Polish death metallers from CATHARSIS have released the first music video from their latest album “Human Failures” released mid 2021 via Mad Lion Records. The aesthetics of the video reflects the band’s fascinations with old black and white horror movies and was shot in the original ruins of the mausoleum nearby the palace in Sławików (Poland). Check out the video:
The video was directed by Marcin Pawłowski, who is also the author of the script. Movie editing and digital processing was done by Endorfina Artmedia.
Adam Mamok comments: “We are very pleased with the end result. This time it took us a long time to get the whole thing completed. The plot is divided into two parts. A story, which is a metaphore for the lyrics of “Your Truth” and shots of the band. I admit, that it was great fun for us and we discovered each other in new roles. The convention of an old movie from the 1930s adds to the dark atmosphere of this video.”
The year of the corona-pandemic, when the world was forced into a standstill, five old friends finally put an old idea in motion. The result is a brand new band, THE HALO EFFECT, who recently inked a contract with Nuclear Blast.
The members of THE HALO EFFECT are not only masters of their domain, but also pioneers of the Gothenburg melodeath scene, who, at some point, have all been members of fellow Gothenburg icons IN FLAMES: Lead guitarists Niclas Engelin (ENGEL) and Jesper Strömblad (CYHRA), lead singer and lyricist Mikael Stanne (DARK TRANQUILLITY), bassist Peter Iwers, and drummer Daniel Svensson. Today, the band are giving metal fans all over the world a taste of their sound with debut single ‘Shadowminds’, that comes together with a music video. Its brooding atmosphere, melodic riffs and harsh vocals provide a perfect example of what THE HALO EFFECT is about.
Watch the music video for ‘Shadowminds’:
The band comments: “We are incredibly excited to unveil this new band with one of the first songs that we wrote together. We felt strongly that this was the right direction for the band. Finding identity, finding a drive and passion is what the song is about and also what this band is about. What drove us to do this in the first place, what obstacles have we overcome in order to fully commit to this lifestyle? It’s about how easy it is to get lost if you lose focus and passion for what you do. With the video we wanted to convey the emptiness of the city in the early stages of the pandemic and what we saw outside of the studio as we were writing but we also love the cool dystopic imagery so we made the city look even more barren and destroyed. Enjoy!”
The initial thought behind THE HALO EFFECT was to go back to the roots and explore the classic Gothenburg Sound, and the band manage just that. Their new take on the iconic sound is sure to appeal to fans of the classic melodeath sound.
The band have also announced their first ever tour, accompanying Swedish death metal berserkers AMON AMARTH and US thrashers MACHINE HEAD on 31 dates throughout Europe and the UK.
The band comments: “We could not be more excited to partner with Cobra Agency for our first tour of Europe together with metal giants AMON AMARTH and MACHINE HEAD. Working together with people who are passionate about the road, the crews, the bands and the fans means a lot to us and doing this together is something we very much look forward to. See you in Sept/Oct!“
European Tour 2022 AMON AMARTH, MACHINE HEAD /w THE HALO EFFECT 08.09. UK Nottingham – Arena 09.09. UK Cardiff – Arena 10.09. UK London – Wembley Arena 12.09. UK Manchester – Arena 13.09. IE Dublin – 3 Arena 16.09. CH Zurich – Hallenstadion 17.09. AT Vienna – Stadthalle 18.09. PL Krakow – Tauron Arena 20.09. EST Tallinn – Saku Arena 21.09. FIN Helsinki – Ice Hall 23.09. N Oslo – Spektrum 24.09. S Stockholm – Hovet 26.09. DK Copenhagen – Forum Black Box 27.09. DE Hamburg – Barclays Arena 28.09. DE Frankfurt – Festhalle 30.09. DE Oberhausen – König Pilsener Arena 01.10. DE Berlin – Velodrom 02.10. NL Amsterdam – Afas Live 04.10. IT Milano – Lorenzini District 06.10. ES Barcelona – Sant Jordi 07.10. ES Madrid – Vistalegre 08.10. ES La Coruna – Coliseum 09.10. P Lisbon – Campo Pequeno 12.10. FR Paris – Zenith 14.10. DE Munich – Olympiahalle 15.10. DE Leipzig – Arena 16.10. CZ Prague – Tipsport Arena 18.10. HU Budapest – Barba Negra 20.10. LUX Esch zur Alzette – Rockhal 21.10. BE Brussels – Forest National 22.10. DE Stuttgart – Schleyerhalle
THE HALO EFFECT is: Niclas Engelin | guitar Jesper Strömblad | guitar Mikael Stanne | vocals Peter Iwers | bass Daniel Svensson | drums
Swedish death metal legends HYPOCRISY are celebrating their 30th anniversary – and what better way to celebrate than by releasing their highly anticipated new album “Worship”! The band’s thirteenth album, the first in eight years, is due for release on November 26th via Nuclear Blast.
