Posted on the band's official website:

"Dear friends

After auditioning some really good singers during the last couple of months, we have finally found a new band-brother -none other than singer extraordinaire Urban breed (ex-Tad Morose) has joined our ranks, and we are all very excited. Urban is well known for his powerful voice, stage presence and great diversity. We welcome Urban into the band, and we hope that our fantastic fans will approve of this choice too. Trust us when we say there's no one better to fill out the big shoes left by his predecessors. To those of you who do not know Urban yet, I would like to encourage you to check out the MP3's at the end of this announcement - this is just a little taste of what Urban sounds like. Please note - the songs are NOT new Pyramaze songs, but material from Urban's past recordings. Thanks for your attention, and now on to a statement from Urban himself.

Michael Kammeyer.

Samples from the previous work of Urban breed:

> Tad Morose - Anubis
> Tad Morose - Servant Of The Bones
> Bloodbound - Crucified

Statement from Urban:

Hello everyone

I am very pleased to join ranks with the great guys and talented musicians of Pyramaze. I'm looking forward to the challenge of filling those big shoes and working with these guys live and in the studio. I think we have a lot to offer each other, and I hope Pyramaze fans are as excited as we are to hear us working together.

Urban breed"

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Source:	pyramaze.com
Band profile:	Pyramaze

The following message has been posted on the Bloodstock website:

"Due to an overwhelming request for day tickets, Bloodstock Open Air has announced the sale of a limited number of day tickets for this year's festival.

As the venue is limited to 10,000 capacity the day tickets will be sold on a strictly first come, first serve basis.

This year's Bloodstock Open Air festival takes place on August 15-17 at Catton Hall, Derby, and promises to be the biggest and best yet. With three stages boasting a frankly stunning line-up of steel-plated talent from around the globe, it promises to be the finest metal festival the UK has ever witnessed. Alongside headliners Nightwish, Dimmu Borgir and Opeth, fans will also be able to see the likes of the recently reunited At The Gates, who will be making their only appearance on a UK stage in 2008, plus Helloween, Iced Earth, Napalm Death, Overkill, Soilwork, As I Lay Dying, Primal Fear, Destruction, Evile, Moonsorrow, Akercocke, Grand Magus and many, many more.

If you think you can cope with the entire three-days of metal heaven, weekend tickets (which include camping) cost £85 and are available from the Bloodstock website as well as selected HMV stores around the UK and major online ticket sites.

Please Note: There has only been a small number of Day tickets allocated on a first come first serve basis and therefore certain days will sell out before others.

Click Here to get your Bloodstock Festival Tickets today !!

Regards

Bloodstock Team"

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Source:	bloodstock.uk.com
Event:	Bloodstock Open Air 2008

Drummer Andrè Hilgers has left the band, as an update on the official Axxis website states:

Andrè Hilgers (drums) and Axxis will go different ways by mutual agreement. Andrè will concentrate his full energy on Rage in the future. We wish him the greatest success out there and we want to say: thanxx for all! We're sure that we all will hear a lot of positive things in the future from Andrè.

Bernhard: "Andrè is a great person and a super drummer. He would earn to reach the top-ten list of the best drummers in Germany. We will miss him."

Harry: "We wish Andrè all the best for his future and we're looking back on wonderful 4 years in a successful time."

Andrè Hilgers started drumming for fellow German metallers Rage as of last year.

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Source:	axxis.de
Band profile:	Axxis

The Download Festival to take place in the spiritual home of rock Castle Donington that is set to kick off this Friday, is about to attempt the world record for "the Most People Made Up As KISS".

The message on the festival website reads:

"We have joined forces with FACE, the official body of face-painters who are providing at least of 20 professional face-painters in order to achieve our goal! - We hope to be able to set a record for over 400 faces painted within 3 hours.

Face painting by our accredited painters is FREE, please don't do your own make up - remember - in order to break the record, we can only accept faces painted by FACE members. Expert face paint makers, Mehron, are very kindly sponsoring the attempt by providing all the necessary paint...

The attempt will take place on Friday 13 June with face painting starting at 13:00 and finishing at 16:00. - The face painters stations will be based in and on the edge of 'Kidney Wood' which is the kidney shaped green area close to the day ticket entrance in the Main Arena.

The stations will be split into four sections concentrating on each of the faces - The Demon, Star Child, The Cat and The Spaceman.

Once you've had your face painted, you'll given details of where to congregate to be part of our mass KISS award-winning photograph!"

KISS are set to headline the first day of the festival, and also original KISS guitarist Ace Frehley is set to play the second day with his solo band.

