Monthly Archives October 2015

Although Halloween has been rather recently adopted in Europe as well, I like celebrating it with my friends since I was a teenager. I view it as the one night a year when people will not question you for having an awesome and creepy choice in clothing and overall look! Therefore, for such a fun holiday an equally fun playlist must create the background music. If you are lacking inspiration, I made a spooky little playlist with 10 of my favourite tracks that fit with the occasion. Check it out and feel free to leave comments with your favourite songs as well! Enjoy:

Embassy of Silence is a really cool (and I rarely say this) Finnish band with an eclectic yet somewhat humoristic approach. From the first song I listened I was hooked and definitely intrigued. Therefore, I got in touch with Tero and Samu and we had a really awesome Skype chat that you can read below. We touched upon all sorts of subjects ranging from the creation process, how they keep things funny, future plans and more! Check it out and if you want a good laugh, don’t miss the video at the end:

Alexandra: For those who are not familiar with you, could you briefly introduce yourselves?

Tero: I can start with this. I’m Tero Kalliomäki guitarist, composer from Embassy of Silence. The band started in 2007 with me and Ines...

German thrash masters EXUMER will enter the studio in Dortmund/Germany on October 19th, to record the follow up for “Fire & Damnation”, which was released worldwide via Metal Blade Records in 2012.

The band will once again team up with producer Waldemar Sorychta (Sodom, Moonspell, Grip Inc., Tiamat etc.), who had produced the band’s comeback album in 2011.

Vocalist Mem V. Stein comments: “We take our time to record/release our records in order to deliver the most exciting and quality products for our fans. We are fortunate enough that Metal Blade gives us the space, time and freedom we need to write the album we believe will advance the band the most...

A couple of days ago me and my camera took another trip to Lutakko for the Battle Beast gig. I must confess that I went to this gig at first because my dad told me that I should cover it. I haven’t listened to Battle Beast in quite some time, since the release of their second album, which I reviewed back then. However, I was more than amazed: the whole gig, with All Rise as an opening act, was more like a party with close friends than anything else! You could see everyone on stage and in the audience was having a blast and you can also see it in the photos. Without further ado, these are my shots from that evening taken in between dancing and headbanging (oh yeah, thanks dad!):

All Rise

Battle Beast

Simulacrum is a very unique sounding band from Finland. I say unique because listening to them one can’t help but find an orderly chaos. An easy label would be progressive metal, but there’s definitely more than meets the eye! I managed to catch Chrism (keyboards and a bunch of other roles as you’ll read below)  for a Skype chat and this is what I found out:

I have seen that you have more than one role in the band. Could you tell us a bit about what other things you do except playing keyboards?

I also have a company called ‘Dark Noise Productions’ and I do all the production work,  recording demos and also I have been doing a lot of music videos lately for different bands.

The term Simulacrum is a representation or an imitation of a person or thing...

PHANTASMA, the new Symphonic Rock musical of Charlotte Wessels (DELAIN), Georg Neuhauser (SERENITY) and Oliver Philipps (EVERON) has just premiered the first music video of their upcoming debut The Deviant Hearts: “Let It Die”.

Read what the band has to say about the brand new music video and the track “Let It Die”:

“ ‘Let It Die’ is the album finale and one of the emotional peaks of “The Deviant Hearts”. The video was shot surrounded by nothing but Austrian woods and origami cranes. We can’t wait for you to see the result. Stay tuned!”

The Deviant Hearts will hit the stores on November 20th and will be available in the formats listed below:
– Ltd Edition Earbook, Bonus Track, 48 Page Booklet including Novel “The Deviant Hearts” + 2 Bonus CD’s incl...

CATS IN SPACE‘s new video for the song “Last Man Standing” can be seen here. The song is taken from the exciting album ‘Too Many Gods‘, landing on Earth on October 30, 2015 via Harmony Factory/Cargo Records.

CATS IN SPACE recently released a making of video. In depth interview with the principal songwriters Mick Wilson and Greg Hart featuring how “Mr Heartache” the first single was developed.

CATS IN SPACE is a brand new six piece band who, armed with their exciting brand of ‘Power Pop Rock’, will transport you back to the heady days of the 70s when bands like ELO, Queen, 10cc & Cheap Trick, in particular, ruled the airwaves.  CATS in SPACE featuring band members with a wealth if experience in the music business for over 30 years, both as writers and performers for bands like: The ...

Last Saturday, the 17th of October, I went to visit the Heavy Metal Maniacs Festival in P60, Amstelveen. It was a small festival, with six bands in the line-up and a single stage. Though there were only six bands playing, there was a great variety of genres. I’ll be giving you a short review of the amazing day I’ve had.

The band to start the day was Snaggletoöth, a Dutch Motörhead cover band, and had all the right to call themselves that. Not only did they sound quite like Motörhead, but the looks were alike as well. They mostly played some classics, such as “Ace of Spades” and “Overkill”, which was greatly appreciated by the crowd. It was a great band to start off with, which surely warmed us up for what was about to come.

Junkyard Drive was the second band to take the sta...

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to send some questions over to the Finnish band Diablo and the lead singer, Rainer, discussed in detail about their upcoming release (30th of October) ‘Silver Horizon’. For those not familiar with Diablo, they have been a part of the Finnish scene since the late 90’s and have quite a unique style with plenty of influences. I recommend checking them out, they are definitely worth it (link with a song below the interview)!