Earlier this year, former Metallica bassist Jason
Newted’s new band, simply titled “Newsted”
released their 4-track debut EP Metal.
Earlier in the summer I wrote an article about it, not actually aware that
Metal was so quickly going to be followed up by a full length album.
Considering I’ve already written an article about the Metal EP, I suppose I can
skip the whole history of the band and what not, besides I’m sure most of you
already know who Jason Newsted is anyway.
Jason
Newsted was always just a tad out of place in Metallica. He came in to the band just months after the death of
bass legend, and arguably the best metal bassist to ever record an album, Cliff Burton. Immediately after joining
the band he faced sort of an initiation by his band mates. My personal favourite
story is that when he would sign autographs for fans, he would write “bassface”
and when other members of the band signed the same item, they would cross out
the “b” in “bassface”...yah you get it. Even after the initiation ended he was
still just the new guy in the band, and that always held a spot in the memory
of the band and older fans of the band that he couldn’t seem to live up to
despite being an excellent bass player. Jason himself at many times during his
career still to this day has mentioned Cliff as being the best bass player to
ever live, to demonstrate that he knew he wasn’t ever in Metallica to be better
than Cliff.
Whenever I think of Danish metallers Volbeat, I think of the first time I ever discovered them. Like so
many of their fans, it was their fortune of touring with Metallica in 2009 that first introduced me to their unique sound. Having
not one clue about this band beforehand, not even knowing that Metallica had
more than one band (Lamb of God)
opening for them, I was completely taken. They didn’t put on a spectacular
show, for the most part they just stood there and played their instruments, and
let their music do the talking.
