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On December 13, Patrick Prince of Powerline conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Powerline: As far as spirituality in the lyrics, as a born-again Christian, the less challenging creative road would have been to write songs like STRYPER. But you do a pretty good job at being provocative.

Mustaine: Music is something that we listen to give us a change in our mood, to help us get out of a bad mood or continue to perpetuate a good mood. And I think if you put on music and someone's condemning you and making you sad or making you cry … that ain't my gig. Somebody else can give that. You know, I like listening to stuff that's sentimental and emotional and stuff, too, but I don't want to be the guy who does that. I'm good at beating my guitar until it throws up and I think people got a good look at that this weekend when I went up and played with METALLICA again. That was really fun. I know a lot of people were really surprised because they never saw me play with the band.

Powerline: It must have been a great feeling going up there onstage again with them.

Mustaine: I had some mood swings. There was some ups and downs and stuff. And, you know, got excited, and kind of got impatient, "Let's go. I'm okay. Well, lets go!" and this kind of thing and that's just the artist in me. I'm just squirrely like that.

Powerline: Playing some of those old METALLICA songs — did you have favorites or are there still favorites now?

Mustaine: You know, it felt fun to play them. I wish I would have had a little bit more opportunity to get prepared with the band. You know, because I'm a perfectionist. I would have liked to have had my sound just so and make sure when I did the solos they would jump up the volume and stuff like that that I'm used to, but we were at a club and playing at a club and playing like a club band. It was fun to take off all the rules and regulations and stuff and kind of shoot from the hip.

Powerline: I was surprised you didn't play "The Four Horsemen".

Mustaine: I think there's a reason for that. I think I know why we didn't play that song but I'm not going to go out on a limb on it. I think one of the things was because we recorded "Mechanix" and they recorded the other way, there's not really a need to do that. There were several other songs that were really important — like "Jump in the Fire" was the first song I brought those guys. And "Phantom Lord" and "Metal Militia" were songs that I brought to them, too, and the only other song was "Mechanix", which later changed to "The Four Horsemen". And the rest of those songs were written by James [Hetfield] or by Hugh Tanner or Lloyd Grant and that's why those guys were there... and a little weird for me, too, you know, standing on stage. I thought it was cool to be just with METALLICA, but Ron McGovney's up there and Lloyd Grant's up there. I was kind of like, "Alright, well, I'll bite the bullet. I'll be cool. This is not so terrible." I got up there and, you know what?! I didn't even notice them. I was having so much fun they weren't even there.

Powerline: Well, you mentioned mood swings. You should have had flashbacks with McGovney…

Mustaine: Actually, you know what?! I didn't even see him the whole time I was up there. It was cool that he was there. He was pretty nervous, too. Ron's a good guy. I was locked into Lars' [Ulrich] playing and James' playing. Me and James, we were like the the Toxic Twins back when we played together and we were a very very dangerous duo. And for a moment I think I stirred some of those old feelings up. I saw one of the videos and it looked like he was having fun. I know I was having fun. I had a smile that I went to bed with.

Read the entire interview from Powerline.

Legendary rocker Alice Cooper, along with members of his backing band — Chuck Garric, Steve Hunter, Tommy Henriksen, Keri Kelli (filling in for Orianthi) and Glen Sobel — took Montreal, Quebec, Canada by storm last night (Saturday, January 28) at the 2012 "Show Harley" event. The band played a blistering 60-minute set for a huge crowd of rowdy, Harley-Davidson-loving Alice Cooper fans. According to a post on Cooper's web site, "the setlist consisted of classics, a few covers, Alice gave away a brand new Harley, the stage lit up with fire, there were the infamously... ahem... attractive 'Show Harley' girls on stage for the biker classic 'Born To Be Wild'. It was a wild night."

Alice's setlist was as follows:

01. Black Widow
02. No More Mr. Nice Guy
03. Under My Wheels
04. I'm Eighteen
05. I'll Bite Your Face Off
06. Billion Dollar Babies
07. Muscle Love
08. Feed My Frankenstein
09. Poison
10. School's Out
11. Elected
12. Brown Sugar
13. Born To Be Wild

Fan-filmed video footage of the concert can be seen below.

Check out photos at AliceCooper.com.

On Thursday evening, February 16, GUNS N' ROSES played a private, invite-only show at Hiro Ballroom that closed out New York Fashion Week. A number of celebrities attended the concert, including Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso, who sat in a VIP section with Chelsea Clinton, Justin Timberlake, Sienna Miller and Tom Sturridge, Taylor Momsen, Alexandra Richards, Jared Leto, Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Masterson, Mario Sorrenti and the Winklevoss twins.

GUNS N' ROSES reportedly hit the stage on time and played "Welcome To The Jungle", "It's So Easy" and "Mr. Brownstone" as part of a set that went well past 2 a.m.

According to Women's Wear Daily, two men in the crowd got into a fight minutes before the show started and ended up getting whisked away by security.

After GUNS N' ROSES took the stage, a member of the audience threw a glass. Axl Rose stopped singing and yelled to the offender, "You little [bleep], you want to throw a glass?"

"See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya," said Rose, as GN'R guitarist Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal ran after the perpetrator.

In addition to sole original member Axl Rose, the current lineup of GUNS N' ROSES includes guitarists Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal, Richard Fortus and DJ Ashba, bassist Tommy Stinson, keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Chris Pitman and drummer Frank Ferrer.

The original five-piece group, along with drummer Matt Sorum and keyboardist Dizzy Reed, will be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland on April 14.

