Posted by: arthur  Posted date:  November 10, 2011   


Bullet For My Valentine, Seether, and Escape The Fate

It really doesn’t get much better than this. A scorching August day, thousands of die hard fans, and a waterfront venue provided a recipe for rock ‘n’ roll on the first stop of the 2011 Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Festival . It seemed like only yesterday that we were here for the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival. As early as 10am, fans started to crowd the gates, waiting for summer’s last dose of metal from one of the year’s biggest tours. This year’s line-up is ridiculous: Hell or Highwater, Art of Dying, Black Tide,  Sevendust, Escape The Fate, Bullet For My Valentine, Seether, Three Days Grace, and the almighty Avenged Sevenfold. When we first arrived and went to the tour bus area, I ran into my buddies Jonny and Tavis from Art of Dying, who I interviewed at Musikfest a few weeks ago. They had beers in hand at 11am, and they told me they had opened for Seether the night before at the famous Starland Ballroom in North Jersey, and they don’t remember much after that (these guys really know how to throw down, and I knew my interview with the Seether guys later on was going to be a good one). Later on, I got to sit down with Jason “Jay” James, bassist for Bullet For My Valentine (one of the tour’s headliners). Bullet For My Valentine hail from Wales, and have been tremendously successful the last few years. Their sophomore album, Scream Aim Fire, hit #4 on the Billboard Top 100 and their latest release, fever, debuted at #3. Only 3 albums into the game, and they are already drawing comparisons to music icons like Metallica and Iron Maiden. Jay is a crazy motherf*cker, and the Bullet guys really know party. Guys from other bands have told me that these guys are THE partiers on any tour. During the interview, Jay told me that they definitely throw a mean party on their tour bus! I caught their performance later on in the day, and it was absolutely blistering. Enjoy the interview!


Next, I caught up backstage with Shaun Morgan, vocalist and guitarist for Seether. Seether have been crushing the hard rock world lately. In the last 5 years, Seether have released 3 albums that have reached Top Ten on the Billboard Top 100. Their latest record, Holding Onto Strings Better Left To Fray, debuted at #2 on Billboard and features the smash radio hit “Country Song.” I saw Seether at the 93.3 WMMR MMR*B*Q at the beginning of the summer, and they were on point! Shaun and I chatted about the writing process, his coolest moment ever on stage (you’re not gonna believe it!) and more! At night, they killed it on stage like they always do. Check it out! I also I caught up with 2 of music’s premiere drummers right now: Steven Spencer of Black Tide and Robert Ortiz of Escape The Fate. Black Tide’s second album, Post Mortem, just came out a few days ago on Interscope Records (big shout-out to all the great people at Interscope!). Escape The Fate just got done sharing a stage with the legendary Motley Crue and are ready to tear up Uproar Festival. I’ll be posting those interviews a little later on, don’t wanna give you guys more metal that you can handle all at once! CRANK IT UP!