THE HOLLYWOOD STARS released their version of King Of The Night Time Worldin December via Golden Robot Records a song they originally recorded in 1974 and was later recorded by KISS and released in 1976 on the Destroyer album.
Now they have released a new single Escape (Live), 15th February. Recorded live at the world-famous Whisky A Go Go in 2019, this is the original version of the Alice Cooper song, Escape, performed by the original band. This is a much more rock and roll version than Cooper’s 1975 recording complete with the energy of a live recording. This was the band’s return to the club that was their home in the mid-70s.
It would seem like every nook and cranny in rock ‘n’ roll history has been explored ad infinitum by this point. Countless books and magazine articles have been written, painstakingly excavating the lives and careers of everyone from Chuck Berry to Aerosmith, Wanda Jackson to Arcade Fire. But what if there was a band with deep roots whose story had barely been broached?
A band with direct ties to Little Richard, The Kinks, The Mamas & the Papas, The Electric Prunes, The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Iggy Pop, The Runaways, The Flamin’ Groovies, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Steppenwolf, Meat Loaf, and Blue Cheer.
Such a band does exist. They are The Hollywood Stars. And now, after more than 40 years apart, they are performing together again and making new music.
Scarlet Records has signed a multi-album deal with power/folk metal band VEXILLUM. The band is going to release their next chapter in its influential career in this Spring.
Vexillum formed in 2004 in Pisa, Italy and released the first full-length album ‘The Wandering Notes’ a few years later, in 2011, followed by ‘The Bivouac’ shortly after, in 2012. The band was able to attract a large following since their inception, and toured extensively with the likes of Rhapsody of Fire, Vision of Atlantis, Orden Ogan and Freedom Call to name a few.
In 2015 Vexillum released their most ambitious project until then, the metal opera ‘Unum’, that features some very special guests such as Hansi Kursch (Blind Guardian), Chris Bay (Freedom Call) and Mark Boals among others. The band promoted the album by touring with Eluveitie, Skálmöld and Freedom Call and got them to share European stages with DGM, Iron Savior, Finsterforst and many more.
With a solid line-up and renewed sound and strong image, Vexillum are proud to bring to light in 2021 to a thundering and thrilling new album.
At the end of last year ANNEKE VAN GIERSBERGEN announced the release of her new solo album ‘The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest’, one of the most important and personal albums in Anneke’s career to date. An album inspired by heartbreak – not something Anneke ever anticipated writing. It will be released on February 26th, 2021.
The third single “Agape” off of said album sees the light of day today and Anneke is very excited to be sharing this new piece of music with the world. She comments: “Agape refers to the highest form of unconditional love, the type of love we all yearn for. I’ve tried to create a distinct echo of a love song from the ‘70s with a meditative guitar arrangement. The lush sound of a string quartet adds a dreamy quality to the song.”
“The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest” – Tracklist: 01. Agape 02. Hurricane 03. My Promise 04. I Saw A Car 05. The Soul Knows 06. The End 07. Keep It Simple 08. Lo And Behold 09. Losing You 10. Survive 11. Love You Like I Love You
The album’s title, ‘The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest’, refers to the idea that, when facing personal challenges, we are forced to find answers to life’s biggest questions. But, at this point in her near-three-decade-long music career, this solo album – and, crucially, the heartbreak that inspired it – was not something Anneke van Giersbergen ever anticipated writing.
In 2018, Anneke began working on new material for her metal band, VUUR. Although their debut album, ‘In This Moment We Are Free – Cities’, was met with a mixed reception, fans were warming up to their heavy, progressive sound. Therefore, a rapid follow-up album would surely establish Anneke’s return to fronting a metal band. However, behind the scenes, these were troubled times.
Anneke shares, ”My belief in VUUR saw me spend all my savings on recording VUUR’s debut album and taking the band on the road. After completing our first touring cycle, I realized that more VUUR would mean yet more, huge financial risks.”
To make matters worse, in 2018, her long-lasting marriage, which had always been wonderful, unexpectedly saw a storm approaching. Anneke adds, “I instantly knew I needed to write music about fixing my life. This creative endeavour would be far too personal for a VUUR album. And it would also require solitude.”