METALLICA performed its top-selling 1991 LP, "Metallica", a.k.a. "the black album," in its entirety this past Sunday night (May 14) at Stadio Friuli in Udine, Italy. As they have done on all the shows on their current European tour, the band played the LP backwards, starting with closing number "The Struggle Within" and ending with "Enter Sandman".

The group's setlist was as follows:

01. Hit The Lights
02. Master Of Puppets
03. Fuel
04. For Whom The Bell Tolls
05. Hell And Back
06. The Struggle Within
07. My Friend Of Misery
08. The God That Failed
09. Of Wolf And Man
10. Nothing Else Matters
11. Through The Never
12. Don't Tread On Me
13. Wherever I May Roam
14. The Unforgiven
15. Holier Than Thou
16. Sad But True
17. Enter Sandman
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18. Battery
19. One
20. Seek And Destroy

Fan-filmed video footage of the concert can be seen below.

Photos are available on the Musica Metal web site.

Asked why METALLICA decided to play the "black" album in its entirety on the current tour, the band's drummer, Lars Ulrich, told Kerrang! magazine, "The people at [the U.K.'s] Download [festival] asked. It wasn't our idea."

He added, "The thing is, although we haven't played at Donington for six years, we have been to the U.K. pretty much every single summer since then. So they wanted us to do something different, and that's what they came up with. I quite like the fact that come [this] summer it'll be the 21st anniversary of the 'black album,' not the 20th."

Asked whether he and his bandmates would have to re-learn the two songs from the record — "Don't Tread On Me" and "The Struggle Within" — that METALLICA had never played live before, Lars said, "Yeah. Although to be honest with you, a song like 'The Struggle Within' is a lot easier to re-learn than 'The Frayed Ends Of Sanity'." He added, "I don't think it's going to be too difficult for us to figure out these songs."

During a recent interview with Spin, Lars was asked which METALLICA song he would take back if he could. "'Don't Tread On Me' has that shuffle vibe," Lars replied. "That's not my thing, but I don't wish to erase it from all 97 bazillion copies of the 'black' album."

METALLICA will play the complete "black album" at its own Orion Music + More festival, scheduled for June 23-24 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. METALLICA is headlining both days and will perform its entire 1984 album "Ride The Lightning" for the first time ever on the other day of the festival.

"Metallica" in 2009 surpassed SHANIA TWAIN's 1997 record, "Come On Over", as the best-selling CD of the SoundScan era. To date, the black album has sold 15,772,000 copies in the United States.

Although METALLICA had scored their first radio and video airplay with their previous effort, 1988's "...And Justice For All", the black album was the band's biggest commercial breakthrough, producing five singles and making them into one of the most popular rock bands in the world.

A three-minute video clip of the members of the Italian rock/metal band LACUNA COIL at Can-Am studios in Tarzana, California talking about their new album, "Dark Adrenaline", can be seen below. Due in North America on January 24, 2012 via Century Media Records, the CD was helmed by acclaimed producer Don Gilmore (LINKIN PARK, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE) and "promises to deliver the melodic, sensual, metallic rush for which the band has come to be known," according to a press release.

Fans both old and new will have a variety of options to choose from, as "Dark Adrenaline" will be released in numerous formats, including standard-edition CD and vinyl, deluxe edition digipak with a bonus DVD, sticker, poster and guitar pick and as an iTunes LP with expanded packaging, five bonus audio tracks and video. The Metal Club edition will feature exclusive artwork designed by the band and will be limited to 3,000 units. The Hastings edition will feature a bonus 10-track LACUNA COIL sampler, and the Amazon digital edition comes with a free five-track sampler. Finally, for true fans of the band, is the "Darkest Adrenaline" box set, which includes both the digipak and vinyl versions of the album along with a hardcover photo book, a LACUNA COIL custom syringe pen and ink, a lyric pad, signed lithographs created by the band and more, all housed in a LACUNA COIL medical box. This box set is limited to 500 pieces and is available exclusively through CM Distro.

"Dark Adrenaline" track listing:

01. Trip The Darkness
02. Against You
03. Kill The Light
04. Give Me Something More
05. Upsidedown
06. End Of Time
07. I Don't Believe In Tomorrow
08. Intoxicated
09. The Army Inside
10. Losing My Religion
11. Fire
12. My Spirit

In a recent interview with Revolver magazine, LACUNA COIL singer Cristina Scabbia stated about "Dark Adrenaline", "I really feel that it is really, really a good album with good songs. I think that it totally captures the essence of LACUNA COIL because it's definitely a mixture of our roots and something completely new. We never repeated ourself with any album, but this one, it's a perfect balance between the old stuff and the new. And the new stuff, it's more obscure than the usual. It's definitely heavier — the sound is way heavier than we did before. A lot of people will be surprised. I think so. . . I believe that, you know, it's something that they don't really expect from us. They probably expect us to go, I don't know, more melodic and mellow and actually this is not the direction we are taking. [Laughs] We're kind of getting heavier while everybody else is getting mellower. [Laughs]"

When asked if she and her bandmates had specific aims when they went into the studio, Cristina said, "No, not really, because I think that when you are writing songs, it's not about what you want to achieve. You just go with the flow and you just like what you hear. And if you like something, you just, like, work on it. I don't think it would make sense for us just to think about a song or like, Oh, the album is going to sound like that. That wouldn't be honest and that wouldn't be hard, you know? Of course, you kind of know what you want to do, just because you know that's your taste, but you don't really know what's gonna be the final result. You just, you know, put down layers and layers and layers and layers, and then you just hear the result at the very end. Actually, after the mixing you're just like, Oh, wow! [Laughs] It's hard to see things, you know. You just kind of draw the image of what you think it's gonna be, but you don't really know what's gonna be in the end."