Much like the proverbial movie monster that once again rises from the grave to wreak havoc across the countryside and feast on more hapless victims, “Kirk Von Hammett’s Fear FestEvil” is coming back for a well-deserved sequel.

The horror convention meets heavy metal thrash fest celebrated its inaugural outing last year in San Francisco—for the second installment in the franchise, Hammett is moving the show to San Jose; kind of like moving from camp to camp on the shores of Crystal Lake if you will, spreading the blood…er, love.

Hammett—best known to millions of fans around the globe as the lead guitarist for Bay Area music legends Metallica—has been a horror film aficionado since his youth and has amassed a huge collection of memorabilia, including original props, costumes, posters, toys and more over the years. It has grown into such an extensive repository that in 2012 it spawned the awesome coffee table-style book “Too Much Horror Business” and inspired him to put on these events for like-minded fans.

Select items from Hammett’s “crypt collection” will be on display over the weekend—which will feature performances from Meshuggah, High On Fire, Orchid, Ghoul, Agnostic Front, and Asada Messiah, as well as a special VIP murder mystery dinner, hosted by Hammett himself.

If you missed your chance to pick up a ticket for the VIP dinner, or don’t feel like getting bludgeoned by the brutally heavy sounds of bands like Meshuggah or High On Fire, you can check out the just-announced, and totally free, “Carnival of Chaos.”

The outdoor event will feature a “Fiend Market” with plenty of vendors, an “authentic freak show,” carnival games, a hearse car show and more.

Descendants of some of Universal Pictures’ classic monster royalty—the Karloff, Lugosi and Chaney families—will be in attendance to share their memories and stories on stage, as will cult classic actor Bill Moseley and others.

Kirk Von Hammett’s Second Annual Fear FestEvil is April 11-12 at the RockBar Theater. More info.

Jason Newsted has played bass with some of the biggest acts and names in metal and hard rock over the course of more than 30 years, laying down a monstrous bottom end and solid foundation for Flotsam and Jetsam, Ozzy Osbourne and, of course, Metallica.

After decades of being the bedrock and collaborator in other acts, Newsted has stepped out—make that stomped out—into the spotlight with his own eponymous band, which released its debut EP, the appropriately titled Metal, this January. The record quickly went to the top of the metal genre charts on iTunes.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer first displayed his formidable chops on the bass in Flotsam and Jetsam in the early 1980s, and he hit the international spotlight when he joined Metallica in 1986, following the death of their original bassist, Cliff Burton.

After leaving Metallica in 2001 (citing personal reasons), Newsted spent several years in Echobrain, along with touring with acts such as Ozzy Osbourne and Voivod before undergoing several shoulder surgeries, from 2004 to 2008, to repair damage from years of physical abuse (from both playing and lifting gear). He moved away from music while recovering and rehabbing.

An invitation from Metallica’s Lars Ulrich to join the band at its 30th-anniversary gigs at the Fillmore in San Francisco at the end of 2011, and people’s reactions to his appearances there, were the impetus for Newsted to get back into playing again. “The fans really screamed me back into this, I hadn’t felt that energy from the people for a long time, and I got bit by the bug pretty seriously,” Newsted says.

Recruiting friends Jesus Mendez Jr. on drums and guitarist Jessie Farnsworth—with whom Newsted had been jamming off and on for many years—the bassist put the wheels in motion for a new group.

“I got the boys together, wrote these songs, and here we are a year and half later, and we’re getting ready for a world tour with this new band, so I’m pretty excited about it,” he says. “It’s a great collective; everybody is hard working and focused; they’re not afraid to put in the hours. I do grind these guys pretty good. We go for hours and hours, but that is what has to happen to order to get the results that we have.”

The show here will be the band’s second live gig—and the venue, the San Jose Rock Shop, is exactly the type of place in which Newsted wants to start out. “These initial shows are to kind of buff the rust off of ourselves, and get out to the fans to let them know what it’s all about—playing in a cool, small, intimate, crushing-feeling, sweaty kind of place, so we can see everybody’s eyes, we can feel what’s going on, forming the band.”

Although Newsted has always had a rightfully deserved reputation as an incredibly intense and fierce player onstage, he has also always been known for his down-to-earth attitude and friendly relationship with fans.

“Meeting people has always kind of been my M.O., almost my forte; I meet fans before, during and after the show, that’s how I’ve always conducted myself in my career,” he explains. “I’m never going to change that as long as I can help it.”

One thing that has changed since Newsted was last out on a major tour is the advent of the VIP package that many bands now offer to fans. For an additional charge, concertgoers can get in early, with the guarantee of an autograph, a photo with the artist, commemorative merchandise and more.

While he was somewhat reluctant to participate in the new avenue of the touring business, Newsted agreed to do so after hearing directly from his fans.

“I’ve never charged people to meet me before, it still feels weird for me, but these VIP packages are something that people actually demand,” he tells me. “The fans are used to that as something that happens at a show now—and it’s something that puts diesel in the bus and makes the wheels go around.

“I will still always be available to talk to fans whether they pay for the VIP package or not,” he adds. “You have to take the music to the people, one fan at a time—sell the T-shirts at the gig, sell the CDs at the gig, and sell the concert experience—those things cannot be downloaded.”

With his band currently mixing a debut full-length album, slated for release in June, and with a European tour set for the summer (featuring new second guitarist Mike Mushock of Staind), Newsted—who just turned 50 in March—is looking forward to getting out on the road again. He wants to play his music for fans live, loud and in their face—the way he says it should be done.

