Find the coverage and some great photos of this year's Devilstone Open Air written by our Lithuanian contributor Inga here>> www
Consisting of members from Luciferion, Forest Of Impaled and Malevolent Creation this Swedish-Polish-American band is hardly lacking in experience and more than a sum of its part. Led by guitar wizard Wojtek Lisicki (Luciferion, ex-Lost Horizon) Against the Plagues is, musically, a continuation of the direction started on Luciferion's second semi-conceptual album "The Apostate". Like tha...
From the ever fertile soil of France comes this black metal act, which was originally formed under the name Empires de Glace. After a stereotypical synthesizer intro with samples of howling winds and thunderstorms and moody spoken monk vocals give way to a rather traditional Scandinavian interpretation of the genre. The music is mostly inspired by the likes of Dark Funeral and Marduk with sweeping...
Death metal is such a limitless genre. You can do whatever you'd like. It can be over the top technical or slow. Brutal or insane and it's all so good. When we made "Visions of Death" it just came out with a natural old school-ish vibe and that's great, but our newer material has a much more modern technical vibe. I love how death metal has evolved.
Weird Truth Productions has announced the signing of Finnish funeral doom metal group PROFETUS for their new upcoming full-lenght album in 2011. Profetus - formed their career in 2006 - has become one the strongest names in extreme doom metal, forging their work in the vein of Finnish funeral doom tradition, the likes of Skepticism, Thergothon and Unholy.
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Swedish death metal veterans GRAVE have parted ways with bassist Fredrik Isaksson "due to personal reasons and issues." Fredrik played his last show with GRAVE in late July at the Eisenwahn festival in Germany.
Commented the band: "There is no bad blood between us [and Fredrik] and we thank him for all the years with GRAVE and wish him luck with whatever he may do in the future. His immediate replacer is Tobias Cristiansson (DISMEMBER) who already did a couple of gigs with us the past weeks in Colombia and Finland. Tobias lives, breathe, eat, sleep and shits metal and we are very confident that he will be a great contribution to GRAVE both live and for writing new material."
GRAVE's latest album, "Burial Ground", was released on June 14 via Regain Records. The CD's cover artwork was created by Costin Chioreanu of Twilight13 Media.
GRAVE's live DVD, entitled "Enraptured", came out in Europe on November 27, 2006 via Metal Mind Productions and in the U.S. on February 1, 2007 via MVD Visual.
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Nattestid and Bjoergvin, the first two albums from TAAKE, are once again available on vinyl thanks to Bergen-based Dark Essence Records, who are re-releasing these much sought after collector’s items. Nattestid was first released eleven years ago, and Bjoergvin eight years ago, and both were limited to a pressing of 500 copies. The 2010 editions will come with new artwork and gatefold covers, and will include an A2 poster. Both albums will be limited to 500 copies available world-wide.
Long recognised as one of the bands that define the essence of true Norwegian black metal, with its icy Nordic riffs and founder Hoest’s intense stage performances, Taake is set to headline the upcoming Dark Essence Records 2010 tour later this year. The eleven date tour has been arranged to give Taake, and fellow label-mates HELHEIM, VULTURE INDUSTRIES and SULPHUR a chance to play in front of audiences that have rarely, if ever, seen the bands before. Dates for the tour as follows:
October
28 - Glazart - Paris, France
29 - Korigan - Luynes/Marseille, France
30 - TBC - Switzerland
31 - Carlito's Way - Milano, Italy
November
1 - Pieffe Factory - Gorizia, Italy
2 - Akademija Club - Belgrade, Serbia
3 - Daos Club - Timisoara, Romania
4 - Art Club - Trnava, Slovakia
5 - Channel Zero - Ljubliana, Slovenia
6 - Božkov, Hospoda Pod Kopcem - Plzen, Czech Republic
7 – K17 - Berlin, Germany
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Swedish vikings of MÅNEGARM have parted ways with bassist and long time member Pierre W. The band will not look for a replacement since Erik G will handle both vocals and bass on future recordings and live performances.
For more info visit Myspace.com/manegarm
Auckland, New Zealand-based metallers ULCERATE are currently in the studio working on their third full-length album - and second for Willowtip Records - titled The Destroyers Of All.
To document the recording, Ulcerate has created a special website that includes a making-of blog, photographs, and video clips. The site will continuously be updated until the release of the album .
The Destroyers Of All tracklisting:
'Burning Skies'
'Dead Oceans'
'Cold Becoming'
'Beneath'
'The Hollow Idols'
'Omens'
'The Destroyers Of All'
Ulcerate's The Destroyers Of All will be available in early 2011.
Greece's CEREBRUM, TEHACE and SARATAN have joined SADIST, VIRGIN SNATCH and CRIONICS for a Polish run of the Beware Of Your Neck 2010 Tour.
The tour will kick off on September 30th in Rzeszow, Poland and will roll over its nine biggest cities, with two additional dates in Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Cerebrum will play songs from the Spectral Extravagance album. Drums on this album were recorded by George Kollias of NILE. During the upcoming tour his parts will be taken over by Jakub 'Cloud' Chmura (THY DISEASE).
Beware Your Neck tour dates are as follows:
September
9 - Rzeszow, Poland - Pod Palm?
October
1 - Lublin, Poland - Graffiti
2 - Warsaw, Poland - Progresja
3 - Olsztyn, Poland - Przysta? Marina
4 - Gdynia, Poland - Ucho
5 - Bydgoszcz, Poland - Estrada
6 - Poznan, Poland - Blue Note
7 - Wroclaw, Poland - Madness
8 - Prague, Czech Republic - Exit Chmelnice
9 - Kosice, Slovakia - Colosseum
10 - Cracow, Poland - Rotunda
Bassist B-Force has left Swedish black metallers DARK FUNERAL. The band's guitarist, Lord Ahriman, said in a statement, "I wish to thank [B-Force] for the six fantastic years he'd been with us on bass. It's been a pleasure indeed working together."
Commented B-Force: "After six awesome and crazy years with DARK FUNERAL, I have decided to leave the band. It's my own decision to leave one of the best band/friends in the world, but I feel that I need to move forward in life and do something else music-wise. There are absolutely NO hard feelings between me and DARK FUNERAL. We are and will continue to be good friends!
"I want to thank the band and all the fans all over the world. You kick ass everywhere I've been playing with the band. I thank you all. May the dark forces be with you."
DARK FUNERAL has already found "a new and totally amazing bassist; a bassist who lives and breathes DARK FUNERAL in its purest form," according to Lord Ahriman. "We will, however, wait until everything is settled before we present him to all of you, so please be patient."
DARK FUNERAL played its final show with vocalist Magnus "Masse" Broberg (a.k.a. Emperor Magus Caligula) on August 21, 2010 at the Summer Breeze festival in Dinkelsbühl, Germany. "Since this was a very special performance in many ways, we not only put on our biggest pyro show ever, we also captured this gig with 10 cameras (including one crane)," said Lord Ahriman. "So you can be sure to expect a DVD release from this killer show in the near future."
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In November 2010, Norway's GORGOROTH will embark on what will be the second leg of the Quantos Possunt Ad Satanitatem Trahunt tour in Europe, following the nine dates of the tour which took place in April this year.
Comments Infernus: "We're totally excited about this! To get the opportunity to extend the Quantos Possunt-tour into other European territories which we did not have time for in April. As of now, we aim at doing this as the second out of three in total. This also coincides with the beginning of a new chapter for us in terms of booking-agency, as I last week made up my mind and decided to switch to Massive Music for the continental parts of Europe. Fear the return!"
The first confirmed concert which will be part of this tour is in Caen, France, at Le Cargö, on 25 November. Further details on the remaining dates will be posted when they are confirmed.
Poland's Massive Music have issued the following tour update:
"Today we have a very good news for all European death metal maniacs. One of the most violent and brutal acts of Brazilian scene namely KRISIUN are gearing up to invade Europe again! Three brothers Alex, Max and Moyses have just confirmed their headlining appearance on the upcoming The Brutal Domination Tour 2010 which starts off on October 20. This four weeks tournee will cover all regions of Europe (the tour schedule will be announced soon). Support will only come from bands at least as brutal as the main act. Their unholy names will be revealed soon! Stay tuned for more details and don't miss Krisiun on their upcoming crusade. They are stronger than ever and 'Sentenced Morning', band's brand new video filmed and edited by Juan "Punchy" Gonzalez during the band's latest European tour should help you to feel this unstoppable madness."
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Just one day after confirming that he has been tapped by Norwegian symphonic black metallers DIMMU BORGIR to replace bassist/clean vocalist ICS Vortex on the band's upcoming ninth album, "Abrahadabra", and world tour, Swedish multi-instrumentalist Snowy Shaw (real name: Tommie Helgesson; THERION, DREAM EVIL, KING DIAMOND, MERCYFUL FATE, MEMENTO MORI, NOTRE DAME) has announced his departure from the group and return to Swedish progressive/experimental metallers THERION.
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