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Billy Joel is in a New York and New Jersey state of mind. During his 2025 tour, which kicks off March 15 in Toronto, Joel will play all three New York City-area sports stadiums, making him the first artist to ever play all three in one summer. His impressive feat will come over a month-long […]
Hank Azaria‘s Bruce Springsteen tribute band has gotten The Boss’ stamp of approval.
The Friends actor joined Live With Kelly and Mark on Monday (Feb. 24), where he discussed his Springsteen tribute band, the EZ Street Band, and what inspired its formation. “I’m from Queens. Queens is just like Asbury Park but less water,” he joked of his and Springsteen’s different hometowns, before explaining while imitating the rocker, “I’ve been imitating Bruce since I was a teenager. A lot of my early impressions are based on hero worship, Bruce being at the top.”
When asked if Springsteen knows about the band, Azaria revealed that he does — thanks to his friend, who is an oral surgeon in New York City. “He texted me one day, ‘Text me your favorite video of the band.’ So, I text him ‘Thunder Road’ — he’s a big Springsteen fan,” he recalled. “Later that night, he texted me that Patti Scialfa, Bruce’s wife, was in his chair. I said, ‘Oh, dear, if I had known that, I really wouldn’t have sent the video.’ Then he sent me a text that Patti showed it to Bruce, and they had watched it twice, actually. What he got is that it’s a loving tribute, which is what it is. I was like, ‘Please make sure they know it’s all for charity.’”
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While Springsteen hasn’t made it to a show yet, Azaria said that “is a goal of ours.”
Azaria and the EZ Street Band went on to perform Springsteen’s 1985 hit “Glory Days” on the show, with Azaria looking and sounding exactly like the superstar. Watch the performance here.
The EZ Street Band are touring throughout the spring, with a full list of tour dates and ticket information available on the group’s website here.
Watch Azaria’s full Live With Kelly and Mark interview below.
Disturbed is walking down memory lane and starting a new era at the same time.
The Chicago-formed heavy rock quartet kicks off The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour on Tuesday (Feb. 25) in Nampa, Idaho, celebrating its five-times platinum debut album, which spent 106 weeks on the Billboard 200. Meanwhile, it’s just released “I Will Not Break,” a characteristically defiant track that is the first taste of Disturbed’s ninth studio album, which will be followed by additional singles before the full-length’s release — most likely in 2026, according to frontman David Draiman.
“We’re going to release track by track over a set course of time,” Draiman, who now resides in Miami, tells Billboard. “We have so many strong songs in this collection of material, so many single contenders, we’re just gonna push ’em out bit by bit. Every musician is most in love with their newest creation, but this body of work was so inspiring it made us want to change our strategy. We have some incredible surprises, too — not all meat and potatoes, stereotypical Disturbed, either, definitely a lot of left turns for us. We’ll see when those actually get to see the light of day. We can’t wait for all of it to be out.”
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Guitarist Dan Donegan feels the same way, describing what’s coming as “a well-rounded body of work. There’s some interesting stuff in there, some really great ideas, some very cool moments. It’s a good blend of everything that’s become Disturbed — some of those old-school moments, those animalistic moments. We’re always gonna have those big, melodic moments with David to showcase showcase some of his vocal jobs, some great, heavy riffs — some of my favorite riffs I’ve written so far. I think fans will be pleased.”
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The heavy-hitting (and certainly familiar-sounding) “I Will Not Break” makes its intent clear with its title. Draiman — whose vocal follows a minute and 16 seconds of hard grooving by Donegan, drummer Mike Wrengren and bassist John Moyer — says it was inspired by “the darkness that I had to go through during the last touring cycle,” which included a 2023 divorce and learning to single-parent his son, as well as aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel and the rising antisemitism he saw surfacing around the world.
“It’s definitely a song I think is very needed right now — definitely I needed it,” Draiman explains. “It’s an empowerment tune. It’s about overcoming adversity. It’s about coming out the other side of the darkness, about not letting the pressures that mount in your life break you.” He adds that the song — produced by Drew “WZRD BLD” Fulk (Lil Wayne, Knocked Loose, NLE Choppa), who helmed 2022’s Divisive — was one of the last to surface in the process.