“I am still that 19-year-old heavy metal kid—I’ve worked a long, long time to get this young,” says Newsted. “The game is a little different, the rules have changed a bit, but the most important rules are still the same—you still have to take it to the people.”

In 1993, underground Southern Californian punk band The Offspring, which play the San Jose Civic on Tuesday Oct. 2, went mainstream when their third album, Smash, came out. Since then, they’ve had a string of singles and platinum records.

Their 9th, Days Go By, was released earlier this year. It, along with the prior album, Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace (2008) were produced by Bob Rock (Famous for producing Dr. Feelgood by Mötley Crüe and the Black Album by Metallica). We recently interviewed singer Dexter Holland about the new album and the recent direction the band has taken.

What strikes me the most about Days Go By is how much more carefully crafted the songs and recordings are—which I think is also true about Rise And Fall. How do you create that sense of immediacy when crafting songs slower? Or is that not a concern for you anymore?

We definitely spent more time on these records than ones in the past and I’m glad that it shows. It’s just a matter of us having done a number of records. This is our ninth record, and we wanted to make sure that it sounds different, not just a repeat of the other records, something more than we’ve done before.

It’s important to have different kinds of songs on the records. Some of my favorite bands growing up were punk bands like the Ramones, where a lot of times the music stayed pretty much the same from record to record. Even though I loved all of it, for us it’s always been important to try and mix it up. So it just takes a little bit longer.

How has the promotion model changed for you now, compared to the 90s, when it mostly depended on MTV and the radio?

It seems like the way the music world is, you need different things all together. It’s not just—get your video on MTV and get your record into Best Buy. That’s done. Now we’re using social media. The Internet’s really big and who you package your tour with, or if you get on Jimmy Kimmel. We have done a little bit of all of that. We did Jimmy Kimmel and the Tonight Show, which we’ve never done before.

The Internet is something I’ve always been comfortable with because I’ve always thought of the Internet as a way to directly connect to fans. It’s what we were trying to do in little clubs as a punk band. The bands that I loved are the bands that invited the audience on stage. We did a lot of that too. I always thought of punk shows as being really inclusive of their audience, like you’re part of an event. So when the Internet came along, you had your own webpage, your own chat room and your own Facebook—Twitter now is even more direct. It fits in very natural to what our band was already about.

We headed up to San Francisco over the weekend to catch performances from Metallica, Beck, Jack White and more.

Photos by Zach Davenport.

The Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, San Francisco’s answer to Coachella, returns in 2012 with Metallica, Stevie Wonder, Foo Fighters and Beck headlining.

The lineup for the three-day festival on August 10-12 in Golden Gate Park was released this morning with a video featuring MC Hammer explain exactly how “hammer time” was born. In addition to the rock-heavy lineup, top electronic acts include Skrillex and Justice.

The Lineup:
Stevie Wonder
Metallica
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Jack White
Foo Fighters
Beck
Skrillex
Sigur Ros
Justice
Norah Jones
Dispatch
The Kills
Regina Spektor
Passion Pit
Andrew Bird
Grandaddy
Big Boi
Bloc Party
Explosions In The Sky
Franz Ferdinand
Mstrkrft
Rebelution
Die Antwoord
Fitz and The Tantrums
Portugal. The Man
Amadou & Mariam
Wolfgang Gartner
Fun.
Dr. Dog
The Walkmen
Washed Out
City and Colour
Two Gallants
Of Monsters and Men
Mimosa
Alabama Shakes
Reggie Watts
Trampled By Turtles
Tame Impala
Jovanotti
The Be Good Tanyas
Geographer
Sharon Van Etten
Yacht
Sean Hayes
Bomba Estereo
Dirty Dozen Brass Band
Big Gigantic
Thee Oh Sees
Wallpaper
Tennis
Zola Jesus
White Denim
Allen Stone
The M Machine
Michael Kiwanuka
Tanlines
Father John Misty
Electric Guest
Caveman
Yellow Ostrich
Papa
Honey Island Swamp Band
Animal Kingdom

Tickets for the festival go on sale April 19 at noon.

Megadeth has had a lot of ups and downs over the years, which is probably fitting for a band that started basically as a grudge after Dave Mustaine got thrown out of Metallica. It’s been one crazy story after the other, but the craziest yet may be that Megadeth is back in top form, a decade after Mustaine broke up the band to undergo a year of shock therapy and re-training on his arm for severe nerve damage that could have meant he’d never play again.

Instead, their latest, Thirteen, has been nominated for two Grammys and is easily their best album since 1990’s Rust in Peace. To support it, Mustaine is restarting his heavy metal festival Gigantour, with Motorhead, Volbeat and Lacuna Coil joining Megadeth for a tour that comes to the San Jose Event Center on Thursday, Feb. 23.

The first song off the latest record. “Sudden Death,” was released in 2010’s “Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock” game, and was nominated for a Best Metal Performance Grammy. Now the single “Public Enemy No. 1” (which features a pretty hilarious video starring an outlaw monkey) has been nominated in the category as well.

Tickets for the San Jose Event Center date are on sale now. The band is coming off its historic “Big 4” shows that saw the once bitter enemies Megadeth and Metallica joining up with Slayer and Anthrax, uniting the four biggest bands in thrash metal. Megadeth also toured with Slayer on the recent “Carnage” tours.

Click here to view the embedded video.