Ross Dolan of Immolation
Intro and questions by Luxi Lahtinen

The true Death Metal pioneers from New York, Immolation, have been busy for the past 5-6 months, preparing songs for their 6th full-length opus, recording them at Millbrook Sound Studio under sensitive yet sharp ears of Paul Orofino (who also took care of the production on the last 3 Immolation albums) and getting ready to hit the road again to promote so far their most matured, advanced and strongest album to date musically titled HARNESSING RUIN.

Ross Dolan, the insanely long-haired frontman of Immolation spoke to Metal-Rules.com recently, so let´s hear what he had to say about the new album, their long-time friend and the producer of the last four Immolation albums Paul Orofino, the new guy in the Immolation –ranks Steve Shalaty, the Internet – amongst other interesting topics as well.

Now let´s get immolated gently for a moment, letting Ross to be our guide through HARNESSING RUIN piece by piece...

Pre-listening session and interview with Vesa Ranta of Sentenced at Finnvox Studio for the forthcoming (yet still unrevealed) Sentenced album.

December 21st, 2004
Article and all studio pics Luxi Lahtinen

I received a text message from the drummer of Sentenced, Vesa Ranta, 20th of December 2004 in which he asked whether I could be interested in hearing the band´s latest yet untitled 13-song studio opus in advance. Of course I couldn´t turn such an extraordinary opportunity down and accepted the invitation without hesitations, and went to Finnvox Studio next day straight from my work.

 
I think I need to point out that I heard the songs for the upcoming Sentenced album only once through and my analysis for the songs is based roughly on my notes that I wrote down while listening to the songs off that record at that time. So it might be better if you, dear reader, didn´t read them too accurately because as I told you already, I had a chance to hear the songs for the new Sentenced album not two or three times or more, BUT just once, and I can hardly remember any longer how these new 13 Sentenced songs sounded like any of that detailed way. So I had to trust to my notes that I managed to write down at Finnvox Studio and if you want to read them through right away, then scroll down to the end of the interview.

For more accurate and detailed info about the new Sentenced album, Vesa Ranta tells in this very interview basically everything from the song writing process of the new songs up to the recording sessions of the new album to the past times of the band, to how and why they even became accused being Nazis (!) by a group of religious people in their hometown Oulu some months ago.

Interview with Psychotron Drummer Gert Kopf
Interview by Lord of the Wasteland
All Pics are courtesy of Psychotron.de

Interview with Udo Dirkschneider
Interview by Marko Syrjälä & Luxi Lahtinen,
pics by Marko Syrjälä

Udo Dirkschneider is a living legend. He’s one of the founding members of Accept which is one of the most important bands in heavy metal history. Together they released series of classic albums like Balls To The Wall, Restless And Wild and Metal Heart which sold millions of copies worldwide. After he left Accept in the late eighties, Udo started a new band which was simply called U.D.O. They released four very successful albums before Udo decided to reunite with Accept but just a few years later Accept break up again and it was time to regroup U.D.O in 1997.  Now the voice of Accept has once again returned with his brand new album called Thunderball and I was lucky enough to talk with master himself before their show in Finland in October 2004.

Lunatica vocalist, Andrea Dätwyler
Interview By Anders Sandvall

Thanks to Frontiers Records for the promo pictures.
Thanks to Stefan at Atenzia records for the help with the interview.

Here comes an interview with Andrea Dätwyler, singer for the Swiss band Lunatica. They have recently released their second album FABLES AND DREAMS on Frontier Records. I’ve asked her a bit about the new album but also some general questions about the band as well.