“We were definitely in a stride of sorts, and definitely feeling it,” Draiman says. “I said to the guys, ‘Give me something, give me an idea that has the old school, head-bobbing feel, that familiar rhythm that I can get really syncopated with and do what they do. So they gave me that. Too easy.”
While fans wait for more new tracks and the eventual album, Disturbed will deliver a 25th anniversary edition of The Sickness on March 7, adding B-sides, demos and previously unreleased songs to flesh out the package, which housed the No. 5-peaking Mainstream Rock Airplay hit “Down With the Sickness” and the Alternative Airplay top 10 “Stupify.”
For the tour, Disturbed will be playing The Sickness, which was produced by Johnny K, in its entirety and in sequence, which Draiman describes as “weird” since those hits, usually saved for the end of the night, will come significantly earlier. “We’ve never done anything like this. I think it’s going to be really cool,” Donegan adds. “It’s our biggest album and our big debut, so we want to honor it from start to finish, playing some of these songs we haven’t played in a long time, and then have a second set of things we did after that.”
Disturbed has plenty to draw from there as well, with 27 top 10 Mainstream Rock Airplay hits — a dozen of which hit No. 1, including remakes of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” All told Disturbed has scored five platinum-or-better albums.
“I remember when we were playing local, before we were touring outside of Chicago, we used to say, ‘I hope we get to the point where we can fill the Riviera Theatres of the world’;…maybe 2,000 seats,” Draiman recalls. “Now we’re playing arenas and packing them with 10, 15, 20,000 at a time. It’s very surreal. It never loses its luster, and it’s still amazing to experience the nice, steady, gradual ascent we’ve been able to have over the course of our career.”
Donegan’s take is that Disturbed “weren’t reinventing the wheel, but we weren’t trying to emulate a certain band, either. We just took all our influences and improvised and wrote the songs, and it started becoming something. But we weren’t chasing anything else; we were just writing the music that we wanted to write.”
The guitarist considers “Down With the Sickness” illustrative of that philosophy. “We were just going into the rehearsal room in the late ‘90s, jumping on our instruments and warming up,” Donegan remembers. “Mikey did this tribal beat…it was never intended for anything, just warming up, and I said, ‘Keep doing that for a minute’ and just started improvising the riff and developing it. David’s listening to what we’re doing and we put that little pause in it, before it kicks in heavier, and out of nowhere in the break he does the signature ‘wa-ka-ka-ka!’ thing and we’re looking at him going, ‘What the hell…?!’ It was just an instinct, just a reaction to this tribal beat and the riff. We were taken aback by it; we didn’t know if he was gonna turn it into words or what, but it just kinda stuck. We were trying to find our own identity…and that definitely helped.”
For The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour Disturbed is also putting together a museum of sorts for VIP package buyers, including instruments and stage outfits, concert posters and vintage t-shirts and merchandise. The group has also announced a European leg of the trek with 17 dates kicking off Sept. 29 in Copenhagen. For Draiman, Donegan and their bandmates, the nostalgic dip has been an invigorating reminder of where the band came from as well as jet fuel for its future plans.
“I just love the fact we’re still hungry,” Donegan says. “We’ve bene very blessed and fortunate to check off bucket list items. We’ve played with pretty much all our heroes — Metallica, Judas Priest, Pantera, Queensrÿche, all these classic rock/metal bands we’ve grown up to. We just played with Iron Maiden in Mexico City in November; that was a huge bucket list show for us. And there’s been a lot of bucket list venues. And we still love doing it. There’s an incredible addiction to performing, to being on stage and that interaction with the crowd, to going into the studio and making new music, all of it.”
Draiman will check off another item of his own on July 5, when he’ll be part of the Back To The Beginning concert in Birmingham, England, where Ozzy Osbourne and the original lineup of Black Sabbath will play its final show supported by a who’s-who list of heavy metal and hard rock acts. “I’m elated to be part of it, humbled and honored,” he says, noting Disturbed’s appearances on Ozzfest tours helped break the band. “It’s the most seminal frontman and band for hard rock and heavy metal; the second record I ever bought, right after Kiss Destroyer, was (Sabbath’s) We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n’ Roll. I love Ozzy. I love the Osbourne family. They’ve been so supportive, such a huge part of we’ve become who we’ve become. We could not have done it without them, so I’m intensely grateful. We all are. I hope that I can just do my little part to pay tribute to their legacy.”
The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour North American itinerary includes:Feb 25 Nampa, ID Ford Idaho Center Arena*Feb 27 Denver, CO Ball Arena*Mar 02 St. Louis, MO Enterprise Center*Mar 04 Milwaukee, WI Fiserv Forum*Mar 06 Minneapolis, MN Target Center*Mar 08 Chicago, IL United Center*Mar 10 Detroit, MI Little Caesars Arena*Mar 12 Louisville, KY KFC Yum! Center*Mar 14 Boston, MA TD Garden*Mar 17 Washington, D.C. Capital One Arena*Mar 19 Montreal, QC Centre Bell*Mar 21 New York, NY Madison Square Garden*Mar 29 Cincinnati, OH Heritage Bank Center^Mar 31 Cleveland, OH Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse^Apr 02 Philadelphia, PA Wells Fargo Center^Apr 04 Buffalo, NY KeyBank Center^Apr 05 Pittsburgh, PA PPG Paints Arena^Apr 07 Toronto, ON Scotiabank Arena^Apr 09 Indianapolis, IN Gainbridge Fieldhouse^Apr 12 Charlotte, NC Spectrum Center^Apr 14 Raleigh, NC Lenovo Center^Apr 16 Birmingham, AL Legacy Arena at The BJCC^Apr 18 Sunrise, FL Amerant Bank Arena^Apr 23 Duluth, GA Gas South Arena^Apr 25 San Antonio, TX Frost Bank Center^Apr 26 Fort Worth, TX Dickies Arena^Apr 28 Oklahoma City, OK Paycom Center^May 05 Seattle, WA Climate Pledge Arena^May 07 Portland, OR Moda Center^May 09 Sacramento, CA Golden 1 Center^May 10 San Francisco, CA Chase Center^May 13 Inglewood, CA Kia Forum^May 15 Phoenix, AZ Footprint Center^May 17 Las Vegas, NV MGM Grand Garden Arena^*with special guests Three Days Grace and opener Sevendust^with special guests Daughtry and opener Nothing More
Chino Moreno is ready to embark on a new arenas tour with his alternative metal band Deftones, starting Tuesday (Feb. 25) at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon. It’s the California band’s first tour since 2022, and it will share the stage with The Mars Volta and Fleshwater during some spring dates in the U.S.
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At the same time, the Sacramento-based band plans to release new music this year, Moreno tells Billboard Español in Mexico City. “So the plan is, obviously, to have a record sometime around that time [during the tour.] It’s getting very close to being ready, so yeah, we’re excited,” he says of what would be the successor to Ohms (2020).
Almost eight years have passed since Deftones last visited Mexico, where — as in the rest of Latin America — it has a solid fan base. But with his other project, Crosses, Moreno was in Mexico City last December. Here, he and his bandmate, guitarist and producer Shaun Lopez, closed the tour of their album Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete (2023) at the Pabellón Oeste of the Palacio de los Deportes, after being on the road between 2023 and 2024.
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“We made it happen! We were gonna do a full Latin America tour, but it was just gonna be too much time and it was close to the holidays, so we decided we at least have to go to Mexico City,” Moreno says.
It was Crosses’ first show in the capital and it was an incredible experience for him and Lopez, who had never been here before. Lopez, a former member of the now-defunct group Far, created an unexpected close bond with Mexico when he served as a producer of Mexican trio The Warning‘s album Keep Me Fed (2024) — it was thanks to the Villarreal Vélez sisters that the musician obtained his first Latin Grammy nomination last year, for best rock song, as co-author of their song “Qué Más Quieres.”