Metal Shock Finland’s Alison Booth caught up with Peter Tägtgren for the Halloween edition of her radio show Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem, which is broadcast every Tuesday from 6PM GMT on UK station TotalRock. The show with Peter can be heard here.
Of course the chat centred around the forthcoming album, but also some other subjects and Peter had plenty of interesting things to say! You can listen to the interview on the audio player and read some excerpts below:
On the positive feedback to the new singles already release, Peter expressed:
“You never know what to expect, I mean generations come and generation goes. But you know, it seems like people stuck to us which I am very grateful to and yeah, it’s amazing I would say, it’s more than we thought.“
Discussing the first single ‘Chemical Whore’, Peter explained:
“Yeah it’s kind of ironic I would say. Because I mean, when you see a few comments going ‘Oh is this an anti-vaxx song?’ I’m like ‘Come on man!’ We did the video in September 2019 so there’s no way.
It’s definitely about how I see doctors and the pharma industries are in cahoots. You know like ‘if you force pills down the throat, we will give you some percentage’, so to say, you know just in a wider simple aspect. So, doctors don’t really need to prescribe you these pills, but if they do, they will make a couple of bucks more, so they’d rather do that – some of them. I’m not saying everybody, I’m just saying, you know sometimes instead of taking a pill, maybe it’s better to go to a psychologist to talk about it, you know.
I mean, the whole reason why I wrote this song from the beginning was actually I have a lot of friends that I’ve seen going down on pills. You know, this Benzyl that’s in the pills, that’s really addictive. Yeah, it becomes a very bad circle of needs so to speak, so I just felt I needed to open up about it.”
Describing “Worship”:
“I would say my whole idea of this album or writing this, is mainly just to write better Hypocrisy songs and a fatter production, that is the goal. And I think it has all the elements you need in there – there’s a lot of sad songs, a lot of slow songs, a lot of mid tempo songs, a lot of epic songs, you know like you float away on it. So, I hope people will be happy with it. To be honest, I really never know what Hypocrisy fans want from Hypocrisy [laughs]. ‘Cause I mean in the past, there’s been so many different kinda styles of albums, but you still have this feeling of Hypocrisy in it. So I guess it’s in my DNA when I write music, I think in a certain way and yeah, it becomes Hypocrisy no matter what. But I definitely feel it’s closer to maybe the end of the nineties albums, you know in the way of the style of songs so to speak, I would say. But still, it’s Hypocrisy today. It’s nothing I wanted to clone myself or anything with the songs, it’s just what comes up in my mind.
Mikael and Horgh, they contribute with a couple of riffs each as well. So I mean it’s important to write with your heart I think and not look around and see what’s popular and what is not,. You know it’s this is Hypocrisy and this is how it always will sound, so take it or leave it.”
