METALLICA and SLIPKNOT are among the first confirmed artists for the Optimus Alive! 09 festival, set to take place July 9-11, 2009 at Passeio Marítimo de Algés in Oeiras, Portugal. This eco-friendly event (recycling is vital to the festival's ethos) starts at 5:00 p.m. every evening.

Last year's Optimus Alive! festival featured performances by RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE and WITHIN TEMPTATION, among others.

Hey Slipknot Fans,
As you may or may not have noticed there are a ton of new dates that are being added to the tour section. A complete list can be seen below. Keep checking back as there are more to come!

June 6th - Rock Am Ring - Nurburgring, Germany
June 7th - Rock Im Park - Nurnburg, Germany
June 9th - Torwar - Warsaw, Poland
June14th - Greenfield Festival - Interlaken, Switzerland
June 16th - Dom Sportova 1 - Zagreb, Croatia
June 17th - Belgrade Arena - Belgrade, Serbia
June 19th - NovaRock Festival - Nickelsdorf, Austria
June 24th - Hove Festival - Arendal, Norway
June 27th - Graspop Metal Meeting - Dessel, Belgium
June 28th - Gods of Metal Festival - Milan, Italy
July 4th - Roskilde Festival - Roskilde, Denmark
July 9th - Alive Festival - Lisbon, Portugal
July 10th - Terrazas de Madrid - Madrid, Spain

According to The Pulse of Radio, SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor caused a stir last month when he revealed plans to make his first solo album sometime in the next year. The biggest question for fans was what would happen with Taylor's other group, STONE SOUR, whose last effort, "Come What(ever) May", surfaced in 2006. Taylor told The Pulse of Radio that he's keeping his priorities straight when it comes to new projects. "I think what got people up in arms is the fact that, you know, it was a question of what was going to come first, solo album or STONE SOUR?" he said. "What it comes down to is that we've put a lot of work into STONE SOUR, and for me to turn around and put out a solo album first would kind of destroy the foundation that we've built for STONE SOUR. So starting this fall, we are going to work on a new STONE SOUR album."

Taylor said he hopes to record the new STONE SOUR album next January and February, with a tentative release in the spring of 2010.

SLIPKNOT began its first solo headlining tour in support of the band's latest album, "All Hope Is Gone", Friday night (January 23) in St. Paul, Minnesota. Ross Raihala of TwinCities.com writes in his review of the concert, "The 10,230 fans who filled the general-admission floor and lower half of the arena were certainly ready for the band's first gig at the X in almost four years, moshing and cheering throughout the evening, shouting along to the Grammy-nominated single 'Duality' and basking in every last chunky riff. Heck, some of them were so excited, they even cheered while the roadies did a pre-show soundcheck behind a curtain.

"Indeed, all those things that seemed so ridiculous about the band in the beginning — from the slasher-film/SM masks to the logo straight out of a 1950s horror comic — now seem like the least unusual aspects of SLIPKNOT. What's most amazing these days is that they can still figure out how to use all nine members, which include a pair of additional percussionists, a DJ and keyboard/samples player alongside two guitarists, a bassist and drummer. All that extra manpower rarely felt superfluous and, if anything, added an extra layer of muscle to the music. The lack of pyro and special effects may have been to save a little scratch in these lean times, but it only further focused attention on the music itself."

Read the entire review, and check out photos of the concert, at TwinCities.com.

The group's setlist was as follows:

1. (Sic)
2. Eyeless
3. Wait and Bleed
4. Me Inside
5. Before I Forget
6. Dead Memories
7. Left Behind
8. The Blister Exists
9. Frail Limb Nursery
10. Purity
11. Everything Ends
12. Psychosocial
13. Duality
14. People = Shit
--------------------------
15. Surfacing
16. Spit It Out

DISTURBED, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE and SLIPKNOT are among the confirmed bands for this year's Nova Rock festival, set to take place June 19-21 on the Pannonia Fields in Burgenland, the easternmost federal state of Austria (near Nickelsdorf and the Hungarian and Slovak borders).

The festival billing is shaping up as follows (in alphabetical order):

3 FEET SMALLER
AUGUST BURNS RED
BLACK STONE CHERRY
BLACK TIDE
BRING ME THE HORIZON
DIE TOTEN HOSEN
DISTURBED
GOGOL BORDELLO
IN EXTREMO
KILLSWITCH ENGAGE
MASTODON
METALLICA
PLACEBO
SLIPKNOT
SMOKE BLOW
THE LIVING END
TRIVIUM

SLIPKNOT percussionist Chris Fehn has high hopes for the band's future.

"I think we're going to overtake METALLICA," Fehn told KansasCity.com in a recent interview. "We're going to overtake any band that sells out soccer arenas in Europe. We're going to do it. We're the last chance as far as the world goes."

"They (fans) keep showing up, and it's getting better and better every year," Fehn said.

And musically, he thinks SLIPKNOT has yet to peak.

"We haven't even made our 'Black' record yet," Fehn said, referring to the 1991 "Metallica" CD that made METALLICA the undisputed kings of the heavy metal scene. "Wait until we do that. It's over, dude."

Regarding SLIPKNOT's upcoming headlining U.S. tour in support of the "All Hope Is Gone" CD, Fehn said, "It's kind of a surprise for now. But we're going to play some really original, like different kind of stuff. We've got a great set put together. We've got four records now, so we've got a lot to choose from."

Dirty Rock Magazine recently conducted an interview with Wednesday 13 (MURDERDOLLS, FRANKENSTEIN DRAG QUEENS FROM PLANET 13, BOURBON CROW). Here's an excerpt from the interview.

Dirty Rock Magazine: Back when Acey Slade joined you on tour during that time you were injured, did you guys talk about MURDERDOLLS and is that something you'd like to revisit someday?

Wednesday 13: I've always talked about it and I keep in touch with some of the guys. But at that time when Acey came back to the band for a bit, neither one of us had talked to Joey (Jordison; SLIPKNOT drummer and MURDERDOLLS guitarist) for quite some time. It was always kind of, well, we'll see what happens one day. I've been in touch with Joey more in the past few months than I have been in the past few years and I'm just kind of waiting to see what happens with SLIPKNOT when it's done. I told Joey that if he's into doing another MURDERDOLLS album, I'm 100 percent for doing it. So hopefully if he gets the free time when SLIPKNOT is done touring for the latest album, maybe if it's a possibility of doing that and I would love to do that.

As Slipknot prepares to hit the road for tours celebrating the 10th anniversary of the masked Iowa group's first album, frontman Corey Taylor is making plans to record his first solo album rather than go back to his other band, Stone Sour, at the end of the cycle.

"I know I have this album that I need to make," Taylor tells Billboard.com, "and I'm the kind of guy that if I can't get that done then it's going to hold me back from all this other stuff I want to do. I just know I've got to make it or I can't branch out."

He adds that there are "a lot of songs I've written that don't fit with either band, really" and describes the material as "kind of a cross between the Foo Fighters and Social D, with some Johnny Cash mixed in." Country will be part of the mix -- "Obviously there's a country background that comes built-in with living in Iowa," Taylor notes -- but he also promises that "there's a lot of upbeat, just flat-out hard rock tunes."

"I've never let myself get painted into a corner," Taylor explains. "I've refused to accept the fact that I can't make any kind of music I want. I think it took people a minute to understand that, but now I'm at a point where I can do anything and people will take it seriously."

But until September, when Slipknot is scheduled to finish touring, Taylor says he's seriously committed to the group, which is continuing to tour in support of its fourth album, last year's "All Hope Is Gone."

The nine-piece group plans to tour the U.S., Canada and the European festival circuit with a show Taylor says is "getting away from the pyro and way more visual, video-oriented this time."

And, he acknowledges, it feels good to have a 10-year anniversary to mark. "It's funny because I've seen so many next-bit-things come and go in the last 10 years, and I look around and go, 'Wow, we're still here.' Ever time we've put an album out people would write us off, but ... we just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger," he says.

"It not only proves so many people were wrong but that we were right," he continues. "My dream wasn't just to make it but it was to stay here and be able to do whatever we want to do, which is just how it's worked out."