More and more, festivals are becoming the driving force for touring rock and metal bands. While obviously there were none in 2020, festivals are returning in force in 2021, mostly in late summer and early fall. Headliners and co-headliners include such heavy hitters as Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Slipknot, Rob Zombie, the original Misfits, Korn, Judas Priest, Five Finger Death Punch and Shinedown. Live Metal’s “2021 Festival Spotlight” series aims to bring attention to some of the names in smaller print on the festival admats—the bands you can get up close and personal with at the smaller stages—along with a few higher profile acts we find worth calling out here. See you at the shows.
Playing: Rocklahoma, Inkcarceration, Louder Than Life
Website: www.thisisdiamante.com
Latest release: Diamante released her second album, “American Dream,” independently in May.
What You Need to Know: No label? No problem! After touring for a year and a half in support of her debut album, “Coming in Hot” (2018), and scoring a number two single on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart with Bad Wolves (“Hear Me Now”), Diamante has taken control of her career for her sophomore effort.
“I think I wanted to see what would happen, what I could create, if it was just me and my producers, and I had all the creative control in the world,” she told Live Metal earlier this year. “And it was so much fun. It was so magical getting to make an album without having a label breathing down your neck or an A&R department or this person or that person.”
Her love of ‘80s rock continues to shine throughout “American Dream,” while the freedom of independence drove her to new levels of honesty and vulnerability in the songwriting.
“There’s … a freedom to just putting it all out there, because these are things that I was internalizing and suppressing and keeping inside, and I think a huge factor was actually just being stuck at home,” she said. “Because I wasn’t on tour, I wasn’t playing shows, I didn’t have this adrenaline every night, and I had to face everything. And everything started bubbling up to the surface. Painful memories, insecurities—anything I was feeling that I was suppressing just shot up.”
What You Need to Hear:
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