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As previously reported, LAMB OF GOD's Randy Blythe spent five weeks incarcerated in a Prague, Czech Republic prison. Blythe was released on a $400,000 bail and was able to return to the United States on Friday, August 3rd. Although LAMB OF GOD was forced to cancel their summer co-headline tour with Dethklok and special guests Gojira, the band performed at SLIPKNOT's "KnotFest". The series of events took place on Friday, August 17th in Council Bluffs, Iowa and Saturday, August 18th in Somerset, Wisconsin. The band has already announced a full blown U.S. tour (due to Blythe's legal situation, the band won't be going to Canada). Full details below.
Shortly after being released from the Pankrác prison in Prague, Czech Republic, WTVR-TV — the CBS television affiliate based in Richmond, Virginia — discussed with Blythe his 37-day stay at the notorious Czech Republic penitentiary on a manslaughter charge related to the death of a fan there two years ago. Here is what went down:
LAMB OF GOD's upcoming tour with IN FLAMES, SYLOSIS, HATEBREED or HELLYEAH:
As previously reported, LAMB OF GOD's Randy Blythe spent five weeks
incarcerated in a Prague, Czech Republic prison. Blythe was released on
a $400,000 bail and was able to return to the United States on Friday,
August 3rd. Although LAMB OF GOD was forced to cancel their summer
co-headline tour with Dethklok and special guests Gojira, the band
performed at SLIPKNOT's "KnotFest". The series of
events took place on Friday, August 17th in Council Bluffs, Iowa and
Saturday, August 18th in Somerset, Wisconsin. The band has already announced a full blown U.S. tour (due to Blythe's legal situation, the band won't be going to Canada). Full details below.
Metal Hammer, recently conducted an in-depth interview with Blythe (Order the issue HERE!). A few excerpts of the interview follow:
“It still didn’t sink in that something weird was happening with my band, but as soon as I got to the top of the ramp, the first thing I noticed was four or five really large men with guns and great pig pointy knives, pistols and facemasks. All you could see was their eyes and their mouths and they looked like they were there to apprehend a terrorist.
“After a minute this woman goes, ‘Mr Blythe’, and I said, ‘Yes?’ and she’s looking at my passport, then she hands me a piece of paper that said I was to be charged with…well..we’re using the term ‘manslaughter’ because it’s the nearest translation in English. It said I was to be charged with, what I think in English would be, GBH, grievous bodily harm with malicious intent resulting in someone’s death.
“I was in the car with three plain-clothes homicide detectives, and one of them sort of spoke English, but not very well, and he started asking me, ‘So, what do you remember of this incident?’ Very conversationally. I was like, ‘You know, I really don’t know what’s happening right now so I want a lawyer’. When they hand you a piece of paper that says you’re being charged with manslaughter you know you aren’t just going to answer a few questions then walk out the door.”
Metal fans in prison:
“One of the guards who drove me was a metalhead. He knew who I was. He was like, ‘I’m sorry you have to be here. I like Finntroll and Rammstein.’ It’s a remand prison, so a little less than half the prisoners there are awaiting sentence and the rest are serving time, but I believe they’re mixed together. It’s a prison, not a jail, but from what I understood, the super-violent offenders were kept in their own ward.”
Ticket links for all shows are below:
This weekend (September 21, 22) tickets for 36 of the 38 shows on the
fall LAMB OF GOD tour will go on sale. The Atlanta show and the Kansas
City show will go on sale the following weekend (September 28, 29). As
previously announced, the tour starts October 30th in Phoenix, Arizona
and runs to December 16th in Seattle, Washington. In Flames and Sylosis
are on all of the dates with Hatebreed and HELLYEAH splitting the tour.
Yesterday we reported that DesMoinesRegister.com is claiming that Doctor Daniel Baldi (a Des Moines physician) has been charged with eight counts of involuntary manslaughter for allegedly prescribing large amounts of narcotic painkillers to patients who later died of overdoses. One of his patients was the late great Paul Gray from SLIPKNOT!
After hearing about this shocking twist of events, SLIPKNOT's own Shawn "Clown" Crahan spoke with DesMoinesRegister.com. This is what he had to say about this NEW piece of evidence regarding the death of his former bandmate:
"None of it is going to bring back our brother Paul. This epidemic of this sort of activity is becoming more and more
… evident. It truly is becoming a problem amongst people. And it
trickles all the way down to the youth. And awareness needs to be
brought about."
