Doing the songs with him. Is he going to go back on tour and mix these in with his usual songs? I don't know. I guess we'll we'll have to see. Anthony, are you excited about a slash blues album?
No, definitely not excited about it, but that one he did with Brian Johnson was. I was pleasantly surprised by that one. OK, so that was a good song. Yeah, so I know we'll see. I don't know, we'll see. Like. I don't know if I'm going to listen to it. Thank you for if I come across a song like I did what the Brian Johnson one I'll listen to it, but I'm not going to go searching out a slash album. OK. Brad, how about you?
I don't know, actually, I was pretty indifferent before we started talking about this, but now I'm really I'm really interested to hear this album. So, yeah, I'm going to I'm going to check it out. Be excited. We'll we'll see. I'm not like I can't wait till this drops. No, I call it call me blasphemous, but I mean, slash is a guitar player. He's I mean, he's good, but he doesn't get me all like, holy crap.
You know, you put having him like as your guest on an album doesn't make me want to buy the album. I'm not I'm not that I mean, it's not a negative thing. It's just he doesn't really excite me. I like several of the songs he's done as a solo artist or in his current band, that's not Guns N' Roses. I like a lot of their songs, but they're still not stuff. I mean, if he came. Yeah, I wouldn't travel to go see him. There you go. That's that's the answer.
If he fell up at M3, I would be there and I would I would I would not choose that time to go to the bathroom. There you go. Uh, the song the drummer from Guns N' Roses, the original drummer, Steven Adler, bless his heart, man. I've seen his thing way too many times and and it does nothing for me. Nothing. It's like it's like you walk into a bar and there's a band covering Guns N' Roses. That's exactly what it's like.
And they're all good musicians and everything, but it's just kind of it's not that it's it's like an act. It's not genuine. You know what I mean? There's no like real spirit there behind the music. Yeah, so there. He's got to hit the pool. Yeah, maybe he should do a blues out. There you go. Personally, the song that I posted today, that Fleetwood Mac song. Yeah, I absolutely hate that. So I've heard it so many damn. I've never been a Fleetwood Mac fan.
And I was like, OK, well, maybe this is like the Brian Johnson song I was due to my ignorance. I wasn't familiar with the original. And I was like, OK, well, this sounds kind of neat. You know, that verse riff that Slash is playing is different for him. Oh, let's see what Fleetwood Mac song it is. Oh, it's this fucking song. So. So when you say a blues album, are you like when you say when you just say he's doing a blues album, I'm thinking more authentic blues.
Or are you talking about a blues rock record? If it's blues rock, that that's different. You know, obviously lots and lots of people can pull off blues rock really well. Yeah. What do you think he's doing? What is he producing? I mean, they're unless I'm messing this up. They're referring to it as a blues album. Huh? Yeah. You know, like metal, you know, blues has got a lot of different genres to it. Yeah. So that's like that's a big term to use to let you know exactly what it is.
Yeah. Let's see what the. You have a track list. Yeah. Nice Victor, the insider, man. He's got all the info. It's it is on the Internet, Brad. Not all that inside Internet. I realize where I live. Oh, wait, I did this. You just the way that you said that was like the Bugs Bunny cartoon. Snow in July. All right. So it's the pusher featuring Chris Robinson Crossroads with Gary Clark Jr. Which is never done for me with Billy Gibbons.
Oh, well, which is the one that I posted today with Chris Stapleton. He to the highway featuring Dorothy. Awful dream featuring Iggy Pop. Born under a bad sign featuring Paul Rogers. Who that Rolling Stone featuring Demi Lovato. Killing Floor with Brian Johnson. Living for the City with Tosh Neal. Stormy Day with Beth Hart. And finally, it just says metal chestnut. Yeah, that sounds like more of a blues rock thing that he's doing there.
And that should be good. You know, he's he's a like like he was saying that, you know, he doesn't blow your mind as a player. And I feel the same way. But I do recognize he's a great player. And he sounded that Brian Johnson tune that he did was great. And I expect the some of the other tunes might be pretty, pretty darn good, too. All right. Let's let's move on to Kerry King and Residue, which is the second track off of his solo album, which was released today.
Ed, you got a chance to listen to it or you're waiting for the full album to come out. Yeah, I'm still waiting. OK, that record is released. I will hit the country roads here one evening and and then come back with my opinion. OK, after a good full listen. Dan, Dan, did you get a chance to listen to it? I haven't heard it yet, either. If it just came out today, I've been working is is a is a full album with Mark from Death Angel. I don't know. It is the the line features.
