Displaying items by tag: Hard Rock

All-female rock sensation Plush recently wrapped up their first headlining Find The Beautiful Tour, following an epic, 23-show arena series with Disturbed and Falling In Reverse earlier this year. Plush closed the touring year by heading over the ocean to shake up Japan, where they played a special show in Okinawa on October 5, 2024, at the Futenma Flight Line Fair. 

Right before leaving for The Land Of The Rising Sun, Plush has dropped a new music video for their smashing hit "Run," directed by Chase Warren. The song held a spot on the Billboard Top 40 Mainstream Rock Chart for several weeks and is featured on their latest EP, Find the Beautiful, which was released in January under Pavement Entertainment.

Thunderous riffs charged with the raw energy of purely aggressive and uncompromised hard rock and catchy melodic hooks comprise the foundation of Chicago rock masters The Outfit's new studio album, "Go." The album was released via Pavement Entertainment, marking their third release, following 2020's "Viking."

"Go" was expertly engineered by Chicago music stalwart Matt Mercado at Sonic Palace Studios in Oak Park, Illinois. It was mixed in Los Angeles by Grammy-nominated, multi-Platinum producer Ulrich Wild, known for his work with Pantera, Static-X, White Zombie, Deftones, and Breaking Benjamin, who produced densely tight, yet well balanced high-quality sound.

The Tacoma Guitar & Drum Festival at the Tacoma Dome is the biggest guitar event and the largest gathering of the musician community in the Pacific Northwest. We met there with a special guest Paul Reed Smith – a founder and owner of PRS Guitars, a modern guitar legend.

Modern because PRS Guitars is a newer name compared to other sharks of the guitar world, like Gibson, Fender, Rickenbacker, and others. We talked about music industry, guitar making, and branding because PRS has become a big worldwide brand in the last few decades.

Interview by Vsevolod Baronin. 
Taken on 10/25/2008, Moscow, Russia. Originally published in Russian.

What is eccentricity for a world-class rock musician? Play 20 notes per second? To patent a seven-string electric guitar? To record a live album with an unheard-of and unimaginable creative concept? Or, finally, go on tour with master classes in Russia, not excluding cities like Ryazan that are quite unique for a musician of such level? Well, since Steve Vai, who does not need the introduction as the electric guitar maestro, did all of the above, we can award him the title of rock eccentric #1. Surprisingly, when communicating in person, Steve turned out to be not at all the character that his music and stage shows represent, but a very polite interlocutor who answers even the trickiest questions in great detail. Steve's answers, of course, sometimes radiate hints of the aforementioned eccentricity and that's why they are good: they allow you to look at familiar concepts from a completely unexpected side, which, perhaps, would never have occurred to a person who is not a rock guitarist of a truly galactic level.