Crahan made it clear that he was referring
to "not only substance abuse but the ability to acquire substances, to
get chemicals and the efficiency of it."
"Hopefully justice will be served," he said.
Doctor Daniel Baldi, who helped run an Iowa Health System pain clinic, is accused of "unintentionally causing the death of Paul Gray by the commission of an act likely to cause death or serious injury, to-wit, continually [writing] high-dose prescription narcotics to a known drug addict from [December 27, 2005] until his death," according to charging documents released at the doctor's court hearing today.
The doctor's lawyer, Guy Cook, told DesMoinesRegister.com his client plans to vigorously fight the charges.
"It is unprecedented to turn unfortunate deaths or medical results into a crime against a doctor," the lawyer said. "Unexpected deaths can occur in severe, chronic pain patients, unrelated to medical treatment. This is especially true with patients who are drug addicts or drug abusers."
On May 24, 2010, Paul Dedrick Gray was found dead today by a hotel worker at a hotel in Urbandale hotel room in Iowa. Paul died from an accidental overdose of morphine and fentanyl, and had also shown signs of "significant heart disease".
What do you think about this? Let us know at the comments section below!
Wow, this is very shocking news! DesMoinesRegister.com is claiming that Doctor Daniel Baldi
(a Des Moines physician) has been charged with eight counts of
involuntary manslaughter for allegedly prescribing large amounts of
narcotic painkillers to patients who later died of overdoses. One of his patients was the late great Paul Gray from SLIPKNOT!
Doctor Daniel Baldi, who helped run an Iowa Health System pain clinic, is accused of "unintentionally causing the death of Paul Gray
by the commission of an act likely to cause death or serious injury,
to-wit, continually [writing] high-dose prescription narcotics to a
known drug addict from [December 27, 2005] until his death," according
to charging documents released at the doctor's court hearing today.
The doctor's lawyer, Guy Cook, told DesMoinesRegister.com his client plans to vigorously fight the charges.
"It
is unprecedented to turn unfortunate deaths or medical results into a
crime against a doctor," the lawyer said. "Unexpected deaths can occur
in severe, chronic pain patients, unrelated to medical treatment. This
is especially true with patients who are drug addicts or drug abusers."
On May 24, 2010, Paul Dedrick Gray was found dead
today by a hotel worker at a hotel in Urbandale hotel room in Iowa. Paul died from an accidental overdose of morphine and fentanyl, and had also shown signs of "significant heart disease".
What do you think about this? Let us know at the comments section below!
As previously reported, LAMB OF GOD's Randy Blythe spent five weeks incarcerated in a Prague, Czech Republic prison. Blythe was released on a $400,000 bail and was able to return to the United States on Friday, August 3rd. Although LAMB OF GOD was forced to cancel their summer co-headline tour with Dethklok and special guests Gojira, the band performed this past weekend at SLIPKNOT's "KnotFest". The series of events took place on Friday, August 17th in Council Bluffs, Iowa and Saturday, August 18th in Somerset, Wisconsin.
LAMB OF GOD is already rescheduling a canceled U.S. tour for October. Here is more footage of the return of Randy Blythe to his home away from home: the stage!
As previously reported,
SLIPKNOT will be headlining the inaugural installment of their own
festival, "KnotFest", on Friday, August 17 at Mid America Motorplex in
Pacific Junction, Iowa and on
August 18th in Somerset, on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Yesterday (June 7th), SLIPKNOT's mastermind Shawn "Clown" Crahan greeted the "maggots" at Council Bluffs, Iowa as they lined up to purchase their tickets for the "KnotFest". "Clown" didn't just greet the fans, he also handed them their tickets for the annual SLIPKNOT themed music festival. This is something that all artists should do!
Scheduled performers for KnotFest:
SLIPKNOT
DEFTONES
LAMB OF GOD
DETHKLOK
SERJ TANKIAN
THE URGE
PRONG
CANNIBAL CORPSE
Tickets go on sale on today (Friday, June 8) at 10:00 a.m. CDT.
Our good friends over at Roadrunner Records recently conducted an interview with Slipknot's Shawn "Clown" Crahan (co-founder of the band alongside the late great Paul Gray) about the 10th Anniversary of the bands sophomore album entitled 'Iowa'.