Discussing the album cover art:
“Yeah, it was actually an idea that I came up with when I was in a hotel in 2017 in LA. I was just laying in bed and got an epiphany or whatever you wanna call it, like ‘wow’ and I just start finding paper to write on. I was drawing on a piece of napkin and shit, you know with the pyramids and the cross, it looked like hell ’cause I’m not a good drawer. Then I took a picture and sent it over to Nuclear Blast, the CEO, I was like ‘I got this great idea about this shit you know and if he can help me develop it with someone that knows what to do’. And that’s what Blake did and he did a fantastic job.
So, the album cover was done before the album was written and the videos were done before all the album was done, I mean all the songs on the album were done. So we did pretty much everything backwards than we normally do. We did photo session in April in 2019, we did a video in LA that’s not out yet and then we did Chemical Whore in September 2019, so everything was done before actually all the material was done. Which is good though, ’cause otherwise we’d have had to wait a little longer, because normally you only focus on writing good songs and record it and boom! Then the company goes ‘You have any photo?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you have any videos?’ ‘No’. [laughs] ‘Later maybe later’.
So it was good to have this kind of set up for once. You know, these things that you don’t think about, that will come eventually and becomes very important, is done before you’re done with the album.”
On the tour situation, Peter revealed:
“I’m afraid it’s gonna be another wait. Actually, we had a tour for October/November this year, but we never announced it because we were just watching how things were going bad during the summer. Because actually, the album was I think supposed to come out at the end of the summer so we would have a month before the tour start. But the pandemic, it made it hard to get all the vinyls and things because the factories doing vinyls were under the Covid thing, so not everybody could work and things like that. So you know, to get a vinyl in three months actually became seven months, then eight months and nine months waiting because of this whole pandemic stuff. So yeah, what can you do and so suddenly now we’re here in November for the release. So yeah, I was glad we didn’t announce it at all.
So right now we pretty much have a new European tour done for September/October next year and I can tell you there’s some UK shows, not only one, only go to London of course that everybody do, but we’re gonna do a couple more I think, that’s what they’re working on.”
To pre-save the album and for more details, visit the official HYPOCRISY website here.
HYPOCRISY is: Peter Tägtgren | Vocals, Guitars Mikael Hedlund | Bass Reidar Horghagen | Drums Thomas Elofsson | Session Guitarist
Us depressive black metallers GHOST BATH have unleashed their fourth album “Self Loather” on the world today – October 29th! The album, released via Nuclear Blast, closes out the trilogy – tragedy, ecstasy, and dread/hatred – and hosts the band’s most devastating and dark music to date.
Metal Shock Finland’s Alison Booth caught up with frontman Nameless for her radio show Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem, which is broadcast every Tuesday from 6PM GMT on UK station TotalRock. The show featuring GHOST BATH will soon be available to listen to here.
The new album and its recording was discussed, along with a few more topics. You can check out the audio interview below, along with some written excerpts from the chat.
Discussing “Self Loather”, Nameless explained:
“I had this trilogy planned before I even recorded Moonlover, back in 2015.So the overall theme was dread and hatred, it was always supposed to be the darkest and heaviest album that we’ve done and there’s a few things that were kinda major changes for this album. In particular, one of the biggest ones was the entire band helped write the album, whereas every previous Ghost Bath album, it was just me writing all the music, doing all the vocals by myself. And with this one, all five members were incorporated and we all wrote it together.
I think the second biggest change, at least on my part, was the vocal style and I really changed things up and I did more of a black metal vocals, I did more of lower death metal growls and I also do sort of a depressive black metal high pitch vocals as well and I mix it up a lot more.”
On the subject of the change of vocals:
“You know, I think first and foremost, they just fit with the theme of the album a bit more – it just made it heavier in my opinion. And then second of all, I think it was just time for a change. I don’t wanna record the same album over and over and do the same things over and over, so you know, it was time for me to push myself. I had to figure out how to do these types of vocals, it wasn’t just something that came naturally to me.
I had to really prepare my throat and make sure I was hydrated and I was warming up and all of that, just to make sure it could sound right. It just felt right, it felt like the right time to make that change and I also definitely wanted to keep the high pitched Ghost Bath vocals in there, because that’s I think part of our sound and part of the depressive black metal sound. It’s kind of an experimentation and moving forward as a band.”