“When we wrote it, it wasn’t in Spanish,” Lopez tells Billboard Español. “Sometimes when you do songwriting sessions like that, you don’t hear anything for like a year. And usually when you don’t hear anything, you think ‘Oh, they didn’t like it, they didn’t like me’ or whatever, you know? And then the manager hit me up a year later and he said: ‘Can you send me a session for that song?’ He’s like, ‘The good news is the girls are going to convert it to Spanish, which is going to be actually really cool because it’ll be the only song on the album that’s Spanish.’”
In 2025, Moreno will spend much of the year touring with Deftones, so Crosses will have to take a break before returning to the recording studio. “I don’t know how soon it’ll be, but we definitely want to work on more music,” Lopez says. “We enjoy making it and yeah, I just would like to thank everybody for showing interest in our project.”
As Deftones is soon expected to announce tour dates in Mexico, Moreno confirms that the band is considering the possibility of bringing the festival they have been organizing annually since 2020 in San Diego, California — Día de los Deftones, whose name is a clear reference to the popular Mexican tradition Día de Muertos celebrated on Nov. 1-2 — to Mexico.
“We talked about it a lot recently, so it’s definitely in discussions to do so. We would love to do!” Moreno says. “I mean, I can’t promise, but, you know, it’s been growing really great.”
Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts will hit the road this summer for the Love Earth European/North American world tour. The first leg of the tour will kick off in Europe on June 18 at Dalhalla in Rättvik, Sweden before moving on to gigs in Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
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The outing will then jump to the U.S., beginning with an August 8 show at the PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, N.C., hitting Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto, New York, Chicago, Denver and Vancouver before winding down on Sept. 15 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, with more dates to be added at a later time.
Young, 79, will be accompanied by the Chrome Hearts band, featuring his longtime collaborator keyboardist Spooner Oldham, as well as Promise of the Real members Micah Nelson on guitar/vocals, Corey McCormick on bass and Anthony LoGerfo on drums. The group released the noisy anthem “Big Change” in January, a grungy warning shot about a major revolution whose outcome is a jagged question mark.
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“Might be a politician/ Tryna say something new/ Might be your decision/ Now you’ve got to see it through/ Looks like a collision,” Young hollers in the tune whose video features the outspoken singer marching through the woods wielding an American flag and a giant boom box. “Ain’t the worst that you could do/ Might be bad, might be good/ Big change is coming to you,” Young warns.
Young debuted the Chrome Hearts band during a show last year and has said an album from the group is tentatively slated for release in April.
Tickets for the tour will go on sale on Tuesday (Feb. 25) via an exclusive pre-sale for Neil Young Archives members, followed by a general on-sale that launches on Friday (Feb. 28). To protect the prices set by Young, a release said that the tour will use Ticketmaster’s Face Value Exchange for all resales and make tickets mobile only and restricted from transfer. According to the release, this will mean that if fans buy tickets and cannot attend they will have the option to re-sell them to other fans at the original price using TM’s Face Value tool; this applies to all shows except those in Illinois, New York, Utah, Virginia and Canada.
Young has also partnered with Farm Aid — which he co-founded in 1985 with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp — to bring HOMEGROWN Concessions to the summer tour, which will bring sustainably produced, fair-priced family farm food served on compostable serviceware to venues.
After a lifetime of regular touring, Young took a break from the road during the COVID-19 pandemic and had planned to be back on stages for a huge tour with his long-running Crazy Horse compatriots in summer 2024 before cancelling the dates a few weeks in due to an unspecified health issue.
Check out the dates for the Young and the Chrome Hearts’s 2025 summer tour below.
