+++Hey guys! It’s Angela from Arch Enemy here. Over the next few weeks I’m gonna be checking in with updates from our U.S. Tyranny and Bloodshred tour. But before that madness begins on May 9 in Philly, I thought I’d give you a little taste of what’s to come. Below is the dirt from our Amsterdam, Paris and Antwerp gigs. +++
We are moving into the tour bus today. Apparently its Motorhead’s vehicle. And what a bus! Double-decker, 15 meters long. Very nice and a little posh inside. Just have a look!
This is how my cosy little space looks like:
Check out the Arch Enemy clan in the lounge downstairs HERE and HERE. I am not in the picture, because I am wearing pajamas and glasses. I know, this is not metal
And this – ladies and gentlemen – is Lemmy’s personal ice bucket!
Playing Amsterdam on a Saturday night - wohoo!!! Our Dutch friends know how to have a good time! The show was sold out and with broken hearts we had to watch the ticket office turning all these kids away. But the total cap of the venue, Melkweg, is 1400 and security is simply the most important thing – too many tragic events in overfilled clubs have happened to risk anything.
Textures did a great job opening up for us – we had them out with us in the past. The venue was boiling up and smelled quite interesting: A melange of sweat and cannabis – they must have been smoking my chocolate, haha.
It was easy to launch into a furious, high rising set - 90 minutes of excessive metal! I loved every second that night - to leave the crowd completely exhausted and happy is the best reward you can get!
Check out this shot from side stage:
Unfortunately we couldn’t launch into a proper celebration afterwards – a long drive to Paris called for an early bus departure. But here a few backstage impressions:
Me, my friend Susan (Murder Syndicate/Cliteater), Green&Blacks organic chocolate and a kick ass new Legion Of The Dammed Hoodie – I am happy!
Arriving at noon in Paris – just in time for the load in. It’s the best time of the day to sleep: You hear the crew getting out of their bunks and into working gear: The sound of others working real hard is very soothing to my ears… haha! It’s the feeling everything will be taken care of, its all going to be fine. I love getting up a lot later and walking into a ‘ready-to-rock’ venue. We handpick our crew, so they’re the best: hard working, lovely, funny and all smoking hot
Speaking of smoking hot: It’s my brother Benjamin’s birthday today and I managed to get a hold of him in his new home in the south of Spain. My little niece Lavinia will be joined by a tiny terror brother soon. Benjamin lives a very different life from mine, but it’s just as crazy.
Paris, Bataclan is packed with almost a 1000 souls ready to thrash. They are already going berserk when Textures hit the stage, forming huge circle pits. By the time we go on, the temperature has risen to sauna-level and the air is pure mist. We are basically breathing water instead of oxygen. The French maniacs are frantic. Singing along with the lyrics and the melodies, showing no signs of fatigue. I start feeling light-headed towards the end of the set and seeing little stars. There is no air left in the house! We look freshly showered with clothes on. It’s just the smell that gives the truth away. Its pure fucking sweat and we worked hard for it. And the French crowd beats every other audience so far on this tour! Je t’aime – merci beaucoup!!!
Here is a good clip from “Revolution Begins!”:
And here is a bit from “Nemesis”
Check out this cute letter I received from a very young Arch Enemy girl: Tuukka from Finland!
Exhausted but very happy we crawl into the bus that night to drive up to Belgium Antwerp. We have played Hof Ter Lo a couple of times before. Getting the Belgium crowd going is not that easy. The show will be on Monday evening – a day most people hate with a vengeance, everybody sober and tired from the prospect of a long working week ahead. Not the best circumstances, and the show falls a little short compared to all the others as a result. The audience really makes 50% of the show happen and tonight the atmosphere isn’t magic. It’s a shame because I want them to let go, let loose. By the end of the set they are finally catching fire, but then the show is over. And I make a mental note: No shows on Mondays in Belgium - let it be a day off!
Here is a great clip of “Enemy Within”
And go HERE to check out some photos from that show.
Since we’re off to England next, we need to discuss and decide the set for the UK shows – We are getting clear orders from our lighting engineer Richard.
