Former Nightwish vocalist Tarja Turunen has confirmed her complete band line-up for her upcoming European tour, which also includes a date in Israel. Joining her are the following musicians:

Mike Terrana - drums (Masterplan, ex-Rage)
Maria Ilmoniemi - keyboards
Oliver Holzwarth - bass (Blind Guardian, ex-Sieges Even)
Alex Scholpp - guitars (ex-Farmer Boys)
Max Lilja - cello (Hevein, ex-Apocalyptica)

Tarja Turunen's recently updated tour schedule is now as follows:

October
18 - Oktoberhallen - Wieze, Belgium (Metal Female Voices Fest)
19 - Rockhal Club - Esch sur Alzette, Luxembourg
21 - Hala Folimanka - Prague, Czech Republic
22 - Bonver Arena (Hala Tatran) - Ostrava, Czech Republic
24 - Incheba Expo Arena - Bratislava, Slovakia
25 - Cassosport Hall - Kosice, Slovakia
27 - SKC - Belgrade, Serbia
28 - Universiada Sports Hall - Sofia, Bulgaria
31 - Exhibition Grounds Hall - Tel Aviv, Israel

November
3 - CKM Nau - Kiev, Ukraine
4 - Sport Palace - Minsk, Belarus
6 - B1 Club - Moscow, Russia
8 - MTL Arena - Samara, Russia

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Source:	metalfromfinland.com
Band profile:	Tarja

Novembers Doom have posted the following explanation regarding their cancellation of the North American tour with Rotting Christ:

"It is with much regret that we must announce our departure from the Rotting Christ tour in January, 2009. A serious medical issue arose with a member of the band, making us unable to tour during that time. While this unfortunately prevents us from participating in the tour, thankfully it has come to light now rather than at the last minute, leaving 3 months time for the promoter to find a suitable replacement for us. We wish the very best for Rotting Christ, and Epicurean, and hope their tour has great success!

Our apologies to our fans who were looking forward to seeing us. This is our greatest regret, and we assure you, we'll do our best to play for you later in 2009."

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Source:	blog.myspace.com
Band profile:	Novembers Doom
Event:	Rotting Christ: Lucifer Over America Tour

HammerFall has now begun recording their seventh studio album. Starting Monday, August 18th, you will be able to follow the 8-10 week process in the form of a video blog, on the band's Myspace. Check back for an exclusive inside look.

First video diary can be found here
Its in Swedish but with English subtitles.

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Source:	blog.myspace.com
Band profile:	HammerFall

Bob Katsionis (guitars, keyboards) recently recorded an instructional lesson that can now be viewed on FireTV, the band's official YouTube page here. Stay tuned for new episodes featuring vocal lessons from Apollo, drum lessons from Mark and additional Gus G. clips, which should be posted over the next couple of weeks.

Katsionis further comments: "In this series of lessons, I will show and explain some of my keyboard solos and parts out of 'The Premonition' album as well as present some of my simultaneous keyboard and guitar performances as these have been seen during FIREWIND gigs. This first video lesson contains stuff from the songs 'Into The Fire,' 'Angels Forgive Me' and some lead keyboard licks."

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Source:	blog.myspace.com
Band profile:	Firewind

Amon Amarth have posted the following on their official website regarding work on a new video clip:

"We recently returned from Poland after shooting the first video for the upcoming album "Twilight of the Thunder God". The video will be for the title track.

We joined efforts with the Polish team, Group 13 and director Dariusz Szermanowicz for "Twilight of the Thunder God" and filmed it on the old Viking site, Jomsborg, home of the Jomsvikings in Wolin, Poland.

Our brothers from Jomsvikings traveled from far and wide, places like Poland, Germany, Belgium, England, Australia and USA to be part of this great video.

It seemed that the Thunder God was on our side when shooting the video because a hurricane/storm passed through the area during the day, creating the chaotic and violent atmosphere we were hoping for. It was the toughest conditions we ever recorded a video in, blood and sweat, quite literally both, were part of the making. But we don't mind getting our hands dirty and metal was never supposed to be "nice". In fact we couldn't have wished for a more fitting video shoot for this song, being the Ragnarök and all!

We want to thank Igor for making this possible, Blodhvitnir Meldric and Sana, the Group 13 crew for their professional work and of course the Jomsvikings for being made of steel!

The album and video "Twilight of the Thunder God" will make its debut in September."

A series of photos from the video shoot can be seen here.

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Source:	amonamarth.com
Band profile:	Amon Amarth

German metallers Anti have issued the short following update:

''The process of the creation has begun... there are no limits... no borders... no dates... For sure... the next album will be a concept album... straight out of the mental-hospital... it isn't a circle... it's a cannonball and you have to find the core... The blessed one...''

Source:

blog.myspace.com

The following short message was posted on Abigor's MySpace page:

"The Abigor/Blacklodge Split-Album is still in progress, also the demo-box will see the light of day sooner or later... we're not dead yet."

In December last year however, the band announced the work on the material for the split album with Blacklodge was coming to an end.

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Source:	blog.myspace.com
Band profile:	Abigor

Pantheist have posted the following on their MySpace:

"As you might have noticed in the last few weeks, there have been a few changes in the tourdates with Skepticism and Ophis. We are proud to announce that the 7 dates have now been finally confirmed! This short but intense tour is going to be a unique event (not joking, considering Skepticism only tour for the second time in their long career and for us it's only our second proper tour as well). Hope to see many of you there.

In related news, we have a great time recording our third album "Journey Through Lands Unknown" with Greg at Priory Studios. The album is currently being mastered at Sonic Mastering by Rik Dowding (some of you might recognize his name from the credits of the last Portishead album; you might even have seen him, as he was their sound engineer on their recent tour). We should be able to post a full track on the myspace site by next weekend or so."

The dates are as follows:

Oct 25 Logo Hamburg, Hamburg (Ger)
Oct 26 Baroeg, Rotterdam (Ned) Dutch Doom Day VII]
Oct 27 Kunstverein, Nurnberg (Ger)
Oct 28 Black Pes, Prague (Cz)
Oct 29 Rock club na OZZaY, Nitra (Svk)
Oct 30 Escape Vienna, Wien (Aus)
Oct 31 Amnesie Berlin, Berlin (Ger)
Nov 01 Scheld'apen Antwerp, Antwerp (Bel)

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Source:	blog.myspace.com
Band profile:	Pantheïst
Event:	Pantheist

Finnish doom metallers Ordog have posted the following brief update:

"The new album is under pressing at the moment, but the release date isn't yet decided. Also Aleksi will head to military service but Ordog still keeps posting news about new album and gigs etc. There will be also soon a new lay-out for the pages and Ordog has composed couple of new songs for the future."

Source:	ordogband.com
Band profile:	Ordog

For four days in March 2008, MetalKult's Brad Angle and Jimmy Hubbard took a journey to the grim-cold heart of Norwegian black metal: Oslo, Norway.

"In this revealing four-part series, we catch up with a few of Norwegian black metal's leading acts. We go on a pub crawl through Oslo's hottest metal bars with 1349's Seidemann (bass) and Archaon (guitar), visit Notodden's ancient Heddal Stave Church, head off to Emperor/Zyklon drummer Trym's Emperial Tattoo studios (where Hubbard gets some seriously Nordic needle-and-ink action), hang with Emperor vocalist/guitarist Ihsahn at his Symphonique Studios, tour the rebuilt Holmenkollen Chapel (which was burned in 1992 by members of the black metal community), go to Helvete (the late Mayhem guitarist Euronymous' record store and informal black metal "inner circle" headquarters) and chat with Satyricon in their cavernous rehearsal studios."

Go to this location to check out the four videos.