June 18 – Rättvik, Sweden @ Dalhalla
June 20 – Bergen, Norway @ Bergenhus Fortress
June 22 – Copenhagen, Denmark @ Tiøren
June 26 – Dublin, Ireland @ Malahide Castle
June 30 – Brussels, Belgium @ Brussels Palace Open Air, Palace Square
July 1 – Groningen, Netherlands @ Drafbaan Stedpark
July 3 – Berlin, Germany @ Waldbühne
July 4 – Mönchengladbach, Germany @ Sparkassenpark
July 8 – Stuttgart, Germany @ Cannstatter Wasen
Aug. 8. – Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion
Aug. 10 – Richmond, VA @ Allianz Amphitheater at Riverfront
Aug. 13 – Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music Theatre
Aug. 15 – Cleveland, OH @ Blossom Music Center
Aug. 17 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage
Aug. 21 – Gilford, NH @ BankNH Pavilion
Aug. 23 – New York, NY @ Northwell at Jones Beach
Aug. 24 – Bethel, NY @ Bethel Center for the Arts
Aug. 27 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
Sept. 1 – Denver, CO @ Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
Sept. 5 – George, WA @ The Gorge
Sept. 6 – Vancouver, BC @ Deer Lake Park
Sept. 10 – Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater
Sept. 12 – Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheater
Sept. 15 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
Pantera announced the dates for an extensive 2025 U.S. summer amphitheater tour on Monday (Feb. 24), with plans to hit 29 cities from July through September. The self-proclaimed “Heaviest Tour of the Summer” from the band featuring the lineup of core members singer Phil Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown with guitarist Zakk Wylde and drummer Charlie Benante is slated to kick off at The Pavilion at Star Lake in Burgettstown, PA on July 15, followed by shows in Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Dallas and Raleigh, before winding down on Sept. 13 at iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, FL.
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The Live Nation-produced tour will feature support from Swedish metal icons Amon Amarth, with more opening acts to be announced later. Ticket and VIP pre-sales will kick-off on Tuesday (Feb. 25) at 10 a.m. local time, with a general on-sale launching on Friday (Feb. 28) at 10 a.m. local time here.
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After years apart, Brown and Anselmo reunited in 2023 for the band’s first major tour in more than two decades, with Wylde and Benante signing on to fill in for late band co-founders drummer Vinnie Paul and guitarist Dimebag Darrell. They went on to tour Europe and open for Metallica on their 2023-2024 M72 world tour and will appear at what is being described as Black Sabbath’s final reunion show with Ozzy Osbourne on July 5 at Villa Park in Birmingham, U.K. alongside Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Jason Momoa, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Lamb of God, Mastodon, Alice in Chains, Halestorm, Gojira and others.
Check out the dates for Pantera’s 2025 U.S. summer tour below:
July 15 – Burgettstown, PA @ The Pavilion at Star LakeJuly 17 – Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music TheatreJuly 19 – Tinley Park, IL @ Credit Union 1 AmphitheatreJuly 20 – Cleveland, OH @ Blossom Music CenterJuly 22 – Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music CenterJuly 25 – Hershey, PA @ Hersheypark StadiumJuly 26 – Wantagh, NY @ Northwell Health at Jones Beach TheaterJuly 28 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Broadview Stage at SPACJuly 29 – Gilford, NH @ Bank NH PavilionJuly 31 – Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts CenterAug. 2 – Mansfield, MA @ Xfinity CenterAug. 3 – Hartford, CT @ Xfinity TheatreAug. 6 – Milwaukee, WI -@ American Family Insurance AmphitheaterAug. 7 – Minneapolis, MN @ Target CenterAug. 20 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Utah First Credit Union AmphitheatreAug. 22 – Auburn, WA @ White River AmphitheatreAug. 23 – Ridgefield, WA @ Cascades AmphitheaterAug. 26 – Phoenix, AZ @ Talking Stick Resort AmphitheatreAug. 27 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia ForumAug. 29 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile ArenaAug. 31 – Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta AmphitheaterSept. 2 – Austin, TX @ Germania Insurance AmphitheaterSept. 3 – Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis PavillionSept. 5 – Noblesville, IN @ Ruoff Music CenterSept. 6 – St. Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino AmphitheatreSept. 8 – Birmingham, AL @ Coca-Cola AmphitheaterSept. 10 – Virginia Beach, VA @ Veterans United Home Loans AmphitheaterSept. 11 – Raleigh, NC @ Coastal Credit Union Park at Walnut CreekSept. 13 – West Palm Beach, FL @ iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre
Noah Weiland, the son of late Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, has paid tribute to his father with a cover of 1993’s “Sex Type Thing.”