See Michael working on the setlist right here:
We hurry and get out of the venue to make the ferry to England. We miss it anyway and now we are all hanging out on the bus, jamming silly music. We have to wait to 4.30 AM for the next boat and then it’s a 90 minutes crossing. I haven’t made up my mind yet if I should stay on the dark, locked up bus in the belly of the beast or hang around on deck for the crossing. Both options are equally tempting. The thought of having a day off tomorrow in good ol’ England is a good one though. And the prospect of four upcoming raging mad shows is exhilarating. Manchester is already sold out; Birmingham, Glasgow and London are closing in quickly too. I am getting all excited just thinking about it and must jam some Judas Priest now. Defenders of the Faith – Hells yeah. As our religion is METAL TO THE LAST BONE!
Amen to that!
Yours truly, Angela
PS: I found a cool interview with Michael that he conducted with GetInThePit TV
Pig Destroyer/Agoraphobic Nosebleed grind guitarist Scott Hull (far right) will release his first solo record, Requiem this June 10 on Relapse Records. Requiem sees Hull explore his long-time love for movies and cinema score in the form of a beautifully crafted piece of work.
Advance song titles from Requiem include: “Consequenze”, “Visita all’ospedale”, “Morte sul treno”, and “Il funerale di Bonnie”.
Audio samples taken from the album can be heard now via the Scott Hull MySpace page: MySpace.com/ScottHullMusic.
On February 21, 2008, when Swedish progressive metallers Opeth rolled into New York City on a press tour in support of their latest album Watershed, MetalKult invited guitarist/vocalist Mikael Akerfeldt and guitarist Fredrick Akesson into our studios for a question-and-answer session.
In the following interview, check out the guys as they discuss a wide range of topics, including guitar heroes, the “Norwegian black metal mafia,” band lineup changes and what to do when you’re down on inspiration.
Post-hardcore bombers Transistor Transistor announce a May 13, 2008 release date for their new full-length, Ruined Lives (Level Plane Records). The album was recorded and mixed by Kurt Ballou at Godcity Studios in Salem MA, and mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side in New Windsor NY.
Tracklisting:
1 Brass Bones
2 Celluloid Rats
3 Diet Of Worms
4 The Ghost Hand
5 Harvest
6 Irreversible
7 Letter Of Resignation
8 Pillar Of Salt
9 The Price of Gasoline
10 Teratogen
11 Morning Sickness
Here’s what Coghlan had to say about the making of Ruined Lives:
“This record came together slowly because we toured for almost all of
2005 for our last record. All in all, after two US tours, a Euro
tour, and two East Coast/Southeast tours, we needed to take a break.
A lot of the album’s lyrical content, if not all of it, stems from
just being on the road for a year — putting personal relationships on
the backburner and having them ultimately fall apart because (more…)
+++Hey guys! It’s Angela from Arch Enemy here. Over the next few weeks I’m gonna be checking in with updates from our U.S. Tyranny and Bloodshred tour. But before that madness begins on May 9 in Philly, I thought I’d give you a little taste of what’s to come. Below is the wrap up from our April 13-16 gigs, when we played Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Moscow.+++
We arrived in the Finnish capital Saturday evening. Helsinki - in sunshine - is a beautiful and lively city, offering interesting architecture, arts, beautiful parks and lots of bars, cafes and restaurants. Saturday night it was stormy, with heavy rain and darkness prevailing through. People were getting totally hammered, screaming and fighting in the streets. The runner from Tavastia club told me that the Fins start drinking from a very early age, about 12-14 years old. It’s the long and dark winters that drive them into depression and they fight it with excessive amounts of liquor. It is tragic to see very young, pretty girls falling out of a bar at midnight, completely smashed, a cig in their mouth, barely able to walk and cursing like old sailors.
Our show was Sunday evening in front of a visibly weekend-drained audience. Our 90-minute set felt slightly exhausting, as it was hard to get the energy back from the crowd. There were some very excited kids there, but too many tired soldiers in between. It was a bit disappointing as all the shows in Finland had been absolutely mad in the past. Next time we will come in on a Friday night, when everybody is still fresh and able to mosh!
Next morning, we have a brutal wake up call at 6AM. We are moving on to St. Petersburg, Russia. Driving into the city, a towering statue of Lenin and a WWII memorial site greets the arriving visitor. The weather is still gruelling and I feel like shit, so I retreat to bed for the rest of the day with a big bag of dark chocolate–covered marzipan. I am addicted to that stuff right now. We are all offline and resembling a horde of Zombies - I believe we all hit the sack no later than 10pm that night. Just look at [guitarist] Michael [Amott]’s face below, haha.
Waking up refreshed and excited about the St. Petersburg show! The venue ‘Port’ was located right opposite an impressive cathedral.