Photo By Austin Scherzberg
Looking ahead to the future:
“It’s just a passion project for me, you know I’m not trying to get rich or anything. I think experiences are very important for me and putting out the music I create and the creation process. Those are all the most important things for me and so I think the main things are touring, to be able to get back on the road and travel, I love doing that. I love playing live and then also to continue to write music.
So, if we can’t really get any good tours or anything, we’ll probably just start writing the next album right away. Even if we do start touring, we’ve already been talking about another album, that’s kinda the plan.”
Greek guitar virtuoso and the man behind FIREWIND, Gus G, released his fourth solo album a few weeks ago on 8th October via AFM Records. “Quantum Leap” is the first instrumental album Gus has released and Metal Shock Finland’s Alison Booth caught up with him for her radio show Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem, which is broadcast every Tuesday from 6PM GMT on UK station TotalRock. The show with Gus can be heard here.
Lots of topics were discussed, mainly about the new album and its recording, with more besides! You can check out the audio interview below, along with some written excerpts from the chat.
Discussing how the album came together, Gus explained:
“I started working on it Spring 2020 when the first lockdown happened. I was actually just finishing up doing press for the last Firewind album that came out, the self-titled record that came out last year and then all of a sudden everything was cancelled.
So you know, I realised I was gonna be at home for a while and I just immediately started putting down ideas on my computer just for the fun of it, just to see what’s gonna happen and then I realised, well we’re gonna be here for a while. So I think around summer I was kinda going through the demos I had and I’m like ‘well, maybe I should just make an album. I have enough material to kind of dig in now and do something.’ It really gave me something to do, it was not a planned album, it was like a thing just to help me occupy my time I guess.
During the first lockdown I somehow felt very inspired and wrote a lot of stuff, which was kinda funny because on the second lockdown when I was finishing up the album, I had no inspiration at all [laughs]. I’m glad I was able to write all this material.”
On being a solo artist, Gus expressed:
“I have my own style and my own sound, but obviously I’ve been experimenting quite a lot on my solo efforts. Whether it is me collaborating with different singers or musicians and making more like rock stuff or hard rock stuff, or whether I’m making classic metal or modern metal, or now, going instrumental. I look at my solo career as a vessel to put out all the other stuff I wouldn’t be able to do in Firewind. I think this instrumental record is a nice addition to the catalogue. I mean, now whenever I go back to playing live I can sort of mix it up onstage. I can kind of envision that, of doing maybe a half and half show or something, or blend it all in.“
Discussing the pandemic and the situation for playing live:
“The measures are changing, like every week. As of today* (in Greece), music is banned indoors in all venues, cafes, bars, restaurants, whatever. It’s crazy because nobody knows what’s going on, so like we were saying before, you really don’t know if there’s going to be any live scene left you know. I mean I don’t know if I should book gigs. I’m probably not going to because it’s all so strange right now. I was thinking about doing some gigs locally, at least I could start here, maybe do something in Greece and maybe later on in the coming months if I have some ideas to do something abroad like, even if it’s a one off thing. But, it’s just really weird, we’re in a strange time, so I’ll wait.”
*The first week of October
On connecting with the fans, Gus said:
“I like to connect with the people that support me, especially nowadays seeing as I can’t travel and meet them in person or play for them in person. I’ve been putting out content more often and trying to do a few live stream things here and there on the YouTube channel or on Instagram or whatever. Yeah, just trying to make everybody forget a little bit from the dark cloud that’s over our head and just have a good time. And this is not only for the people, it’s also good for me, for my mental health. So it’s good, it’s been a good healthy thing.”
From the early days in 80’s California, to going on to become a band recognised as a pioneer of the thrash metal scene, EXODUS are back! After seven years since their last album, “Blood In, Blood Out”, the brutal and eleventh studio album “Persona Non Grata” is set for release on 19th November via Nuclear Blast.