Released on Thursday (Feb. 20), the haunting rendition of the track sees Noah offering up a faithful take on the original, albeit without the angry vocals that Scott included over 30 years ago. Featuring production and additional guitar from Spencer Carr Reed, the cover also comes accompanied by a video which sees Noah making his way throughout Sherman Oaks, CA alongside a Chucky doll which represents the elder Weiland.
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The video features subtitles which see Noah reflecting on the loss of his father. “There was so much I wanted to tell him, like how much has changed on Earth without him,” one caption reads, while a final caption adds, “I wish I could dream about you forever. But it’s ok…because for now I will carry on your legacy.”
“Filmed this about a dream I had long ago about seeing my father again,” Noah wrote about the track on social media. “It’s hard for me to stay in the moment sometimes, but I try.”
Scott Weiland passed away in December 2015 at the age of 48, with an autopsy later declaring his cause of death as an accidental overdose of cocaine, ethanol and methylenedioxyamphetamine. Scott first rose to fame in the ’90s as the frontman of Stone Temple Pilots, who officially formed in 1989 as Mighty Joe Young.
The band’s debut album, Core, was released in September 1992, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. “Sex Type Thing” was issued as its lead single in early 1993, and would peak at No. 23 on the Album Rock Tracks (now called the Mainstream Rock) chart. Second single “Plush” would also win them a Grammy Award for best hard rock performance.
Stone Temple Pilots would split in 2003 after releasing five albums (including 1994’s chart-topping Purple), though would reunite in 2008 and release a self-titled record in 2010. Scott Weiland would be fired from the band in 2013, with Linkin Park‘s Chester Bennington taking over as lead vocalist until 2015.
In 2016, the band launched a search for a new vocalist, ultimately announcing Jeff Gutt as their new singer in November 2017. The band have since released two studio albums with Gutt, with their most recent being 2020’s Perdida.
That same year, it was revealed that Noah Weiland, along with the sons of Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, had formed a band called Suspect208, though the group would only last for a year before splitting.
In April 2024, Noah revealed he was being “blackmailed” by an unnamed individual who demanded $2,000 to refrain from leaking a demo titled “Time Will Tell”, which featured previously-unreleased vocals from Scott. Noah instead decided to finish the song with Reed, telling Rolling Stone the idea was to present the track as a familial collaboration.
“Due to the fact that nobody who ‘represents’ my dad actually cares to give the fans new unheard music, let alone keep his name alive in the first place, my friend Spencer Carr Reed and I decided to turn it into a more modern sounding song as if he was still alive and just decided to hop on one of my songs,” Noah explained at the time. “That was the concept behind it.”
Almost four years since founding Korn bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu announced he was taking a hiatus from the group, the musician has revealed he hasn’t spoken to his bandmates in more than five years.
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Fieldy made the revelation in a recent appearance on the Basement Talk podcast, explaining that his hiatus has featured no contact with any of the musicians he rose to fame with.
“I haven’t talked to those guys since 2019. So it’s like we’re just kind of both…. They’re truckin,’” he explained. “They’re a machine. They’re going. It’s insane. It’s dope that they can keep on going like that.”
Though somewhat vague in his responses, one of the podcast’s presenters inquired as to whether “it’s all love between everybody” between the other members of the band. “Yeah. It’s cool to see them keep on going,” Fieldy added. “I’m, like, I need to chill. I’m just kickin’ it.”
Fieldy served as the bassist of Korn since its inception in 1993, performing on every one of their studio albums to date, including 1998’s Follow the Leader and 1999’s Issues, which both topped the Billboard 200. In June 2021, however, he revealed he would be taking “some time off to heal” and to address the “bad habits” which had “caused some tension with the people around me”.