Our Lighting designer Richard in front of the venue.
We made our way through the crowd (I very much dislike venues with no way out in the back – there is a fire and we are TOAST) and got ready with banana milk meets Vodka with Chris backstage.
They caught me with “forbidden” food that night, but to my defence: There was no cheese on that pizza. It was vegan!
The show was killer! Loud and crazy, bodies flying and fists in the air! Check Darkside.ru’s pictures here and here.
The only “glitch” in the set was when suddenly an old lady appeared onstage and, obviously confused, tried to make her way down to the crowd. Armed with a big shopping bag and a wild stare. I couldn’t help but make a few jokes Thanx to darkside.ru, we got a good shot of it:
Here’s the set list for the St. Petersburg show:
Intro
Blood On Your Hands
Ravenous
Taking Back My Soul
Dead Eyes See No Future
My Apocalypse
Chris Amott Solo
Revolution Begins
Daniel Erlandsson Solo
Burning Angel
Bury Me An Angel
Dead Buried Their Dead
Vultures
Michael Amott Solo
Enemy Within
Nemesis
–Encore–
Snowbound
We Will Rise
Fields Of Desolation (Outro)
After the show we boarded the night train to Moscow. It was a hot and tight ride and none of us slept that much to be honest. But it’s a famous trip so you gotta do it – only once in my case, haha. That’s Michael below:
We decided to add “The Day You Died” to the set list in Moscow. It went down surprisingly well. We kinda thought it’s more of a “Japan” track – so emotional and melancholic. I think it will stay in for the next couple of shows now.
Moscow is basically history on every street corner! You don’t know where to look first, or where to go for sightseeing. As usual, our stay there was way too short, and we didn’t have much time to look around. But at least some of us made it to the Red Square:
The venue DK Gorbunova is big and well equipped. The 1500 people in there filled it up nicely and got a good sweat going! I had a close encounter with security that night. A kid who crawled up onstage was trying to get back into the crowd—it was very tight up front and people were getting pressed into the stage rim. Well, the security obviously felt it was necessary to jump at him and get quite physical, pushing him all over the stage. I got in there and they actually let him go back into the crowd. Its not easy doing the security job, but there is a definite difference between being firm and getting violent. And violence against our fans is NOT something I like to see!
To see some more cool pictures from the show go HERE or HERE.
At the end of the show I did my little “shake hands with the front row” round…and almost got torn to pieces! All my wristbands were gone within seconds and my arm still looks a little mangled:
And here a few backstage impressions:
The paparazzi Angela at work!
Chris is awake at last.
Taking pictures with the promoters.
Catching the Three Musketeers in action!
Our exquisite video director Paul Smith came out to Moscow and filmed the show professionally. We will use it for a little clip and maybe as bonus material on the next DVD, which is already in the works!
The Russian promoters Andre & Igor and their assistant Sasha took great care of us – but it blew their mind that Michael and I are vegetarians. They made fun of it until the last day, when we met at noon in the lobby. Andre looked absolutely destroyed and I had the last laugh - strongly advising him to maybe try some fruit or vegetables at some point. He looked like a ghost and definitely was in desperate need of some vitamins – and not just lard. That’s me and Andre below.
When it was time to say goodbye, we laughed, we cried and then made our way to the infamous airport there, anticipating two shitty flights via Helsinki to Amsterdam. We got to the city of sin and weed in the evening. All about the red lights, sweet waffles and expensive supercharged chocolate in my next update then! I am getting ready to rock these Dutch stoners now!
Glen Benton, vocalist and bassist for death metal legends Deicide, claims to have seen a Sasquatch or Bigfoot in a Florida state forest.
In the latest issue of Terrorizer magazine, Glen tells the tale of one strange night in the middle of nowhere, where he believes he saw ‘the Florida Sasquatch’:
“I see this big fuckin’ thing lurched down on the side of the road… It’s this big grey thing… it fuckin’ clears the road in one fuckin’ leap, ‘ROOOOAHHR!’ then into the woods.”
Glen describes following the creature into the woods in his jeep: “This thing’s snapping down trees left and right. All around was a smell like the inside of a dumpster… This thing looked like a primate of some sort. Fuckin’ huge eyes, but like part-orangutan and part-chimp.”
After calling Florida Wildlife, the area was checked and tracks are said to have been found. Glen’s experience was documented as an official sighting.
