New Swedish doomsters AVATARIUM - featuring legendary doom metal pioneer Leif Edling (CANDLEMASS) on bass, Marcus Jidell (EVERGREY) on guitar, Carl Westholm (CANDLEMASS) on keyboards, Lars Sköld (TIAMAT) on drums, and singer extraordinaire Jennie-Ann Smith - have revealed the cover artwork and track listing for their upcoming self-titled debut album, due out in the North America on November 26th.
“As opposed to many contemporary artists eager to express their inner emotional turmoil, my ambitions as a painter stand first and foremost from a lifelong love of hard rockin´music and the inherently darker iconography of that genre,” states Swedish artist Erik Rovamperä (CANDLEMASS), who created the album artwork. “I’m seldom one to channel personal experiences in my art but rather view my work as part of the Heavy Metal tradition forged by likes of Derek Riggs [IRON MAIDEN], Ken Kelly [RAINBOW, KISS], and many more. In the specific case of AVATARIUM, my sources of inspiration have come to include the heretical idolatry of the pre-Christianized cults throughout ancient Europe and esoteric allegories of the late medieval secret societies.”
Guitarist Marcus Jidell unveils an insight on the birth of Avatarium:
“When we started to demo the songs on this album, we had one thing that we thought was extremely important: We wanted to make music that was heavy, dark and poetic. Also, we had an urge to make an album with a very organic sound and no ‘fixing and trixing’ in computers but just try to make great emotional music. During the whole process, we have been looking for feeling rather than trying to make everything technically perfect. I think that everything really came together the first day Jennie-Ann came in the studio and sung ‘Moonhorse.’ She had everything we looked for in a singer: Rock n' Roll attitude, Jazz and Blues feel, a big and powerful voice, and yet so able to be fragile and extremely tender in her interpretation of the songs. If you like heavy, dark riffs and big guitars, emotional, raw and bluesy vocals, thunderous and groovy drums I am quite sure that you'll like AVATARIUM. We are very proud to present the first but not the last AVATARIUM album to you. ”
The track listing for Avatarium is:
01. Moonhorse
02. Pandora's Egg
03. Avatarium
04. Boneflower
05. Bird Of Prey
06. Tides Of Telepathy
07. Lady In The Lamp
The band’s 3-song Moonhorse limited edition vinyl EP will be released in North America on October 29th and will be exclusively available through Nuclear Blast USA’s Webshop.
The Moonhorse EP track listing is:
01 – Moonhorse
02 – Boneflower
03 – War Pigs (Black Sabbath cover)
Visit AVATARIUM online at www.facebook.com/AVATARIUMOFFICIAL.
