UGLY KID JOE will release a new studio album, “Rad Wings Of Destiny”, on October 21. The official music video for the LP’s second single, “Kill The Pain”, can be seen below. This epic track shows a darker, rawer side to UGLY KID JOE, with the lyrics focusing on the battle of addiction and the daily struggle to stop.
“The lyrics are written from the perspective of peer pressure and outside influences that keep so many people from getting clean,” comments guitarist Dave Fortman. “The line ‘beautiful we lay here under the sky, watching the loneliness die’ always felt like the perfect metaphor for me to define this song. Kill the pain and if only for a moment, end the suffering of addiction.”
“Rad Wings Of Destiny” sees UGLY KID JOE re-teaming producer Mark Dodson who was behind the desk for the band’s debut album, “America’s Least Wanted”, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
Speaking to France’s Loud TV about the “Rad Wings Of Destiny” album title, UGLY KID JOE frontman Whitfield Crane said: “I love JUDAS PRIEST. UGLY KID JOE has a penchant for poking a little humor into the universe — the universe needs a little humor — and also giving respect to things that we love. So we love JUDAS PRIEST. We’re from California. We say ‘rad’ all day long. So ‘Rad Wings Of Destiny’.”
Regarding how “That Ain’t Livin'” came together, Crane said: “I wrote the riff in Greece. We worked on the song as a band in Mallorca, Spain. We tracked the song in El Paso, Texas. And then we couldn’t finish all the vocals in El Paso. So then I found myself living in Lisbon, Portugal. And I flew to London to meet the producer and I tracked the vocals in London.”
Asked if the rest of “Rad Wings Of Destiny” is musically similar to “That Ain’t Livin'”, Whitfield said: “Well, it’s hard for me to describe it, ’cause I’m so close to it; I’m really close to it. But yeah, the first track, ‘That Ain’t Livin”… Also we love old-school AC/DC; I mean, I love for AC/DC. I wrote the riff for ‘That Ain’t Livin” on an island in Greece and I had the riff. And so we wrote that song. And it’s really an homage to ‘Powerage’[-era] AC/DC. So that’s that song. But there’s nine other songs, and there’s a lot of different frequencies that we’re embracing.”
As for the lyrical themes covered on “Rad Wings Of Destiny”, Crane said: “‘That Ain’t Livin” is just — if you feel stuck in a nine-to-five rut, stop. Embrace life… We cover a version of THE KINKS‘ ‘Lola’, which is really cool; we did great on it. But I’ll let the thematic structure of the album, I’ll let that remain a mystery for someone to figure out themselves. I think if I project what I think it is, sometimes that takes away from somebody feeling what it is for them.”
After a 15-year hiatus, UGLY KID JOE reformed in 2012 and has toured extensively throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
The band released the EP “Stairway To Hell” in 2012 and the full-length “Uglier Than They Used Ta Be” in 2015.
Two years ago, Crane told Eonmusic about UGLY KID JOE‘s huge success on the back of single “Everything About You” in 1991: “‘Eye of the storm’ is a good way to put it, because it just was all happening at a deadly fast gait. And it was a lot — it was beautiful and also very challenging, because there’s a lot of people that surround the business of music that are full of shit. But when you’re 23 [or] 24, you don’t know how to negotiate that, so on one hand, it was super fun and we did all the things you should do at that age, and on the other hand, it was too much for me. But we survived it, and I can deal with it all now.”
Openly Christian rockers STRYPER have released a new single, "See No Evil, Hear No Evil". The song will appear on their upcoming studio album, which is due later this year via Frontiers Music Srl. The follow-up to 2020's "Even The Devil Believes" was produced by guitarist/vocalist Michael Sweet and was once again recorded at SpiritHouse Recording Studios in Northampton, Massachusetts. Sweet stated about the track: "'See No Evil, Hear No Evil' was, believe it or not, inspired by the health issues that Oz [Fox, […]
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