Mark, Phil Demel, also from Category Seven, Paul Bostoff from Slayer fame and Troy Sanders on bass. Yeah, I haven't heard it. Sorry, Victor and everybody. I haven't had a chance yet, but I want to hear it. Yeah. Anthony, do you get a chance to listen to it? I heard half of it. OK. Your impression? Well, I turned it off. All right. So that's the first. That's the first time. That's second half. OK. Yeah. Lots of swearing in the first half. Yeah. I thought it was pretty dull.
Yeah. It just it didn't do anything for me. Much like the last one. Well, the last one was better, actually. Right. OK. Brad, I don't know if you got to listen to this, if you. Yeah, I listened to the first half of the first half. And and I was like, yeah, this this isn't my thing. It's just not my thing. So, yeah, so that's that's why I'm not going to say it's bad. It's just it's just not my bag.
You mean to take it away? But no. And the video with all the the pentagrams on fire, like, you know. A little cliche, huh? Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. The the two songs. And if you want, you can cover your ears. The two songs so far, I mean, on the one hand, you could say, OK, well, Kerry's doing, you know, what we are expecting from Slayer. But at the same time, it's Kerry doing what we're expecting from Slayer. And given given the musicians that he has, especially Mark on vocals.
This comes back to like Alicia from from Arch Enemy, like she's got this range and she's just doing the guttural vocals. Mark is sounding like Tom Araya. Yeah. And he's phrasing like him as well. It's like. You can get it like maybe Kerry has written these pieces. He's like, sing that sing it like this. Right. And which is probably what he said to Tom. And now he's saying it to Mark. And so it's the same. Right. Right. That's that is probably pretty much on the money.
And the thing is that Mark is one of the. Best singers in all of metal, not only because what he's done in Death Angel, in my opinion, but he still has his voice all these years later. Like you have that. In your you know, you have that tool at your disposal, you have that in your arsenal. And OK, just sing like Tom phrase it like Tom. You know, that's the only thing that I want. And the the intro to the song sounds cool because of what Paul kind of does at the beginning.
It's like, OK, well, this is kind of intricate and and a little different. But then once like the riff kicks in, it's like, OK, well, yeah, all right. This kind of exactly what you said. It's like the first song, but not as good. So Victor, if you were interviewing Mark, would you have the balls to ask him if he was told to sing like Tom? Yes. Wow. Yes, because and it's funny because I've one of the one of the things that I've had pitched to me recently was speaking to Tony from Lords of Black.
And as a lot of us have commented on within the Patreon group, that it's the kind of the only band that Ronnie Romero kind of stands out in. And my question would be to him exactly that saying, hey, you know, kind of the consensus between my listeners is that this is the only place where Ronnie kind of shines, where he isn't boring. What do you think of that? You know, I you know, if I had if I had the pleasure to talk to Mark, I'd ask him that.
And look, at the end of the day, it's Kerry's band. It's his name all over it. And these guys are a bunch of employees. So they're being they're being told what he wants. And there's no shame in that, you know, you know, he's getting a payday for it. And I understand it. And, you know, people that knock that kind of stuff. It comes back to the whole kiss thing. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. Oh, I would never wear that makeup, blah, blah, blah.
There you would look you if you're a fan of the band and you've always wanted to play with them, you would suit up in that makeup, in that you would learn all the moves the way that they asked you to, because you would be making a shitload of money and you'd be doing something that you've always wanted to do. And Mark, Mark could be a big fan. He is a big fan of Slary and he may want to do the Tom thing. So that could be on him, too. So I don't think it's a case where he's well.
I don't know. But I wouldn't imagine it's a case where he's being told to sing like Tom. It's just like he's Tom would have sung songs that Carrie wrote and now Mark singing songs that Carrie wrote. So they were coming from the same place. So I'm OK. I want a new Death Angel. That's the way he writes songs. And when Death Angel comes with a new release, I want to sound like Mark and D.A.
That. Yeah. And that could very well be the case, you know, where he's hearing the songs and he's saying this needs Tom's voice. So I'm going to sing it like how Tom would have sung it. That could very well be as well. The the the case. I mean, that's that would be. I mean, if again, if I had the pleasure of speaking to him, that would be a way of kind of having a two pronged attack on that question.
You know, were you asked to sing this way or did you feel that that was what the material warranted? So, yeah. That'd be a very diplomatic way to discuss that. Ed, we'll get back to us in a few weeks. When Napalm releases the album, I will. And I'm anticipating. Him, his vocals being the way that you're describing, because kind of like Dan said, if it was his Death Angel vocals and it would probably sound too much like a new Death Angel record, you know, vocalist can affect the band that much.
Could be. You know that. Yeah. So I'd like to hear him doing something different, even if it is mimicking Tom a bit. I mean, that's going to fit Terry's style of writing. OK, makes sense. Last thing here. CJ Snare, lead singer of Firehouse, passed away earlier this week, I believe. I was never a big Firehouse fan, and they had one huge single at the end of the 80s, early 90s song that got played at a lot of weddings. So 64 is definitely. Early to go.
And I'm surprised at how many people are coming out and saying stuff about him because the band is so big. And because the band, you know, again, had one really big hit and really didn't have anything else. But it's a band that has been together, putting out music and touring for the better part of the last 30 years. Brad, I'm assuming that you're probably the the most. Likely adept at speaking about Firehouse here. Were you a fan with or are they yard metal worthy?
Actually, I do play some of their stuff mostly. Well, you know, I interviewed Bill Levity, Levity, OK, who I think is an incredible guitar player, really, really great guitar player, but even more just a cooler dude. And I just really enjoyed chatting with him. And he's the kind of guy I guess sent a message right now, and he'd message me back. And he's he's he's not a he's just he's just a down earth. Good old Virginia boy, CJ.
And they're really been a huge fan of his vocals, though the vocal tones is a little bit, I think, for for hard rock. A little bit softer. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how to say it. But I got to say that I think he's a good guy. But I got to say that I've seen him many times and I've just kind of been like, I want to like these guys better, you know, mostly because Bill being in the band, I want to like them better. Last year at M3, they were really, really good.
And CJ was singing at that point. So I know that when he was diagnosed, he was given less than a year to live. And he made it for almost four years. So that's I think that right there says a lot about the guy and his character. And the fact that he they had a substitute singer doing a lot of shows in the last year, but he did M3. And I had no idea he was sick, but he sang his ass off and ran around the stage, looked like a pro. That band that night was on fire. I mean, they they won.
They won the day. I mean, they were the best band that played that day. I was like, who knew? You know, who knew? So he seemed like a good dude. You know, it's tough on everybody who knows. I mean, the fact that everybody's coming out of the woodwork, talking about what a great guy he was and sharing pictures with him and stuff. I think that tells you a lot about what kind of guy he was. So yeah, we we we don't all get to be here for the same amount of time. So you want to make your time count.
And probably 64 C.J. years were pretty good. So all right. OK. Anyone else want to mention something about CJ Snare? All right. I'm in silence, though. Appreciate that. Thanks, Brad. Yeah. Yeah. Real quickly, before we wrap things up here, Sean Richam has been with us the entire show. He did mention that his hoodie arrived yesterday. First one was too small, but I was told to keep it. New one is perfect. Excellent customer service at no extra cost.
I appreciate you sharing that with us, because I mean, it's I've gone through various providers with the merch. I always want to make sure that the merch is available, both in the States and in Europe, because some some places are only available, only make their merch available in the States. And it costs an arm and a leg to get over here and into Europe. And this isn't the first time someone else has had an issue with sizing or with the colors being off. I forget what it was.
And they've said, keep it. We'll just send you another one. So that's awesome. Awesome. So if you do want to support the show with any merch, just go to signals from Mars dot com and you'll find merch across the top. You'll also find links to the social media where you could catch the entire replay of this or subscribe to the podcast. Gentlemen, I do want to thank you for joining me tonight. Anthony and Ireland's Braden.
Damn it. I want to say Utah still in Idaho and in Kentucky and Dan in California. Thank you all. Yes. Thank you for the geographic lesson in in. Yes. Geology, whatever map reading, cartography. There you go. Thank you guys for for joining me live tonight for your all of your input. Thank you, Sean, for joining us in the chat. And thank you to anyone who's listening or watching the replay of this. We will see you next time right here on signals from Mars. See you folks.
Thank you for listening to the signals from Mars podcast. You can subscribe to this show on all your favorite podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon and more. Go to signals from Mars dot com for more information. This concludes our show.