Nuclear Blast announces the breathtaking news for all AVANTASIANS: The new album will be called “THE MYSTERY OF TIME“, and is set for release in March.
Immediately after the release of this new Metal Opera, based on a story written by Tobias Sammet, the band will embark on a full-fledged indoor-tour, during which the band and special guests will bring the epic undertaking to the stage. Due to embracing all of the different eras and history of AVANTASIA these shows will have an extended playing time, and the whole evening will be dedicated to Avantasia with no support acts. Guests and album details will be announced soon!
Musicians who have been confirmed as guests on the CD so far are URIAH HEEP drummer Russell Gilbrook, producer and guitarist Sascha Paeth, former KISS & MEAT LOAF guitarist Bruce Kulick, and of course Tobias on bass and vocals. Now we can announce the name of the next guest star: New Wave Of British Heavy Metal legend Biff Byford from SAXON will sing one role on this forth-coming epic.
Vocalist AMANDA SOMERVILLE recently released her first full-on metal solo album, Alloy, under the TRILLIUM moniker. She discusses the project in a new interview on Rich Davenport’s Rock Show via the audio player below starteing at the 23 minute mark:
An excerpt from a recent interview with Somerville conducted by BW&BK’s Carl Begai is availabel below:
Folks that are expecting Somerville to follow a similar path to the work she’s done for EPICA and AVANTASIA on Alloy are in for a shock. Some tracks are attitude-laden cousins to melodic rock, others are heavy-edged and bordering-on-Black Sabbath dark. The album is almost completely devoid of orchestral arrangements and features no neo-classical bombast whatsoever, carried through numerous twists and turns instead by the vocals and some almighty riffs. Bottom line: Alloy is loaded with plenty WTF moments.
“Which is a good thing (laughs). Nothing about what I do is contrived; it all comes out the way that it comes out, and sometimes it needs to be a little more conformed, I guess. Literally, as cheesy as it sounds, the music pours out of me the way that I feel it. I don’t like following formulas. My songs have a typical song structure – verse / pre-chorus / chorus – and that’s just in me, but in terms of trying to fit a certain formula, that’s not a conscious thing for me. It’s not something I want to do, either. That’s why there are no Latin choirs on the album (laughs).”
“I’ve actually gotten comparisons to Epica and After Forever. In fact, one guy made the After Forever comparison before he knew that Sander was one of the songwriters on Alloy. That kind of surprised me, but Sander does have a signature sound, but I don’t hear the similarities.”
Click here for more, including Somerville discussing working with Sascha Paeth and Avantasia bandmate Jorn Lande (MASTERPLAN) on the song ‘Scream It’.
Alloy was released on November 4th in Europe and November 1st in North America. The tracklist is as follows:
‘Machine Gun’
‘Coward’
‘Purge’
‘Utter Descension’
‘Bow To The Ego’
‘Mistaken’
‘Scream It’
‘Justifiable Casualty’
‘Path Of Least Resistance’
‘Into The Dissonance’
‘Slow It Down’
‘Love Is An Illusion’ (bonus track)
The first video from the album is for the track ‘Coward’ which can be viewed below:
