YNGWIE MALMSTEEN On Working With TIM 'RIPPER' OWENS

Greg Prato of UGO.com recently conducted an interview with legendary Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen. An excerpt from the chat follows below.

UGO.com: How did you hook up with [singer] Ripper Owens [ex-JUDAS PRIEST, ICED EARTH]?

Yngwie Malmsteen: I started writing the songs, and once I started recording them with the drummer, Patrick [Johansson], I realized, "Wow, this is turning out to be pretty heavy." Then I started writing the lyrics and melodies, and all the songs started to take form — that's when I realized I needed to have another singer. Because the songs started taking on their own life. What I envisioned in my head, it needed something more powerful. We'd been crossing paths a long time — me and Ripper — I don't know exactly how it happened, but we hooked up, he came down and sang a couple of songs to try out, and that was it. We both realized that was it.

UGO.com: How would you compare working with Ripper to the previous singers you've worked with over the years?

Yngwie Malmsteen: He's very cool to work with. I have a very strong vision of what I'm going for — I showed him the parts and he delivers really well. I'm very pleased with that.

UGO.com: Ever see the movie that was supposedly based on his life, "Rock Star"?

Yngwie Malmsteen: I did see that one — a long time ago, yeah [laughs]. Half of it. It's kind of hard to take it seriously, when you're in that industry yourself, because it's so nuts the way it is. It's Hollywood, y'know?

UGO.com: Any standout memories during the recording sessions?

Yngwie Malmsteen: It was pretty smooth. The album was recorded very different from what I've done before — we started doing the backing tracks, went on tour, came back, did some of the keyboards, went on tour again, and then did some of the guitars. It was done in sections.

UGO.com: What are some of your favorite tracks from "Perpetual Flame"?

Yngwie Malmsteen: They're all "my children," so I love them all. Of course, every time I think of one song, it will have a lot of meaning, like "Death Dealer" — I love the high-energy double bass, "Red Devil". The instrumental, "Caprici di Diablo", is the hardest thing I've ever played in my life! I can go on — every song has a very strong value to me.

Read the entire interview from UGO.com.

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ALICE IN CHAINS To Enter Studio In October

ALICE IN CHAINS will enter the studio in October to begin recording its first all-new studio effort since 1995's self-titled third album. According to an online posting by The Baldy — whose job is "to travel the world with ALICE IN CHAINS and send photos, videos and blog entries back to [the webmasters] at AliceInChains.com" — "the guys gathered in a rehearsal studio in North Hollywood for the last few days of July and the first few days of August, and began running through the new material and shaking off the rust. After four days of going through the songs alone, the producer for the upcoming record joined the guys and they spent another three days polishing and spit-shining the songs together. A lot was accomplished in that week, and everyone is eager to move forward."

Before the band begins recording, the guys will head over to Peoria, Arizona to join their good friends DEFTONES at KUPD's End of Summer Scorcher on September 20. After the concert, the band will also spend a few more days in pre-production rehearsals working on material before commencing the actual tracking process.

In a spring 2008 interview with The Pulse of Radio, ALICE IN CHAINS guitarist Jerry Cantrell confirmed that he, bassist Mike Inez, drummer Sean Kinney and new singer William DuVall have been writing songs for months, but explained that they're not rushing to start recording. "We've been working about the last four months, and there's a good bulk of music and a good body of work so far, and we're having fun, and you know, we're taking our time and trying to figure out where William fits in and where we need to step up, and I have all the confidence in the world in the guys," he said. "The most important thing to me is that we're all together and, you know, it's been a tough and painful experience at times, but it's been very rewarding at the same time."

ALICE IN CHAINS officially regrouped in early 2006 after a 10-year absence with DuVall stepping in for late frontman Layne Staley, who died in 2002.

stepping in for late frontman The group did its own headlining tour in the summer and fall of 2006, followed by a 2007 co-headlining jaunt with VELVET REVOLVER.

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METALLICA guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield told MTV.com that the video isn't making any lofty political statements about the war in Iraq. Instead, it's a statement on humanity, helmed by acclaimed Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, who, along with Lars von Trier, co-founded the Dogme 95 movement in filmmaking. Hetfield said that when he was writing the song's lyrics, he never envisioned the video would look anything like this.

"That's the beauty, I think, of writing vague but powerful lyrics — that someone like a movie director can interpret it in his own way and obviously, someone creative is able to take the metaphors and apply them to whatever he needs in his own life," the frontman explained to MTV.com. "The main [theme of the video] is the human element of forgiveness and someone doing you wrong, you feeling resentment and you being able to see through that in the next situation that might be similar and not take your rage or resentment out on the next person and basically keep spreading the disease of that through life."

He added, "The one thing that I wasn't keen on here was Metallica plugging into a modern war or a current event [that] might be construed as some sort of political statement on our part. There are so many celebrities that soapbox their opinions, and people believe it's more valid because they're popular. For us, people are people — you should all have your own opinion. We are hopefully putting the human element in what is an unfortunate part of life. There are people over there dealing with situations like this, and we're showing the human part of being there.

"It's the forgiveness part — that is key," he continued. "METALLICA has never plugged into any current event visually, but this one is kind of a hotbed. People have very high opinions about this war, and we're trying to cut through all of that. The politics and the religion tend to separate people, and what we're trying to do is bring it together with the common thread of resentment and forgiveness."

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