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Source:	downloadfestival.co.uk
Event:	Download Festival 2008

Tom Gabriel Fischer has launched his new band named Triptykon, and set up a myspace page at this location.

One new song entitled "Crucifixus" is available to be heard on the myspace page.

The logo of the new band can be viewed here.

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Source:

myspace.com

Agnostic Front have announced a short tour of the U.K. to take place in August, full dates as follow:

Sat 09 - Luton, University (Sub Club)
Sun 10 - Blackpool, Wintergarten
Mon 11 - Peterborough, Met Lounge
Tue 12 - Newport, T.J.'s

Luton doors 7pm tickets £12 in advance (subject to booking fee)
Blackpool doors 12pm day ticket £30 in advance (subject to booking fee)
Peterborough doors 7.30pm ticket £12 in advance (subject to booking fee)

Buy online at www.ticketmaster.co.uk or individual box offices.

The album "Warriors" is available though Nuclear Blast Records now.

www.agnosticfront.com
www.myspace.com/agnosticfront

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"Mithras are searching for a sticksman to man the kit at future live shows.

Applicants should be familiar with the Mithras material; be skilled with blastbeats / double kick drumming / and have decent general drumming ability.

Mithras aim to play a decent number of shows and possibly tour in 2009 and simply need a drummer to complete their live line-up.

The band asks potential candidates to contact them on the following email address: band@mithras.org.uk"

Source:	mithras.org.uk
Band profile:	Mithras

Meshuggah have announced a headlining tour of the U.K. to take place in September, full dates as follow:

September
Thu 04 - Brighton, Concorde 2
Fri 05 - London, LA2
Sat 06 - Newcastle, Academy
Mon 08 - Glasgow, Garage
Tue 09 - Manchester, Academy 3
Wed 10 - Sheffield, Corporation
Thu 11 - Birmingham, Academy 2
Fri 12 - Bristol, Academy
Sat 13 - Notthingham, Rock City

Tickets are priced £13 except Newcastle, Bristol and Birmingham where they are £12 (£15 in London) (subject to booking fee) and are available to buy at www.seetickets.com or 24hr cc hotline 0870 264 3333. Tickets also available at individual box offices. Doors are at 7pm and Meshuggah are onstage at 9pm. Support TBC.

The album "ObZen" is available through Nuclear Blast records now.

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Band profile:	Meshuggah
Event:	Meshuggah: U.K. Tour

Nuclear Blast have released an E-Card for the new Testament album "The Formation of Damnation" which was released on April 25. The E-Card includes a gallery, a biography, and samples for each song of the new album.

The E-Card can be found at this location.

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Band profile:

Testament

Tobias Sammet has posted the following statement on his official website:

"How are you doing? It's been a while since I have been speaking to you. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you for your great support. "The Scarecrow" is an album that means a lot to me and it was quite a commercial risk to just follow my heart instead of doing exactly what people expected. But if I take a look at the chart positions and sales - it went into the album charts in 16 countries, hitting the Top10 in four countries - it seems like you appreciate my honesty! Thank you!

Now preparing for the festival summer with Avantasia seems so surreal. Avantasia has never been on stage before and all of the sudden we are headlining the biggest festivals in the world, just been confirmed for the Sziget festival in Hungary on the 13th of August, playing amongst legendary bands such as R.E.M., die Ärzte, Iron Maiden and the Sex Pistols. Amazing!

The Avantasia line up will be Jorn Lande, André Matos, Amanda Somerville, Olli Hartmann, Bob Catley (not all shows), Sascha Paeth, Miro, Robert Hunecke, Claudy Yang and Frank Lindenthal who is gonna replace Eric Singer who'll be playing with KISS. Despite all rumors Michael Kiske will not be there, as he didn't wanna do it and I respect that! We'll put on a huge epic show anyway. Nobody has done something like that before and I swear, nobody will ever forget the event, neither you nor us!!!"

Avantasia tour dates are currently as follows:

07.06.2008 SWE, Sölvesborg - Sweden Rock Festival 2008
06.06.2008 SUI, Huttwil - Rocksound Festival
10.06.2008 RUS, Moscow
13.06.2008 JPN, Tokyo
15.06.2008 MEX, Mexico City
18.06.2008 ARG, Buenos Aires
20.06.2008 CHI, Santiago
22.06.2008 BRA, Sao Paulo
04.07.2008 SER, Smederevo - Castle Festival
10.07.2008 CZE, Vizovice - Masters Of Rock
12.07.2008 ESP, Zaragoza - Monsters Of Rock / Metal Way 2008
26.07.2008 ITA, Milan - Rockin' Field Festival
01.08.2008 GER, Wacken - Wacken Open Air 2008
12.08.2008 HUN, Budapest - Sziget Festival

Source:	tobiassammet.com
Band profile:	Avantasia

The following message has been posted on the official Axel Rudi Pell website:

"Just would like to let you know that we will enter the studio on April 20th to start recording the next CD. I completed the writing process for all songs and I'm very proud to tell you, that the next record will be awesome! It will feature 10 songs, runs approx. 60 minutes and has NO Intro... hahaha...! Also there will be NO coverversion on it... I'll keep you updated with some more Infos and photos during the next coupla months..."