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Source:

blogs.guitarworld.com

Latvian metallers Heaven Grey have made a new song, recorded in 2008, available for streaming online at the band's official MySpace page. The song is called "Regret" and is part of the new material the band has recorded after their debut album "Northwind", which was released ten years ago. A live video of the song can be watched at this location. The video is shot at club "Melnā Piektdiena" on 25 April.

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Source:	myspace.com
Band profile:	Heaven Grey

The UK's Gorerotted have decided to take the big step of changing their name to THE ROTTED! Having worked so hard on their new album "Get Dead Or Die Trying", the lads felt that due to the huge progression they've made from previous releases musically and lyrically and after frequent line-up changes that this was the only right thing to do.

Says frontman Ben McCrow: "The motives behind what we were doing with Gorerotted have changed over the years, and as a mark of respect for what we achieved, for previous band members and for fans, we didn't feel it was right to continue under our previous monicker. This album is gonna blow people away, I couldn't even classify it for you if I tried, all I can say is its heavy as fuck, catchy as hell and a piece of work we're all incredibly proud of. People have been affectionally referring to us as The Rotted for some time now, so it seemed like a decent change to us."

Source:	myspace.com
Band profile:	The Rotted

The following short message was posted on the home page of Elis:

''We will play at the 'Festival For Free' at the P.M.K. in Innsbruck (A) on April 19th 2008! So if you want to see Elis for free, be there!''

Also this:

''We proudly announce that we are going to play this year at Wave-Gotik-Treffen and M'era Luna Festival! We are very happy to be part of the line-up, and can't wait to play! Hope to see you there!''

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Source:	elis.li
Band profile:	Elis

The following blog has been posted on the Stormlord MySpace:

"Stormlord has signed a recording deal with Locomotive Records (Grave Digger, Astral Doors, Benedictum) to release the new, long awaited fourth full length album titled "Mare Nostrum".

The band says: "We are so excited about this new deal, Locomotive Records is one of the leading labels in metal scene and they will grant a worldwide availability to our new album. The recording session are almost finished and the stuff sound amazing, we can't wait for you to hear it, in the first weeks of March all the songs will be mixed and ready. We want to thank our former label Scarlet Records for these beautiful 8 years spent together, they have always believed in Stormlord and their support made us reach some huge goals."

"Mare Nostrum" will be released on Locomotive Records on late May.

In the band own words "it'll see Stormlord going back to an epic sound near to our first album "Supreme Art Of War", that almost ten years ago was able to influence tons of bands still growing strong in the scene, even if the style of our recent albums will not be missing. You'll find some surprises like an acoustic song, folk instruments and even some sitar parts, everything mixed with an extreme-epic attitude like it was back in the days, but with the nowadays production and a well developed technical skill."

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Source:	blog.myspace.com
Band profile:	Stormlord

The following blog has been posted at the official Pantheist MySpace page:

"As you may have not noticed, since the font is completely unreadable (one could argue that this is done deliberately as it would grant us a certain aura of kvltness, but I have to admit that it's probably the actual myspace skin that needs changing) there is a new gig date displayed on our profile: Friday 21st of March (bank holiday) we are playing at The Unicorn in Camden. That's right, after having been based in London for about 4 years now, it is about time -in true funeral doom terms- for our first ever London gig. We seek to perform mainly new tracks with a small dose of 'oldies' in between.

Furthermore, our promo has been sent to several labels, so we are awaiting for responses and feedback that will hopefully allow us to set up another perfect marriage between cynical business and idealistic naivete (without of course wanting to disclose at which side we currently are). Stay tuned as news will be announced here as soon as there is something worthwhile to mention.

Lastly, many many thanks to those who have listened to the previous promo track "The Loss Of Innocense" in the past few days. After 750 plays in ten days time or so we started to fear that people might actually become sick of the track before it's even properly recorded, so we decided to take it down again. However, your persistence and enthusiasm has moved us so we decided to give you a sneak preview of the second promo track as well for a few days."

In the meantime, a track called "Eternal Sorrow" has been posted on the band's MySpace page.

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Source:	blog.myspace.com
Band profile:	Pantheïst