Joey Tempest talks to HEAVY Mag about Europe's tour with Scorpions

The voice of a generation, Myles Kennedy talks to HEAVY Mag about his new album Year Of The Tiger

Seether frontman Shaun Morgan chats to HEAVY Mag about their forthcoing tour.

"It just sounded like a fun thing to base the tour around," laughed Jake Kiley, guitarist for Strung Out in regards to the band performing their seminal album Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues in its entirety on their upcoming Australian tour. "Our booking agent down there suggested we do it and it just makes sense. Whatever makes it a good tour for the fans: whatever brings everyone out... It's one of our more successful and popular records so it's a great thing to book the tour around that and then we can also play a bunch of new songs as well. It makes it fun for everybody."
Released in 1996, Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues was Strung Out's breakthrough album and still seems as relevant today as when it came out over two decades ago.
"I think it has to do with the time it came out," Kiley reflected. "It was a very exciting time for punk rock and for bands like us. There was a lot happening. In the mid 90's a lot of bands put out their sort of definitive records so for some reason it really connected with people. It's personally not my favourite record (laughs) but I love it for what it is. It's a very pure punk rock record. Every song is super fast and short and to the point and it was kind of us coming into our own. I feel that record really made us stand out from the pack a little."
To hear Jake discuss more personal topics such as where Strung Out fit in back then and now and if he feels the troubles reflected on by Strung Out through their career have made a difference as well as how the band has changed musically over the years and information on the album, tune in to the attached audio.

The legendary Judas Priest chat to HEAVY Mag about their new album - Firepower.

Thrash metal outfit Revocation talk to HEAVY Mag about Direct Underground Fest 2018

HEAVY Mag chats to Godsmack as their new album hits shelves.

Steven Adler chats to us about his Australia tour... and that London billboard.

HEAVY Mag chats to The Contortionist ahead of their Australian tour with SikTh.

"The music climate was a lot stronger," recalled Sikth vocalist Mikee Goodman on the period when an unsuspecting music world was introduced to his band in 1999. "We were coming out of the 90's and at that stage there was a lot of nu-metal bands and people gave nu metal bands a bit of a cuffing because of bands like Limp Bizkit but at the end of the day, nu metal was quite an experimental form of music. It was taking one type of music like hip hop and doing a more basic form of groove metal and also loads of different experimentation so that was a big scene. There was a lot of great bands around in the 90's and there was a scene because the music scene was a lot stronger back then. There was still such thing as a record industry where you were getting development deals... it was a completely different time. We wanted to do something different and invent our own sound. There's a lot of bands in every scene in every generation who want to sound like other people because they want the fine angle and hop on the wagon and be accepted. Nowadays there is more bands than ever going for social acceptance through music and metal is in a horrendous state where people are just repeating the same formula and doing the same thing going over the same ground again and again and things have to change."
In an extremely forthright and honest interview Goodman discusses the bands first ever Australian tour with The Contortionist starting ??, the social pressures inherent in the modern music age, the reaction to the monumental album The Future In Whos Eyes? plus the band's thoughts on the album nearly twelve months later as well as certain things that he believes are crippling the industry from the inside. Tune in to the attached audio for all this and more.
Kris Peters