With just her acoustic guitar and basic recording gear, Anneke retreated to a small house near the woods, just outside her hometown of Eindhoven. She let go of the pressures of what VUUR’s future might be, and fell into the meditative process of writing a solo album. In 2019, work continued on the new songs. In 2020, Anneke asked her friend and producer, Gijs Coolen, to help finish the album.
Throughout the completion of the album, Anneke’s fragile, acoustic song-stories were fused together with an alchemy of panoramic strings, horns, and percussion. The resulting 11-track record has all the intimacy of Anneke serenading an audience of one, combined with surprising departures into swampier, foot-stomping grooves.
The Japanese art of kintsugi has inspired Anneke to use a repaired heart as the album’s symbol. Kintsugi teaches that bringing together the pieces of a broken object – with the use of a precious metal – adds value and uniqueness to it. And, instead of giving up on their marriage, Anneke and her husband decided to take the time to mend their bond. They now cherish the repaired heartbreak as something profoundly valuable.
Their journey through this personal storm, and the album that Anneke created in the eye of it, proves that the darkest skies truly are the brightest.
Italian hard rockers FUORIUSO will release their new album “Teenage Disease” on February 19th via Volcano Records.
FUORIUSO is an Italian hard rock/sleaze band formed in 1995 in Bergamo by brothers Lucky and Van Toxic (bass and guitars) with vocalist Holly and TNT on drums. After many demos and gigs they released their first EP “Hell is better than all” (Toxic Records/Venus) in 2003, produced by Marco Cecconi (Power Symphony). In 2006 TNT quitted and Rig (Evil Bards, Strange Wings) joined the band. In 2007 FuoriUso released “Black Signs” (Sweet Poison Records/Self); produced by Yonatan Rukhman (Folkstone). The release was supported by some shows sharing the stage with Hanoi Rocks, The Quireboys, Adam Bomb, Extrema, Punkreas, among the others. After that, the band took some time off and the members started different musical projects. In 2014 “Hell is Better Than All” was re-released digitally and in 2015 FuoriUso celebrated their 20th anniversary with a special live show. In August 2020 “Black Signs” was re-released digitally through Toxic Records/IMD and in December of the same year the band enters in the Volcano Records Roster.
Not long now before Karisma Records releases “Nordisk Krim” the latest album from Psychedelic Folk Rock Proggers TUSMØRKE, for whom the album has a particular significance, since, having developed a fascination with the subject matter long ago, it is an album they have dreamt of making for most of their lives.
It was as children visiting in the museums at Moesgaard and Silkeborg that they first laid eyes on the famous Danish Bog Bodies with their orange hair, and where the seeds were sown for the project that was to eventually become “Nordisk Krim”. As the band explains:
Nordisk Krim, which means Nordic Noir, refers to the fact that the bog bodies were first thought to be a police matter. In reality, the true crime was disturbing the gifts to the gods in their slumber. Nordisk Krim celebrates the willing victims of ancient rites, those whose bodies are in the bog, but whose souls are among the stars in the heavens.
Everyone knows about mummification of bodies in Egypt, but maybe not everyone knows how the myths and practices surrounding those mummies affected bodies found elsewhere, even when those bodies had mummified due to natural conditions, as was the case in Scandinavia. So today, with the release of the single “Mumia” TUSMØRKE gives a glimpse into the ancient practices, and the myths.
TUSMØRKEwere happy to give us this insight into their own quirky take on the subject of “Mumia”:
Ancient as well as early modern medicine was attracted to anything spectacular as a cure for any ailment, whether it was ingesting mercury against syphilis, smoking herbs up the arse against constipation or drinking aquavit against a common cold. The king of ineffective cures was arguably pulverised mummies, imported from Egypt to treat diverse maladies. Something preserved for five thousand years must be good for something, right?
Egypt was far away from Scandinavia, however, a fact that spawned the questionable business idea of pulverising bog bodies, marketed as mummy powder, or mumia. It can be argued that this was just as effective as the original Egyptian medicine. However, it also turned a number of suffering patients into ghouls. Worth a song, anyway.
The lineup on “Nordisk Krim” includes Benediktator (bass & vocals), Krizla (flute & vocals), HlewagastiR (drums), Haugebonden Gode Gullstein (keys) and Åsa Ree (violin), who recorded and produced the whole thing in Benedikator’s home studio (Det Ytre Rommet). Apart, of course, from some field recordings and some bubble noises recorded in the bathtub (The Bubble Bath of Blood).
