December 22, 2000

MALEVOLENT CREATION‘s Joe Black album has been remastered and now includes bonus tracks. The tracklisting: ‘Joe Black’, ‘Self Important Freak’, ‘Sadistic Perversity’, ‘No Salvation’ (remix), ‘To Kill’ (remix), ‘Tasteful Agony’ (remix), ‘Genetic Affliction’, ‘Raining Blood’, ‘Remnants Of Withered Decay’ and ‘Impaled Existence’.

Currently on the road promoting his new book, Are You Morbid? Into The Pandemonium Of Celtic Frost, TOM GABRIEL FISCHER (aka Tom G. Warrior) revealed that he will be doing "A new Frost album – we are going to attempt it at least. First we’re going to do rehearsals for songwriting this coming Spring. We all have our main projects (including APOLLYON’S SUN) , so the Frost album will be a side project. Should it work, it’ll be an ongoing side project, but on the other hand we hope we are self critical enough to not release anything should we feel it cannot live up to the standards Frost has once set. We don’t want to go and ruin Frost’s reputation with some rehash old foggie album. It’s go to be as innovative and interesting as the old Frost was, otherwise we’re not going to do it." As for Apollyon Sun, his midly-received alterna-project: "We have begun work on a second album. It’s going to be quite a large step forward from the first album, it’s going to be much darker, much heavier, it’s going to have much more interesting ideas on it. We’re trying to expand Apollyon Sun in a Frost manner, that we want to go much further and incorporate more ideas from one album to the other, perhaps in a more subtle way, but certainly in the same philosophy. We have begun work on the second album, we expect to finish it next year. We are going to go to an American label with the album. It’s too early to mention a name here because nothing has been signed yet but we have a lot of very good people with us and we’re very confident we’re going to have a much better contract for the next album than we had for the first one. We are very convinced the second album’s going to be a great step forward for the band. We’re certainly going to tour on the second album, we have toured with the first one in Europe and it was amazing, the response, the band’s very aggressive, very heavy live. That has come across really well on stage so we’re very eager to bring that to the States." Throughout the Frost biography, Fischer is quite open/bitter about his relationship with their label Noise Records during Frost’s career. As for the recent split with Sanctuary, he remarks: "When you read my book, just substitute the name Sanctuary for the name Noise, and you’ll know exactly what happened. I’m 100% serious about this. The only thing is we realized much earlier nowadays because we have more experience and we were able to quit in a mutual decision without going to court and everything. Other than that it’s probably the most short sighted label you can find nowadays. For any rock band I would strongly warn any band to go there if they want to just record the same album over and over, it’s the perfect label. That doesn’t apply to us."

The following are quotes from the ARCH ENEMY website, www.archenemy.net. "Today we were graced with the presence of the keyboard wizard from Borlange, Per Wiberg (Spiritual Beggars). He has been adding great vibes and textures to the monolithic Arch Enemy album. Using old mellotron sounds and piano he has created some really atmospheric and sometimes downright spooky stuff for us, we are very pleased! We have also been doing guitar solos over the last couple of days and that is going really well too, the brothers of metal are spitting out licks’n’tricks left right and centre, hehe… Gotta go, I hear an arpeggio. Sharlee" "Oh yezzz…we are still here, working around the clock (well, nearly anyway!) in order to deliver a great album asap! The Metal Monster (great working title, huh?) is taking form. There is now a THICK wall of ultra heavy guitars on tape (or hard disk actually as we are in pro-tools heaven/hell!). Wish you could hear it, it sounds amazing! It’s becoming quite clear to us that we have some of our best riffs ever on this album! I am also working on the lyrics a little, doing some fine tuning here and there. I will be posting the song titles soon here on the website. The lyrics cover all kinds of ground this time, and I’m really pleased with them, they are as intense as the music, really emotional stuff. Well, I should be helping Chris record right now, see you soon..bye! Michael"

CATASTROPHIC, featuring OBITUARY’s Trevor Peres and including members of PYREXIA, will release their debut album, The Cleansing, on Metal Blade Records March 6th in North America and February 5th in Europe. To find out more information and download an MP3 from The Cleasing visit: www.catastrophic.org

DARK TRANQUILLITY are planning two gigs with THE HAUNTED in Greece for January 27th and 28th. The band will also play in Karen, Gothenburg on February 8th with EVERGREY, TRANSPORT LEAGUE and IN FLAMES. The event will be broadcast live on Swedish radio.

DEICIDE are currently in Florida writing tracks for their next release, to be recorded in April and released in Fall 2001. Glen Benton pomises the "heaviest and sickest record of all time".

Former CRADLE OF FILTH guitarist/songwriter Stuart Anstis has a new ambient project called APHELION (pronounced Ap-heel-e-on). The album will be released in February on Iris Light Records. There will be a limited edition of 500 copies of this album that are individually signed by Stuart.

Necropolis Records is pleased to announce the addition of two of Japan’s finest and fiercest bands to their 2001 schedule, death metallers INTESTINE BAALISM and DEFILED.

KRISIUN are at home in Brazil working on new material for their next full-length.

BORKNAGAR have been nominated for Best Norwegian Metal Album of 2000 for a new Norwegian alternative music award. The prize goes to the band that gets the most votes through the Internet. To vote, visit the following website: www.alarmweb.org