Metal Shock Finland’s Alison Booth caught up with drummer Tom Hunting for her radio show Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem, which is broadcast every Tuesday from 6PM GMT on UK station TotalRock.
Of course all fans know Tom has been fighting cancer and had a successful gastrectomy in July. We had a chat about his health before the interview, Tom told me that everything is looking great and he is back at work with the band, with some recent shows taking place.
Lots of topics were discussed from the new album and its recording and back to the old days, with more in between. You can check out the audio interview below, with some written excerpts – it wasn’t the best connection so it’s a little clipped in places, but Tom had lots of interesting things to say!
About the release of “Persona Non Grata”, Tom expressed:
“We feel awesome about it, I mean this album’s been done for quite a while but we’re super proud of the work we did on it and you know, the manner in which we recorded it and the songwriting process was, we just had fun all the way around. Crazy times and we just kinda like did the best with the time we had you know? Everything’s hooky and just you know, lotsa crunch. We’re very happy with it.
I think all the fun we had recording really came out in the music you know and we had a good time. We were under no time constraints like for tracking or anything like that. We had an open book of creativity and it was flowing you know?“
About recording in home studios, Tom revealed:
“Usually, when it comes time to track drums, we have the songs and arrangements worked out, but I usually only have like seven or eight days to set up, get my tracks in and then I can never revisit or redo anything. The way we did it this time, I set up, did my tracks – got it done pretty fast. But if I heard something you know, if I wanted to enhance a riff or whatever, I can go and basically insert a different drum fill or whatever. And that was a great privilege to have for me, ’cause at the end it’s a more beautiful drum template to play, you know? The guys liked it too and the same could be said for them, ’cause we were all stuck here together and it just worked out, everything lined up.
And it was the first time we tried to record this way, so remotely. Usually we do the drums in a proper studio and everything else gets done anywhere. But this time we just did it all, there was a lot of DIY involved. I was nailing up big ass pieces of carpet, you know I had my stapler out – I was stapling pieces of fabric to the ceiling to try and get those sound waves right for the cymbals crashing [laughs].”
Regarding keeping EXODUS going after so many years, Tom said:
“Well, I’m gonna go with a cliche here and we’ve all said it, everybody in our band. It’s crazy, if you’d asked me, you know when we first started, if the journey would still be going in 2021, I would tell you I don’t think so. But Gary is a force, Gary Holt is a guitar force in this world, our band’s more of a brotherhood than other bands I see that do it like on our level. You know, we’re still best of friends and we’re family you know.“
I think as younger men doing this we probably were more into it for the party you know and now we’re older, I think we respect the journey a little bit more. It’s the best education I ever could get in my life.”
Talking about debut album “Bonded By Blood”:
“There’s times I dread having to play Piranha for the umpteenth billion time, but I’m super proud of the fact that we made an album that was a statement, so long ago and so many statements were made back then. We just had fun – we were young, guys in the throws of creativity and just kind of hungry and learning our instruments.”
Tom had lots to say about his love of English drummers:
“I think about Clive Burr all the time. I watch his videos. I have to say I was pretty mad at Iron Maiden for releasing him without any real explanation as to why [laughs]. Don’t get me wrong, I love Nicko McBrain, I’ve been listening to him since he played with Pat Travers and I love Nicko, he’s a very colourful drummer, but I love the way Clive drove that band. The way he would install these crazy heavy metal disco type beats and he had such a fast flick of the wrist, you know?
And then of course Keith Moon was a maniac. You expect from a traditional drumming standpoint, even rock drumming, you would think he would do one thing and he does another. And Bonham, he was a force. There’s a lot of ’em, a lot of English drummers. Ian Paice, my favourite leftie, a man after my own heart ’cause I too am left handed, he’s still doing it!“
EXODUS is: Gary Holt | Guitar Tom Hunting | Drums Steve “Zetro” Souza | Vocals Jack Gibson | Bass Lee Altus | Guitar
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 