In case you missed the memo, the deluxe edition of 'Iowa' came out this week and you should pick it up! Not only does this reissue include the masterpiece that is 'Iowa', but also the hour-long documentary 'Goat' (directed by Clown).
Here is the interview!
Iowa seems heavily inspired by the band's experiences traveling the world during the touring cycle following the debut, so why was it called Iowa?
Well, basically, you have your whole life to make your first record, and because of that, you have a lot of expectations for your dreams, and in this life, I think we all know how hard it is to achieve a dream that's not so easily obtainable. And when this happens, your whole outlook on life changes. So going through what we went through on the first record, which was basically receiving the dream, making the record, going through pre-production, recording, mastering, mixing, seeing Los Angeles, being exposed to people we’d never been exposed to before, then running the gauntlet of what touring is—because touring certainly isn't my idea of how I would do things. And once you go out there and you play all the sheds and you play all the clubs—it's pretty easy to think about, because you roll through a certain town and there’s only so many clubs you can play at, so that's where you play. And we got big kinda quick, so within that first cycle we went from alternating opening slots on Ozzfest to being the second band on the Coal Chamber tour to pretty much doing our own tour, always coming back to the same clubs. So we'd realize, “Oh, we’re coming back to this city. I hate this club, and I hate these people. And I hate this circumstance.” So we're learning all this while having achieved the only thing we all ever wanted to do, which is get out of Iowa in search of a larger world and live our dreams. So not only did we get out of Iowa, we got all over the United States, all over Canada, Australia, Europe, all on one album cycle, learning all the ups and downs. Then you start hearing about the sophomore curse, and for us it was just strange that people wanted to even interject their opinions into a place they shouldn’t even be sticking their noses in. And I think that’s how it all came about. We came home from such an intense cycle and went right into work—Paul and Joey and Jim just went right in, and they took all the angst and frustration of everything we were forced to learn and wished we hadn't—but don't get me wrong, there were just as many if not more better times, doing everything we did. All the beautiful people we met, all the beautiful places we got to go, all the amazing shows. But there was also the opposite side, the things you didn't think were going to come with your dream. So it was about nine guys having this dream to do the only thing they ever wanted to do since they were little kids, and we put it all into perspective, saying, look, this is what we wanted to do our whole lives, and going through all that dark shit on the first cycle and just having it shoved down your throat and falling into a dark place, whether it be, I'm not embarrassed to say, drugs and alcohol and situations that you normally would never be in and having the wrong people around you and all these things, they're all there for the second record while people are talking to you about the sophomore curse and how many more “Wait and Bleed”s they want, and that's not what we want. So it was truly a way for us to dig deep and remember the roots of why we needed to get out, and pinpoint it to an exact word, and there's no better word than just Iowa. Where we're from, what raised us, where the thought process came from, where we were born and maybe where we would die.
Was there a song that, once you recorded it, you sort of realized, oh, okay, this is the kind of record we're making?
Well, you know, it's gonna be different for each person. For me, when we wrote “Skin Ticket”…everything started over at Paul's little brother's house, and then everything moved over to a big warehouse, and we used to practice at my house all the time. I bought a house, and the band moved in my house before I moved into it, to finish this record Iowa. And we started writing this song “Skin Ticket.” I can remember being in the basement—we built a room just for us and it's still like that, same carpet and everything from ten years ago. I put outlets everywhere for everybody. It's hard to explain without being in front of you, but at the end there's this breakdown, a crescendo that's also a falling apart. And a lot of it's in the drums. There's myself and Chris and Joey, and if you listen, everything is building just to this crescendo of crazy, distraught, dysfunctional whatever, but at the same time it's breaking down like into different times and everybody is on but off, but off in the right sense. And I can remember playing that and watching us, going, Wow, this is the farthest we've ever gotten in our heads as a band. We're gone right now. I'm watching everyone working to something that's going up and getting tighter and angrier and more intense and at the same time it’s falling apart in different areas to get to that end, and I was like, Whoa, this is what being in a band is really like when your thought processes can meet and you can connect so beautifully. And I was like, this next shit is gonna hurt people. This whole album is gonna hurt people in a way that they have been hurt, and they're gonna use it to heal, and it's gonna help, and really exorcise the demons and be something that's very, very needed in today's world.
How did the band's relationship with producer Ross Robinson change between album #1 and album #2?
I think maybe back then I might have said, you know, pressure this, pressure that, but in all honesty, you have to learn and Ross is the best coach ever. He taught us how to let go, he subjected us to things that we didn't want to be subjected to. As much as he was scared of Iowa, we were scared of L.A., and as much as he doesn't understand Iowa, we didn't understand L.A. We didn't understand preproduction, or what it meant to get in a room and have the door locked on you and some guy in your face telling you your part sucks for the song. Ross never came up to me or to anybody in the band and said “That sucks,” it was always like “OK, I hear what you're doing, but I think you can do better.” So there was a learning curve on that first record, and I think Ross was such an excellent mentor and teacher and producer that when we came to the second record, we had blood in our eyes. We had been through it. And he came to many shows, so he knew it, and I can remember he got into motocross and he did some insane fuckin' jump and broke his back, and that's how he started the record with us. With a broken back! Complete pain, just dysfunctional insanity. And I can remember talking to him on the phone and him saying he was running and working out, just to get ready to do the next record, to be healthy for us and to be able to work longer days and longer nights and get ready to fight the people that were trying to get in so we wouldn’t be imprinted by what people wanted. In fact, I can remember Ross making me smash my cell phone against the wall cause the outside influences were trying to get in. He's always been just a great fuckin' producer, one of a kind…he does not give a fuck when it comes to making music, you know what I mean? If you're not in the band, then he doesn't give a fuck. He is the man. So he's always been on our side. He always let us make the final decision on what we wanted, and if it wasn't something he necessarily agreed with, he did his best to make sure that he got the best out of us. I think we always got along. There was never any pressure with Ross. Never.
A lot of bands have been going out and playing albums front to back in recent years. Would you consider doing that with Iowa?
Well, we've talked about these things, you know, but our fans are so rabid—I don't think our fans are really ready to get into that thought process as of yet. We're still a fairly new band, in that we've been together 12, 13 years, something like that, and we still have only four records, because we take a while to do one, we do it right, then we tour it to hell, we kill ourselves, we take a year to repair, we take another year to get bored, refocus, pay attention to what's around us, reflect on what was, get back in the studio and do it again. So over this whole time, we haven't been a band that's wanted to get off its record label, make a bunch of shitty fuckin' records, and whatever. We've stuck to painting masterpieces in our minds, and I think when the maggots and our culture—we're not a band, we're a culture—there's a certain thought process that comes with needing to see Slipknot, and I don't think anybody's ready to commit to, “OK, Slipknot is coming to my town to just play Iowa and that's all we're gonna see.” I mean, people still need to hear “[sic].” They need to hear “Surfacing.” Now they need to hear “Duality.” “Psychosocial.” “Pulse of the Maggots.” “Left Behind.” They need all these songs to carry them through this world they live in.
Joey and I have sat down a lot of times and talked about it, but this is how crazy we are—we've been like, “Fuck it, we'll just play all four records in one night.” We didn’t even say hey, we could come down to a smaller venue and do four nights in a row, an album a night. We were like, fuck it, we’ll play all four albums in a row, from beginning to end. That’s kinda how we talked about it, ’cause we’re into the thought process of it, not the logistics of it. But yeah, I do believe there’ll be a day when we do that, but I don’t think our fans would want that right now. But I can’t speak for them. I could be 100 percent wrong. But I know we just played Rock In Rio in front of 150,000 people, and when you’re going from “[sic]” to “Eyeless” to “Wait and Bleed,” and ending with “Surfacing” and “People = Shit” and “Left Behind”…it’s like a meal. You’re not just eating steak, there’s gravy and potatoes and something you like to drink. You got all the best things you want to enjoy your meal. In the future, when it’s time and we can settle down and get into that thought process of returning to that era and doing it correctly, I’m sure we will do it. Because I think it’d be good for us and I think it’d be good for people. Because I look at our whole career here, and there are so many songs off the first album we’ve never played live. There are so many songs off the second record that we’ve never played live. Same with the third, same with the fourth. And I remember on the Vol. 3 tour cycle, towards the end we decided to add “Skin Ticket,” and I remember us looking at each other thinking, that was the best thing of the night. And I don’t know if it was new and we got to add it to this rigorous thing we’d been doing, but looking back on it and watching the tapes and listening to it, we were like, No, it’s just really good. And we can still do it. And we’re a good enough band to bring ourselves to those occasions, and it just felt good mixing it in with all the other stuff, and we realized that all the other colors on our palette are attainable at any time. It’s just up to us to mix ’em.