“I’m going to respect what was asked of me and take that time,” he wrote in a statement at the time. “Unfortunately you will not see me on stage with my band. I will be working towards getting the bad habits out of my system. In the meantime I will be staying creative to keep my mind & soul in a good place.”
In the wake of Fieldy’s hiatus from the band, Suicidal Tendencies bassist Ra Díaz stepped in to take his place. Despite his departure (and his claims that he hadn’t spoken to his bandmates since 2019), Fieldy is still credited as the bassist for the group’s most recent album, 2022’s Requiem, which wrapped recording shortly after his exit.
Four months after announcing his hiatus, Fieldy released a since-deleted video in which he clarified the “bad habits” that he had initially referenced, denying it was in relation to drug use. “I’ve never tried cocaine, I’ve never tried heroin. I drink Bud Light, man. It’s clear,” he said.
At the time, he also addressed his relationship with his bandmates, claiming there is “no beef” between the members of Korn.
“They’re killing it,” he added. “I’m always gonna be Fieldy from Korn for the rest of my life, because that’s part of my legacy. Those are my homies, those are my brothers. We’re just in different places right now. We’re not even mad at each other. We’re all cool.”
Depending on when you were first introduced to DPR IAN throughout his decade-plus career in entertainment so far, it may be smart to check on how exactly to address the Australian multi-hyphenate.
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Born Christian Yu in Sydney, Australia, in 1990, and known by his Korean name Barom, the future star introduced his first moniker by uploading dance videos to YouTube as B Boy B.yu — a nickname thought up by his mother to remind him to always “be you” or, in young Barom’s case, “B yu”). After high school, he embraced an unexpected swerve to debut in the K-pop industry as Rome, the leader of the boy band C-Clown. When the group split, he reclaimed Christian and used +IAN after directing music videos for the likes of BIGBANG’s Taeyang and iKON’s Bobby, before ultimately landing on his DPR IAN stage name as part of he and his Dream Perfect Regime’s independent, creative musical movement.
But for a friendly conversation like the first episode of Billboard’s The Crossover Convo, he says Ian is “perfect.”
“There are so many eras that I’ve been through and pertaining to those eras is where a lot of those names came out,” DPR IAN explains to Billboard. “Having it all laid out like that really puts a lot of things into perspective. I’ve really just been on the run and on the fly, and I haven’t been able to process a lot of these things; it’s been quite the journey.”
With a musical journey that began with a childhood obsession with progressive-music icons like Daft Punk and Moby, embracing British-pop icons like The Beatles and Spice Girls, to diving into new genres on multifaceted projects like vocalizing over icy EDM on “Do or Die” with DPR ARCTIC, while delivering a psychedelic rock experience for “Diamonds + and Pearls” on the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings soundtrack, that features a diverse roster of superstars like Simu Lu, Anderson .Paak, DJ Snake, Saweetie, Swae Lee, BIBI, 21 Savage, Mark Tuan of GOT7 and many more.
The Shang-Chi soundtrack peaked at No. 160 on the Billboard 200 in 2021, but IAN built upon the chart momentum with his 2022 full-length Moodswings in to Order (peaking at No. 146 on the chart), which was soon surpassed by Dear Insanity EP from 2023 (No. 138).
But IAN says the music’s personal impact on listeners is more important than how much they buy or consume it.
“I’ve never really expected any of that as I was starting this,” he says in reaction to his organic chart rise. “Even if it affects one person and if it’s enough to change one person’s world for the better, that was enough for me.”
For the premiere episode of The Crossover Convo, take a journey through DPR IAN’s music history and look out for the next star to go through their global-pop music journey next month.
Canadian rockers Three Days Grace have never played it safe. For over two decades, they’ve delivered some of rock’s most anthemic gut punches—”I Hate Everything About You,” “Animal I Have Become,” and “Never Too Late”—while weathering lineup changes, shifting sounds, and carving out a legacy that refuses to fade.
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Now, they’re flipping the script once again. Original frontman Adam Gontier is back, but not as a replacement—he’s teaming up with Matt Walst in a rare, dual-frontman powerhouse. Instead of a passing of the torch, it’s a collision of past and present, rewriting the band’s next chapter in real-time.