Check out the famous original video footage of a supposed Bigfoot creature:
Two brand new exclusive tracks from the upcoming Deicide album, Till Death Do Us Part, are available for streaming and download at the official Deicide MySpace page here: www.myspace.com/thestenchofredemption
Till Death Do Us Part is released on April 28th in Europe and May 13th in the US. The album will be released as a special edition CD with a free “GLEN FOR PRESIDENT” woven patch (while stocks last), or as a standard CD, limited edition 12″ picture disc LP and limited edition 12″ colour vinyl LP.
Pre-order your copy of Till Death Do Us Part now at (more…)
Metal legends JUDAS PRIEST will be releasing their sprawling double disc concept album, Nostradamus‚ via Columbia Records on Monday, June 16th in the UK/Europe, and a day later in the US on Epic Records.
Long in the works, Nostradamus‚ takes epic storytelling to a whole new level, as it recounts the life of this mysterious, world-known 16th Century French prophet. Some of the events that Nostradamus experts have interpreted as his predictions include the great fire of London in 1666, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and most recently, 9-11, among countless other renowned events.
“As in any concept piece, the lifeline needs to be of a solid source, taking the music over many levels of interest and perception,” points out singer Rob Halford. “Nostradamus‚ contains new frontiers explored and defined. The sense of adventure and the journey we undertook bringing the man’s life alive with metal was a real labour of love.”
As with all new Priest releases, the group - singer Rob Halford, guitarists Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing, bassist Ian Hill, and drummer Scott Travis - will embark on a mammoth worldwide tour in support of Nostradamus. Priest will be performing at the 2008 Download Festival - on a bill also featuring Kiss - which will serve as a Œhomecoming‚ of sorts for the group, as they performed at the first-ever Monsters of Rock Festival‚ at Donington Park in 1980.
Since 1974, Judas Priest has been one of heavy metal’s most successful bands, issuing such all-time classic albums as 1980’s British Steel‚ 1982’s Screaming for Vengeance‚ and 1990’s Painkiller‚ and such arena-rocking anthems as “Breaking the Law,” “Living After Midnight,” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin.”
“The Nostradamus album - above all others - is perhaps the one I’m most proud of,” says Tipton. “Whilst in essence and (more…)
On April 4th, 2008, a lengthy line of denim jackets, long hair and metal shirts stretched down the block from BB Kings Bar & Grille in NYC’s Times Square.
This legion of fans was patiently waiting to see the legendary Bay Area thrashers Testament, who were in town to promote their ninth studio album, The Formation of Damnation (Nuclear Blast).
The excitement was no doubt in part due to the fact that Damnation features the original Testament lineup of vocalist Chuck Billy, guitarists Eric Peterson and Alex Skolnick and bassist Greg Christian, with the addition of former member Paul Bostaph on drums.
When Testament finally hit the stage several hours later, the energy was uncontrollable. Armed with our cameras, MetalKult was fortunate to witness the electric set, which contained a solid mix of vintage and new hard-thrashing metal.
Below, check out “Over the Wall,” “Into the Pit,” “Practice What You Preach” and “Apocalyptic City” from that show: (more…)
When west coast thrash vets Exodus came to New York to play a show on February 7, 2008, at BB Kings in support of their latest album, The Atrocity Exhibition…Exhibit A, MetalKult had the opportunity to catch up with guitarists Gary Holt and Lee Altus.
After the two sat for a revealing video interview with our bros at Guitar World, we had the two guitarists demonstrate how to play a few riffs from their greatest hits, including “Toxic Waltz” and “Bonded By Blood,” as well as from new tracks like “Funeral Hymn.”
On the heels of the band’s new albumGods of the Earth, The Sword have announced summer, 2008 tour dates with the legendary Metallica, beginning July 16 in Bergen, Norway. Joining Metallica and The Sword on the tour will be New Orleans’ Down.
The Sword’s brand new music video for “Maiden, Mother & Crone” can be viewed HERE.
Additionally, The Sword will perform as one of the featured artists of the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival, set to take place June 12-15 in Manchester, TN. The Sword perform alongside a diverse crowd, including Metallica, Sigur Ros, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, The Raconteurs, M.I.A., Willie Nelson and more.
The Sword features guitarist / vocalist J.D. Cronise, guitarist Kyle Shutt, bassist Bryan Richie and drummer Trivett Wingo.
To check out the Gods of the Earth E-card, featuring “Fire Lances Of The Ancient Hyperzephyrians,” visit this location http://www.kemado.com/ecards/thesword.
