JASON NEWSTED 'Feeling A Bit Better' Following Bouth With 'Walking Pneumonia'

NEWSTED — the new band featuring former METALLICA, VOIVOD and FLOTSAM AND JETSAM bassist Jason Newsted and STAIND guitarist Mike Mushok — was forced to miss last week's Gigantour dates in Canada after Jason was diagnosed with "walking pneumonia."

In a new message on his Facebook page, Newsted writes: " I'm feeling a bit better. This pneumonia bug can last a few weeks sometimes... I gotta keep pushing... The show must go on!

"We'll be firing up the metal machine again beginning tomorrow [Tuesday, July 30] in Everett, Washintgon.

"We have a couple of very big weeks ahead with Gigantour and the release of our 'Heavy Metal Music' LP on August 6th!

"Cheers and let's fukking rock! See ya out there."

NEWSTED is taking part in this year's edition of Gigantour, the critically acclaimed package festival founded in 2005 by MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. Also appearing on the bill are headliners MEGADETH, along with BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, DEVICE, HELLYEAH and DEATH DIVISION.

NEWSTED's debut album, "Heavy Metal Music", will be released on August 6 in North America via Chophouse Records/Collective Sounds and August 5 in Europe through Spinefarm Records. Jason told Billboard.com the 11-song album will be very similar to the band's debut EP, "Metal", which sold around 6,200 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 62 on The Billboard 200 chart. "The EP was always intended to be the primer, a sampler of what was to come on the LP," he said. "It's all metal all the time. It's not all fast, but it is all heavy."

Regarding how the material for NEWSTED's debut album came together, Jason told Loudwire: "It started out as my seeds for the first eleven songs that I made on my GarageBand thing. I wrote all the tracks — guitars, bass, drums, everything and gave them to Jessie [Farnsworth, guitar] and Jesus [Mendez Jr., drums] and had them go learn it, put their artistry on it and so it was collaborative in that way for the first batch. Like the four songs on the EP came from that initial eleven, so that's how those songs went. Each day as we get deeper into the songs, the collaboration gets deeper as well. I have come a long way from my tunnel vision of 'Only my ideas are good enough' bullshit, and I'm a lot more open to everyone's ideas and the artistry of each person to make it what it is. And three heads is better than one and that kind of thing. So it has become more collaborative as we go. I've written ten more since that time in October last year and a few of them have made their way onto this LP now. Once again, they were all my seeds, but now that we have Mike Mushok in the band and I give the music to all three of those guys, now I have three great artists bringing back their responses and their counterpoint playing to my ideas, so it's becoming more and more collaborative every day and on this LP there will be shared writing credits on at least half of the songs with the writing credits now."