“I grew up same town, watching these guys practice in my basement when I was 12 years old,” Walst tells Billboard. “So I’ve always been a big fan of the band. It’s pretty cool to see this happen.”
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This reunion had been years in the making. Gontier made a surprise appearance with Three Days Grace in 2023, igniting rumors of a comeback. By October 2024, the band made it official after dropping a video of Gontier and Walst linking up at the studio. For the first time, Three Days Grace would have two lead singers.
If the reaction from fans was explosive, the impact on the charts was just as immediate.
Their first single as a dual-fronted band, “Mayday,” skyrocketed to No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. It marked their 18th No. 1–the first featuring vocals from Gontier since “Misery Loves My Company” in 2013.
“We knew people would freak out about it, but I didn’t think it would fly up to No. 1 on Billboard in five weeks to No.1,” Walst says. “It’s now sat there for five weeks. It’s been No. 1 for half the time it’s been out. We’re blown away by it. It’s crazy.”
With new music and a massive tour alongside Disturbed on the horizon, the next big question became—how do two powerhouse singers split up vocal duties?
“We start rehearsals next week, and then we’re out on tour with Disturbed across America, and it will be the first time we’ve gone through the songs together,” explains Walst, who took on the role of frontman in 2013.
For older songs originally sung by Gontier, Walst says, “I’m playing guitar and singing harmonies, backups.” Meanwhile, for songs from his own tenure, “he’s playing guitar and singing backups, and then for the new song we’re gonna sing together.”
Walst has a deep respect for Gontier’s talent, particularly his vocal range. “He can sing really, really high, he can hit notes that way, way up there. It’s insane.”
That ability, Walst believes, has only grown stronger over time. “It’s pretty cool to watch,” he added.
But when it came to recording their first tracks as a two-frontman band, they took an unconventional approach to deciding who sings what.
“Sometimes we did rock paper scissors,” Walst laughs. “Like, okay, who’s singing this part?”
“A lot of the time in the studio, it just comes naturally. Who’s gonna sing what and where,” he explains. “It’s been a lot of fun. We have each other’s backs and we cheer each other on when we do a good take. It’s pretty cool to be part of.”
“We get along. We’re both pretty chill people, and we’ve known each other for years and years,” he adds of his relationship with his fellow frontman. “We grew up together. We’re from the same town, so it’s not like if Van Halen singers tried to get together and do a tour.”
With a deep catalog of Billboard rock hits, the band is gearing up for a high-energy setlist, featuring the heavy-hitting sound that has fueled their legacy—only this time, with even more fire behind it.
“I think we’re just gonna bash them over the head with some hits,” Walst jokes.
“We have a lot of heavier songs on this album,” Walst teases. “But we have our ballads too, some lighter stuff. With every album, we like to balance it out with heavier songs and some lighter material, just so there’s diversity in it. ‘Mayday’ would not be the heaviest song on the record, but it’s up there.”
After 20 years of career highs, lineup changes, and countless tours, the band knows longevity in rock isn’t just about surviving—it’s about evolving and not letting egos get in the way of the music. For Walst, that’s never been an issue for the band.
“We don’t get offended if our idea isn’t good enough, or if our suggestion doesn’t go through,” he continues. “It’s about the song. Whatever is best for the song is gonna go.”
“I think it’s just writing about stuff that is going on in our lives or around us, and that people can apply themselves to the music and feel that,” Walst reflects. “If they’re depressed or they can reach on to a song, like ‘Never Too Late,’ or they going through a breakup, listening to ‘I Hate Everything About You.’”
As Three Days Grace kick off their new chapter, Walst is looking forward to what’s ahead.
“When the crowd is going nuts, it fuels me,“ he says about performing live. “The more they go crazy, the more I go crazy. I haven’t been on a stage for a year, and it’s gonna be interesting to get back up there and feel the butterflies and feel that energy again. It’s kind of like a drug you can’t get anywhere else.”