Joining host Abe Kanan today for a special Audacy Check In, Neil Sanderson of Three Days Grace is here to talk about the band's brand new single "Mayday," their 2024/2025 plans after reuniting with singer Adam Gontier, and more.

After first teasing fans that an important announcement was on the way, Canadian rockers Three Days Grace revealed they would be reuniting with original vocalist Adam Gontier following a decade away along with co-founders Neil Sanderson on drums, Brad Walst on bass, Matt Walst continuing his vocal and guitar duties, and lead guitarist Barry Stock who joined the band in 2003.

Today, fans get the first taste of what's on the 3DG horizon with their first single of 2024, "Mayday." "Sometimes life is turbulent," Matt Walst told us of the new song's inspiration, "but beyond the clouds is blue skies. So, just keep going."

“First of all, I feel just gratitude for being at this point in my career,” Neil tells Abe at the start of their chat. “We've been doing this almost 25 years, and just to have so much excitement about the new music and, you know, we were able to pull this off, put it together, all good vibes. We don't look back, we only look forward and it's gonna be just bigger and better than it's ever been at this point. I'm in my 40s… it's like, ‘Damn, let's go!’”

With Adam back in the band, 3DG will now have dual singers he explains. “It's kind of crazy to think that we have this huge chapter with Adam and then this massive chapter with Matt and with like 17 number 1 singles thanks to people like you and people that care about the music and the fans… We've got all these songs that were really successful at Rock radio and now we can just play them all any way that we want. I have envy for the singers, because they only have to sing half the show. I still got to play drums the whole damn time."

On the new single, “Mayday,” both singers are featured. “At first it was like we didn't know how we were gonna kind of like slice it all up and who was going to do what,” Neil remembers, “as we first started sitting down and writing new stuff and trying things out and experimenting. As soon as each guy kind of laid their thing in, it was like, ‘Oh man, this is deeper than we would have thought. We played to each singer's strengths and they didn't try to be anything that they're not. It just creates this completely new dynamic, a new facet to the sound.”

“I did see them at one point, like rock-paper-scissors to see who's going to sing the next line, which was kind of funny, but that's how naturally organic it happened,” he adds. “It wasn't forced at all. We started thinking about bands like Pink Floyd back in the day that had two singers and they were both completely different characters with different voices -- but that's part of the magic with it. So, we just really leaned into that.”

The impetus to get Adam back in the band he says started with simple conversations. “A lot of the stuff on the Internet over the years is like all this bad blood and stuff, and I think a lot of people made that up in their mental cinema… We were kind of like, ‘Stuff happens.’ The thing about being in a band is, it's like being in a marriage with three other people. So things happen, people go different ways, people have different life directions and stuff. 13 years ago, we kind of came to a crossroads where that became a major factor, but all this time later, it just made sense to investigate what it would be like to make this thing that would be bigger than better than anything we've ever done.”

After performing guest vocals with them at a concert and seeing the crowd’s reaction, “We're like, ‘Let's sit around with some guitars and see if we can be creative together because that was the only thing that mattered,” he says. “We need to be able to vibe out; it's like we could pull a stunt or something, but that that's not what we wanted to do. He’s coming ba ...

Joining host Kevan Kenney for a special Audacy Check In on the release day of their 2024 comeback album, FROM ZERO, the members of Linkin Park are with us to talk about the brand new record, upcoming world tour, and more.

Mike Shinoda, Dave “Phoenix” Farrell, Joe Hahn, and Emily Armstrong join KROQ host Kevan Kenney today while currently in Bogota, Colombia celebrating the release of Linkin Park's 2024 album, FROM ZERO, and bringing their brand new live show to all corners of the globe.

“It's very rare to play a new spot and it came up somehow on maybe Twitter or somewhere, but the last time we had played a new show I think was in Hungary on maybe the last tour cycle,” Phoenix tells us. “But it seems like these days there's one or two new cities or new countries per cycle that we get to see for the first time. It's always a good time.”

Finally getting to this point, Mike Shinoda says was a complicated process, “For me, two years ago, it was very overwhelming and I think the best thing that we did was to just basically let things happen in the order and at the timeline that they were gonna happen -- let things happen organically and not push too hard. And I feel like what ended up evolving was we just naturally kind of found each other. We found this new line up, we found [singer] Emily [Armstrong] and [drummer] Colin [Brittain] in particular, and the music just kind of came into focus based on what we were having the most fun doing.”