“Nordisk Krim”, which will hit the streets on the 26th February, is a double concept album coming in at a whopping 82 minutes. With artwork by Anne Margrete Sjøflot for both the album and all the singles, track listing is as follows:
Ride the Whimbrel
Age of Iron Man
Mumia
Cauldron Bog
Dog’s Flesh
Moss Goddess
Black Incubation
Et Moselik
Heksejakt
(The Marvellous and Murderous) Mysteries of Sacrifice
“Nordisk Krim” will be available in digital, double CD and double LP formats, with the vinyl being limited to 666 copies in transparent magenta. It can be pre-ordered from:
Celebrated Swedish heavy metal titans SABATON enter a new partnership with NUCLEAR BLAST, re-signing with their longtime label home for a new single and much more to come.
“Livgardet,” the band’s first new music since 2019’s “The Great War” (which cracked the Top 10 in 11 countries, including No. 1 positions in Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden), will arrive on February 26. The Swedish-language song honors the Swedish Royal Guards first established in the year 1521.
“It feels good to continue our collaboration with the world’s biggest heavy metal label, Nuclear Blast,” said SABATON bassist and co-founder Pär Sundström, who also serves as the band’s manager. “We have been working with Nuclear Blast for more than a decade, and at the end of last year, we signed the contract for the upcoming releases, and we will continue to write metal history together.”
The Nuclear Blast relationship with SABATON dates back to 2010’s World War II-themed “Coat of Arms”. Its follow-up, 2012’s “Carolus Rex”, was released in both English and Swedish language editions. “Livgardet” marks a return to the band’s native language. As SABATON‘s frontman, co-founder, and principal songwriter Joakim Brodén declared:“Damn, it feels good to be singing in Swedish again!”
“The excitement level at Nuclear Blast is of the highest proportion due to the fact that today, we announce and celebrate the extension of our relationship with one of the most successful metal bands in history, the mighty SABATON!” proclaimed the global Nuclear Blast Team collectively. “Here’s to many more years of success and domination together!”
“Believe is ecstatic at the prospect of helping extend the relationship between the two top Metal entities, SABATON and Nuclear Blast Records, for years to come,” added Thorsten Freese, Managing Director of Believe (Germany), the Paris based label services and distribution provider. “We understand how important the two brands are, and there’s more than 100% full support and understanding of their leading markets. Here’s to many more years of continuous success!”
SABATON’s ninth album centered on World War I, often referred to as “The Great War.” “The Last Stand” delved into various “last stands” throughout history. “Livgardet” strengthens the band’s well-known reputation as experts, aficionados, and storytellers regarding the triumph and tragedy of battle.
“Since 2012 and Carolus Rex, we have been looking forward to writing more songs in Swedish, and we felt that we were not done with the history of our fatherland,” Sundström explained. “Over the past years, we have been discussing around topics until something obvious came up. One of the oldest military regiments in the world, the Swedish Royal Guard (Livgardet), was formed in the Sabaton home region in Sweden, Dalecarlia, in 1521 by the legendary Swedish king Gustav Vasa. For the past 500 years, they have evolved with the times and served under various kings and queens around the world and are still active today. We felt that such an anniversary would be worth a song, and we aimed at writing a respectful tribute, an anthem for this Swedish regiment and its legacy. The rich 500 years of history is, needless to say, extremely hard to fit into one song, and that is why we mainly focused on the parts and battles that happened during the age of the Swedish Empire. We aimed to write a respectful tribute, a powerful anthem, for this Swedish regiment and its remarkable legacy.”
SABATON headlined London’s Wembley Arena in February 2020. Judas Priest chose them as main support on their 50 Heavy Metal Years tour of North America, scheduled for September and October 2021. The group will kick off 2022 with an unprecedented 29-city tour of their home country.
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Visionary artist KIMMO KUUSNIEMI's ANCIENT STREAMING ASSEMBLY (ASA) have released “Aurora Nuclearis”, a powerful 12-minute audiovisual experience, dedicated to the Late Keyboardist Esa Kotilainen. - Click image to watch the video
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