The reissue features a 2CD/1DVD set, which includes:
- The original album.
- Previously unreleased live audio from the band's 2002 DVD "Disasterpieces".
- "Goat", an-hour long film capturing the insanity that was "IOWA".
Official track listing of 10th-Anniversary Reissue of 'Iowa':
\m/ Disc 1:
"Iowa"
01. (515)
02. People = Shit
03. Disasterpiece
04. My Plague
05. Everything Ends
06. The Heretic Anthem
07. Gently
08. Left Behind
09. The Shape
10. I Am Hated
11. Skin Ticket
12. New Abortion
13. Metabolic
14. Iowa
15. My Plague (New Abuse Mix)
\m/ Disc 2:
"Disasterpieces - Live In London 2002"
01. (515)
02. People = Shit
03. Liberate
04. Left Behind
05. Eeyore
06. Disasterpiece
07. Purity
08. Gently
09. Eyeless
10. Drum Solo
11. My Plague
12. New Abortion
13. The Heretic Anthem
14. Spit It Out
15. Wait And Bleed
16. 742617000027
17. (sic)
18. Surfacing
\m/ Disc 3:
- "Goat" (hour-long film capturing the insanity of Iowa, directed by M. Shawn Crahan.
Music Videos:
- My Plague
- Left Behind
- The Heretic Anthem (Live)
- People = Shit (Live)
As we reported last week, it has been 10 years since Slipknot released their critically acclaimed sophomore album entitled "IOWA". Released in August 28, 2001, "IOWA" has sold over two million copies in the United States alone. In order to celebrate this special anniversary, the band has announced that on November 1, 2011, they will be releasing a reissue of "IOWA" via Roadrunner Records.
Slipknot's frontman Corey Taylor can be seen below describing his feelings about 'Iowa' and the impact it had in his life.
The reissue features a 2CD/1DVD set, which includes:
- The original album.
- Previously unreleased live audio from the band's 2002 DVD "Disasterpieces".
- "Goat", an-hour long film capturing the insanity that was "IOWA".
Official track listing of 10th-Anniversary Reissue of 'Iowa':
\m/ Disc 1:
"Iowa"
01. (515)
02. People = Shit
03. Disasterpiece
04. My Plague
05. Everything Ends
06. The Heretic Anthem
07. Gently
08. Left Behind
09. The Shape
10. I Am Hated
11. Skin Ticket
12. New Abortion
13. Metabolic
14. Iowa
15. My Plague (New Abuse Mix)
\m/ Disc 2:
"Disasterpieces - Live In London 2002"
01. (515)
02. People = Shit
03. Liberate
04. Left Behind
05. Eeyore
06. Disasterpiece
07. Purity
08. Gently
09. Eyeless
10. Drum Solo
11. My Plague
12. New Abortion
13. The Heretic Anthem
14. Spit It Out
15. Wait And Bleed
16. 742617000027
17. (sic)
18. Surfacing
\m/ Disc 3:
- "Goat" (hour-long film capturing the insanity of Iowa, directed by M. Shawn Crahan.
Music Videos:
- My Plague
- Left Behind
- The Heretic Anthem (Live)
- People = Shit (Live)
It has been 10 years since Slipknot released their critically acclaimed sophomore album entitled "IOWA". Released in August 28, 2001, "IOWA" has sold over two million copies in the United States alone. In order to celebrate this special anniversary, the band has announced that on November 1, 2011, they will be releasing a reissue of "IOWA" via Roadrunner Records.
The reissue features a 2CD/1DVD set, which includes:
- The original album.
- Previously unreleased live audio from the band's 2002 DVD "Disasterpieces".
- "Goat", an-hour long film capturing the insanity that was "IOWA".
A teaser trailer for the "Iowa" reissue can be found at Iowa.Slipknot1.com (click on the goat's stomach in order to view the clip).
"IOWA" track-listing:
1. "(515)"
2. "People = Shit"
3. "Disasterpiece"
4. "My Plague"
5. "Everything Ends"
6. "The Heretic Anthem"
7. "Gently"
8. "Left Behind"
9. "The Shape"
10. "I Am Hated"
11. "Skin Ticket"
12. "New Abortion"
13. "Metabolic"
14. "Iowa"
