-- Morphosis out February 8th

Polish extreme haters tentatively titled HATE will be unleashing their new demons on February 8th via Listenable Records worldwide.

check out their myspace profile for the new stuff and a detailed bio of the band..

www.myspace.com/hatepoland

-- Atrocity is back with a new covers album

Alex Krull's band Atrocity is back with a new covers album. As you probably recall they once released a very commetcially successful covers album in 1997 called "Werk 80" speacializing on synth-pop hits of the 80's era. Now they are ready for the second installment tentatively called "Werk 80 II".

click here to download a full track taken from the album provided by the band's official website.

-- WDHR posted 2 new songs online

Minnesota's With Dead Hands Rising made available 2 new songs via their myspace page. Both songs are taken from their upcoming release "Expect Hell".

click on the banner to listen to the songs and check out upcoming live dates:

-- Eric Rutan's hate is eternal..

Follow up to 2005 critically acclaimed album "I, Monarch", Hate Eternal is back with a new record. On February 19th the new cd "Fury And Flames" will be hitting the stores.
This will the first album with Hate Eternal's four-piece band formation. With the addition of Shaun Kelley, the band will be touring as a quartet.

here is the cover artwork done by Paul Romano:

-- Nominees for Best Metal Performance

This year's Grammy Awards nominees for Best Metal Performance are :
As I Lay Dying with "Nothing Left"
King Diamond with "Never ending Hill"
Machine Head with "Aesthetics Of Hate"
Shadows Fall with "Redemption"
Slayer with "Final Six"

The award ceremony will take place on February 10th in Los Angeles.

5to1: Lion's Share

5to1 is an interview series i've started to put online consisting of 5 quesitons (and 5 answers for sure!). First "victim" of 5to1 is Lars from Lion's Share. here we go:

1 Six years have passed since Lion’s Share’s latest studio release “Entrance”... Can you tell us what happened during this 6 year time period?
After the “Entrance” album and tour I was totally burnt out after taking care of everything regarding Lion’s Share plus doing the album tour - album tour routine for over 8 years. I hit rock bottom pretty much overnight and playing guitar wasn’t fun anymore so I put the band on hold to be able to re charge my batteries. At first I didn’t do anything. Then I did a couple of shows with friends like the guys from Europe (the band), the most famous weather man in Sweden (at Sweden Rock Festival 2004), etc just for fun without any pressure, just to get the fun back into playing music again. I also co wrote songs for a couple of records and did a couple of guest solos here and there, plus produced, wrote for, played on and mixed an album called AUDIOVISION “The Calling”. It was mainly the solo album from Narnia singer Christian Rivel that he hired me to do, but we had some very cool guests on there like Jeff Scott Soto, Mic Michaeli, Bruce Kulick, IA Eklundh, Tony Franklin and some past members from Thunder, Electric Boys etc. Also towards the end of the break, Sampo and I wrote the ROAD TO RUIN album together with singer Matti Alfonzetti (Jagged Edge, Skintrade, Scott Gorham). Of course also a LOT of hard work to make the new LION’S SHARE album as good as it turned out.
2 Patrik is also working with some other bands & projects mostly know for his work with Astral Doors and Wuthering Heights, was your first choice when you were writing new material for a possible new album in 2007? What caught your attention most about Patrik, what hit you about his voice & style? What is your favorite non-Lion’s Share album of Patrik by the way? :)
My favourite singer of all time is Ronnie James Dio so I like singers that are similar in style like Tony Martin, Jorn Lande, Russel Allen etc. I think this style of voice fit my way of writing riffs and melodies very well. My melodies have a wide range and my riffs and guitar style demands a powerful voice to match and cut through. In 2003 I heard a sound clip of Patrik Johansson on the net right before the first Space Odyssey album came out. We got in touch and he was a fan from before and liked the new songs I had written so he joined Lion’s Share. I still wasn’t ready for the big race that releasing an album means with everything from the production to interviews and live shows etc, so we decided to not go public until we were 100% ready. Had we gone public the fans and media would have started requesting a new album and we had been put under pressure. Now we had the luxury of being able to work with this comeback album until we were 100% happy with it and ready to return to the scene.
Best non Lion’s Share album from Patrik would be Space Odyssey.
3 Richard Evensand was behind the drum-kit while recording “Emotional Coma”, how did you guys get together, he’s a very well known drummer for his works with Soilwork and Chimaira.. Lion’s Share’s music seems to be quite different for his previous efforts..
I early on decided that I wanted to bring more energy to the songs and that I wanted a more “modern” and “busy” drumming style. I was aware of Richard and he was my first choice for the album. Even though Richard has played on a lot of different things he’s a huge fan of Saxon, Judas Priest etc so he was really into our songs and doing this album. Unfortunately he was about to move to Australia to get married so we all knew he would only record the album and not tour with us.
4 There are some very significant guest appearences at “Emotional Coma”. Like my favorite Kiss guitar player for their post make-up era, Bruce Kullick, and one of the most important voices around these days Mats Leven (who has just left At Vance, and i just did an interview with Olaf Lenk) and Glen Drover... Can you tell us storied behind their appearences? Their involvement? Was there anybody who you thought would also be a guest musicians on this new album but you couldnt manage to arrange it?
Mats Levén is an old friend and he also did the backing vocals for our first two albums, so that was a no-brainer. His voice blends really well with Patrik’s. The studio where we did most of the demos was co owned by the former KISS Army president of Sweden, so when Bruce Kulick was in Stockholm to do a KISS Expo he suggested we invite Bruce to the studio to do a guest solo. I’m a KISS fan since I was 8, so of course I wanted a former KISS member on my record. Obviously Bruce liked the songs and cut a solo for “The Edge Of The Razor”. He even did it on my guitar since the song is tuned down and he wanted to use the whammy bar. Glen Drover from Megadeth, I’ve known for a couple of years after working with his other band Eidolon. I asked if he could do a solo and he agreed. He did it over in Canada and just sent us the file. Eric Peterson from Testament was working on a solo too for “Bloodstained Soil”, but unfortunately we had to start mixing before he managed to finish it off. They all did a killer job on the album and are extremely nice guys!

5 You’re a big fan of classic bands like Sabbath, Judas Priest, Kiss and Rainbow... it seems you dont enjoy much about the heavy music made in the 90s and 2000s : ) are there any bands you like which formed not in the 70s? : ) Rammstein for example? any else?

I like a lot of different stuff. From POP and AOR through progmetal to classic heavy metal and real aggressive stuff. I’m a fan of Arch Enemy, Soilwork, In Flames, Distrurbed, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein and many many more. It’s just that when you list your all time favorite albums it’s also a lot of nostalgia. Memories from grewing up and stuff. The albums I’ve listed at http://www.lionsshare.org/ are albums that have meant a lot emotionally to me (and still do). They have influenced my guitar style and songwriting in a big way.

for more Lion's share music: http://www.myspace.com/lionsshare