Swedish melodic metallers Dragonland are back on their stellar musical quest with a brand new album, programmatically entitled "Astronomy", destined to amaze the dedicated listeners of technically challenging bombastic metal, but also sure to positively surprise those of you who haven't yet been exposed to the impressing compositional quality of this virtuoso six-piece. Guitarist Olof Mörck comments the 4th opus as follows: "This album is another huge step on the way of finding our unique galaxy in the melodic metal firmament. It is partly a musical resumé over our previous career, retaining all the core elements of what made Dragonland what we have always been about, but most of all it is a progression towards the future of metal and powerful music in general".

Let us take a quick look back to recap the band's past: After their formation in summer of 1999, Dragonland released two albums ("The Battle Of The Ivory Plains" and "Holy War") via the Greek label Black Lotus Records and toured Japan in May 2003. "Japan was something like a turning point of our career, we came back with bustling creative minds", guitarist Nicklas Magnusson explains. Most of the musicians are known from playing in bands like Prophanity (guitarist Nicklas Magnusson), Nightshade (bassist Christer Pedersen) or Nostradameus (drummer Jesse Lindskog) while keyboardist Elias Holmlid helped out King Diamond on their tour in 2001 and recorded keyboards for Falconer's second album. Soon after signing with Century Media Records the band was ready to attack recording their third epic masterpiece, "Starfall", in Division One Studio. Evergrey mastermind and frontman Tom S. Englund as well as Arnold Lindberg made sure that the band's vision was perfectly captured in the newly built super-studio in Gothenburg. "Our ambition to create a fresh sound was thoroughly realized in Division One Studios, the final production perfectly fits our songs", vocalist Jonas Heidgert states.

The songs on "Starfall" ranged from the three minute metal-hit and title-track "Starfall" to the 11-minute epic "The Book Of Shadows" - a trilogy that comes with an inspiring and adventurous story. People like Tom S. Englund, Arnold Lindberg and Henrik Danhage (Evergrey) added the icing on the cake by guesting with vocals and guitars on a whole number of tracks. The visuals for the album were done by ToxicAngel, whose services have been used by Sonata Arctica and Children Of Bodom. Metalheads and lovers of powerful, atmospheric music instantly embraced "Starfall", honoring DRAGONFALL's most important step to a new creative peek in their career.

Two years after the launch of "Starfall" album, Dragonland returned to quality-trademarked Studio Fredman (HammerFall, Opeth, Dimmu Borgir, etc.) for the realisation of "Astronomy" and achieved their most complete and comprehensive work to date: From the epic vibe of the opening track "Supernova" or "Cassiopeia", the compact approach of the title track, the power-ballad "Too Late For Sorrow" and the grand finale with the classically inspired depth of the trilogy "The Old House on the Hill" (a 14-minute movie score piece), "Astronomy" is a through and through passionate musical journey of atmospheric and majestic sound landscapes, vocally enriched by guest vocal features ranging from angelic female passages to aggressive death metal shouts, which help adding a new dimension of amplitude to the band's predominantly melodic overall character. Niklas Sundin's (Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, Arch Enemy, etc.) gifted conceptual artwork and Olle Carlsson's (The Haunted, Soilwork, Nevermore, etc.) brilliant photography round off the packaging for this ambitioned, modern album, which is sure to appeal to fans of Nightwish, Yngwie Malmsteen or Dragonforce, but also proggier acts like Evergrey and Soilwork.