"The CD will be released by SPV in Germany on October 24th and in Europe on October 27th. The release date for the USA will be confirmed very soon. Catch the band live this year at the Rock Of Ages and Wacken Open Air festivals during the summer. A headlining tour is planned for January 2009"

Details will be updated on the official site in the coming months.

Source:	axel-rudi-pell.de
Band profile:	Axel Rudi Pell

"Rumors have been circulating for some time, but Guitar World has confirmed that Ripper Owens is indeed the new lead singer for Yngwie Malmsteen. Yngwie announced the news to the Guitar World staff today when he came to the magazine's New York headquarters for an exclusive interview and photo shoot.

Malmsteen and Owens, who formerly fronted Judas Priest, are hard at work on a new CD, which is currently scheduled for a July release."

Source:	guitarworld.com
Band profile:	Yngwie Malmsteen

It is time once more for the annual Metal Storm Awards to take flight and collect your votes! It is up to you to decide just which of the many great albums of 2007 deserve the glory of being hailed winner in their category.

As the trend has been the past number of years, 2007 provided us once more with another fantastic year for metal of all kinds, which once again proved to be a more difficult task than we first imagined where agreeing on the limited amount of nominations is concerned. Indeed each category we feel has the best selection of albums from over the span of the year with the focus on the quality of the albums, not to be swayed by the big names that may just assume they have a place. Of course if your favourite is not nominated, you can still vote for it using the "write-in vote" to have your say about it.

This year we have nineteen genre categories as well as the other usuals for biggest surprise and letdown, etc. and of course our "drama of the year" to spice things up even further.

The voting is open for one month; it is time to make yourselves heard! Visit the Metal Storm Awards.

Metal Storm Staff

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The following message has been posted on the official Mat Sinner website:

"Well, we can announce one of the rare Sinner shows today and it's already around the corner. The band will appear on March 8th at the Komma, Esslingen/Germany to kick ass @ the 3rd ROW Festival, a now traditional and established charity festival, organized by some close friends incl. former Sinner drummer Ralf Schulz. Check out their website here!

In other news, the songwriting for Sinner's new album "Crash & Burn" is in full swing. A first songwriting session with Henny Wolter was unbelievable creative and we wrote some cool stuff, with a smile on our faces and a great foundation for more forthcoming sessions. Klaus & Christof are writing too at the moment. Next week, my friend Igor Gianola (UDO etc.) is coming to my studio, because we have some cool ideas for the new Sinner album and I'm writing with Ronny Milianowicz & company again. The target is loud & clear - the new Sinner album and the first for AFM Records will be a steaming, rocking and very traditional heavy rock album! We plan to start the recordings in late March for a September 2008 release! Later this month In addition, I will record some bass tracks for Alex Beyrodt's first solo album!

And as you think, there's a well deserved break for Primal Fear after 3 months of touring, you're wrong :-) - as promised earlier, we're working hard on our ten years anniversary tour, called "10 Years Of Metal" - it will be around one week with very special concerts, a special setlist and a big party! As all Metal Commando dudes asked us - yes, there will be a show in Reichenbach again! Stay tuned for more information & updates soon!"

Source:	matsinner.de
Band profile:	Sinner

The following bands have all been confirmed for this year's Hellfest Summer Open Air in Clisson, France, with still over thirty more to be announced:

7 Seconds, Alchemist, Arkhon Infaustus, Ava Inferi, Baroness, Belphegor, Coalesce, Comeback Kid, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Dimmu Borgir, Dying Fetus, Evile, Himsa, In Flames, Job For A Cowboy, Madball, Marduk, Mayhem, Municipal Waste, Necrophagist, NOFX, Obituary, Opeth, Origin, Primordial, Rotten Sound, Satyricon, Sodom, Today Is The Day, The Ocean, Treponem Pal, Ultra Vomit, Watain, Year Of No Light

For the full line-up visit this page.

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Source:	hellfest.fr
Event:	Hellfest Summer Open Air 2008