Giving off a smile when Kevan said it felt like the band was getting back to its “roots,” Mike explains, “I love that there's such a strong Linkin Park DNA in the record -- it does really feel like Linkin Park -- but I think there's a part of it that's the old sound, and part of it that's every era of the band, to me, on the record.”

“I don't know if I know well, what the Linkin Park DNA is,” Phoenix admits. “It's kind of like when you're too close to something, you just do it, and then other people tell you, they almost interpret it, and then you kind of say, ‘OK, cool, I'm glad that came across.’ But I think in any and all of that creation of an album, or working on new music, or new stuff, or when there's, I don't know ‘interstitials’ or whatever you might want to call it… for me, those things are just us doing us, figuring that out, and moving forward."

"In this process," he adds, "one of the things that was so fun and rewarding and cool and energizing was just how, when we started gradually integrating Emily and Colin, it felt like Linkin Park. It just felt like it fit for me and for us, and those were the coolest moments in the entire process. Just feeling like things were kind of gelling and coming together, and we're having a blast doing it the whole time. So, at this stage being ready to finally have the album out, having people be excited about it, that feels great.”

Don't miss Kevan Kenney's full Check In with Linkin Park above, and stay tuned for more conversations with your favorite artists right here on Audacy.

Words By Joe Cingrana, Interview by Kevan Kenney

Joining host Abe Kanan today for a special Audacy Check In is Breaking Benjamin's Benjamin Burnley – along with his son Ben Jr. -- giving us details about the band's brand new music, upcoming album plans, and plenty more.

Although Breaking Benjamin has not dropped a full length since 2018's 'Ember,' the longest span of time they have had in between albums, they have kept themselves quite busy in the meantime. The band just wrapped up their most recent co-headlining tour with Staind and special guest Daughtry, and at the start of the month released their brand new single "Awaken," which landed at the top of several Billboard charts.

Before discussing new music, Abe wanted to know from Ben Jr. what it’s like having a mega rockstar dad who performs in front of tens of thousands of people at his concerts each night. “It's like something special to me because, you know, I play on stage. I entertain like thousands of people and I'm grateful for that,” he tells us.

“Every time he's with me, he plays on stage with us,” Ben’s dad explains. “And also too, I want to mention, for real, the last chorus of ‘Awaken,’ there's like a pad vocal that's going on in the background and he's singing that. So, he's singing on the record. Yeah, he's singing on that song.” Giving us a taste of the raw audio featuring his son, Ben proudly says, “Not many people know, but, I mean, I'm kind of just spreading the word that he's singing on that track.”

The new single’s runaway success has, in a way, passed Burnley by since the band has been busy on the road since its release earlier this month. “I had no idea,” he tells us, “because I'm out on tour and just doing my thing out here. We have so much going on during the day… I haven't really checked in. I didn't know it was doing so well. I'm very, very thankful and grateful for that.”

“Our day to day out here on tour, we do a meet and greet and then we do the concert and we're not really, because we're traveling so much -- today is the last day of the tour -- the only kind of interaction that we get with actual people is at our meet and greet,” Ben explains. “So, we've gotten some good reactions from that and out here on tour, in the wild, that's really the only gauge that we get, because the rest of the day is stuff like this and the concert.”

The positive reaction he admits is “definitely gonna give us a little bit of a pep in our step,” to finish the rest of the album, “but we are already the type of band that we're going to give it our all no matter what,” he says. “That's what's taking so long… that and COVID.”

Taking his time writing music during what he considers such an uninspiring period, felt like the best course of action, he believes. “Everybody has a different personality, everybody works best under different conditions, and I'm just the type that I can have the negativity of COVID and all of that be turned into a positive thing. But I'm the type that it has to be after it's over and I reflect on it, not while I'm in it -- and that's like with anything. Like, if something bad happens and I'm hurting or whatever the case may be or even if I'm happy it has to be at a time, which is weird, I guess, but it has to be at a time when that's over and I'm looking back on it, not during. I'm too busy going through it during.”

Looking back now as a major headliner, Ben still remembers the early days quite fondly, playing at 11AM when the festival gates officially opened. “Yeah, I'm kind of surprised we're not doing that,” he says humbly. “I'm surprised we're not playing 11 o'clock. I'm really grateful that we're where we are, but I definitely do. I was just talking about that recently, you know how we've all been there, we've all done that. We all do the same things out here, and every step of the way is its own fun, its own allure, because I miss those days kind of in a way, because the climb, you know, the climb is fun. Reaching thin ...