Jason Newsted‘s unbridled enthusiasm for heavy metal during his tenure in Metallica was infectious.
As the other members seemed to be slowly losing passion for thrash in the 90’s, Jason appeared to be the sole voice of reason. That is, of course, until that whole ‘Load’ era thing happened. But hey, we digress.
The guy’s still a metal lifer at heart, and it’s quite likely that if he had had more of a creative say in Metallica, the band would never have fallen from grace so hard post-Black album.
So it’s with great pleasure that we share the news that the man is finally getting back into the heavier side of music again after a bit of a reprise these past years. Per a new radio interview, sounds like Newsted’s got not one, but possibly two heavy bands in the ‘ol hopper:
“I’m kind of stepping back into the heavy now. So the last couple of weeks I’ve been auditioning guitar players for a heavy project. I’m back on bass and singing with a metal drummer — double bass, you know; getting’ loud again.
So I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire. I’m putting two new projects together right now — but loud.
The Chophouse Band [an older but now reimagined Newsted project] started out as almost a bluegrass-tinged thing, and now it gets to some places that are as heavy as anything else that I’d been involved with — Voivod, Ozzy, Metallica, Newsted band; any of that stuff — it gets to those places now.
I can actually really concentrate on playing the guitar and then singing that background stuff. And there’s screaming and some [growling] also. So I still haven’t lost that.
And it lets people know that there’s still one foot in that place. You can take the boy out of the metal [but] you can’t take the metal out of the boy; it’s just the way it’s always gonna be.” Color us intrigued here at The Pit. Can’t wait to hear it.