Bloodstock was amazing, the atmosphere was great there and the line-up was great, particular highlights being Fear Factory and Bloodbath. Defiantly worth going. For those of you who couldn’t go, you’ll have to make do with my article, which can be found at this location. Below is a video of one of my favourite acts of this year, Bloodbath’s ‘Eaten’. Enjoy.

This means that a grand total of 31 of the 40 bands have been confirmed at this time! So far the line up of bands is as follows:

• Agent Steel
• Amon Amarth
• Cripper
• Dark Tranquillity
• Death Angel
• Ensiferum
• Epica
• Exodus
• Fear Factory
• Finntroll
• Forbidden
• Gamma Ray
• Iced Earth
• Korpiklaani
• Marduk
• Moonspell
• Nevermore
• Obituary
• Rage
• Raven
• Sanctuary
• Saxon
• Sodom
• Sonata Arctica
• Swashbuckle
• Testament
• Trouble
• Tyr
• Uli Jon Roth
• Unleashed
• Whitchburner

Great line up so far? I think so! But so it should be for the cost. As much as I’ve talked about it before, this sounds like one of the ultimate metal experiences. The insurance on that boat must be expensive. Over 2000 metal heads head banging and moshing on a luxury cruise liner? I know, it sounds awesome to me too…

Immortal was announced at BOA 2010 to the crowd to be appearing the following year, of course to a massive response. This will be their first UK appearance since 2002 and it’s going to be their only UK date in 2011. Bloodstock’s 2010 line-up will be hard to top for 2011, with this year including Opeth, Fear Factory, Children of Bodom and Bloodbath and Twisted Sister among others. I’m still holding out for Dethklok for this year though.

As more bands are confirmed I will be listing them here. In the mean time, look out for the Bloodstock article I wrote for Xtreme Radio over the summer. When it goes up it will be linked here.

It’s usual for bands to do well in thier home countries, and although I usually think of Kamelot as a Scandinavian band, only the lead singer Roy Khan is Scandinavian. Having just cancelled their North American tour due to Khan’s illness, their have been reports of apathy from the lead singer. Although the band seems optimistic that Khan will return to the band, could this be Kamelot’s last album featuring Khan? I hope not.

Having not heard their newest album at time I can’t say whether this success is warranted, but I’ll be reviewing it here soon enough.

25.02.2011 (H) – Petöfi Csarnok, Budapest
26.02.2011 (SLO) – Cvetlicarna, Ljubljana
27.02.2011 (I) – Alcatraz, Milan
01.03.2011 (CZ) – Masters of Rock Café, Zlín
02.03.2011 (A) – Szene, Vienna
04.03.2011 (D) – Kaminwerk, Memmingen
05.03.2011 (D) – HsD, Erfurt
06.03.2011 (B) – Hof ter Lo, Antwerp
07.03.2011 (D) – Garage, Saarbrücken
08.03.2011 (CH) – Z7, Pratteln
10.03.2011 (F) – Theatre Barbey, Bordeaux
11.03.2011 (E) – Apolo, Barcelona
12.03.2011 (E) – La Riviera, Madrid
13.03.2011 (E) – Rock Star Live, Bilbao
15.03.2011 (F) – Transbordeur, Lyon
16.03.2011 (F) – Élysée Montmartre, Paris
18.03.2011 (GB) – Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
19.03.2011 (GB) – Corporation, Sheffield
20.03.2011 (GB) – Garage, Glasgow
22.03.2011 (GB) – Academy 2, Manchester
23.03.2011 (GB) – Milennium Music Hall, Cardiff
24.03.2011 (GB) – Sub 89, Reading
25.03.2011 (GB) – Koko, London
26.03.2011 (D) – Essigfabrik, Cologne
28.03.2011 (NL) – Effenaar, Eindhoven
29.03.2011 (NL) – Patronaat, Haarlem
30.03.2011 (D) – Halle Gartlage, Osnabrück
31.03.2011 (D) – Substage, Karlsruhe

MetalTube will deal with anything Metal on YouTube, such as concert videos, interviews, song covers, channels and more! So starting from a week today, I’ll be posting what will technically be the third YouTube video in the series (MT #3).

Stay tuned!

One thing I did read about that got me excited was that Sonata Arctica are recording a second live CD after ‘For the Sake Of Revenge’ in Milan, and from the looks of it, it’ll be even better than the first one! On their site, it’s been announced that the DVD will include numerous things including:

• A recording of the two hour concert in Milan: The site describes this show as “a journey from the beginning of their career as one of the most popular Fi[n]nish metal bands until now” as it looks like they’ll be playing old classics building up to newer material. Defiantly looks like a great show for diehard SA fans.
• A recording of SA’s open air gig in Kemi: In addition to the first show, the DVD will feature the bands open air festival in their hometown of Kemi in Finland.
• Bonus behind the scenes footage from interviews, tours ect… : As amusing as the ‘Men from the North in the ‘Land of the the Rising Sun” was, it would have been nice to have some other proper bonus material to back it up with. If it’s well produced the behind the scenes stuff will defiantly be of interest. In all seriousnes though I hope they do a feature similar to the documentary from the last DVD. It was brilliantly funny (it’s basically a documentary about the bands drinking!).

All in all, it looks promising, and on a similar note their show in Milan looks like it’ll be a good one as well. Expect reviews on here, even if it just turns out to be of the DVD.

Sonata Arctica’s homepage can be found here.

It is taken from the bands second real life album, ‘Dethalbum II‘. It comes from the episode ‘Dethcarraldo’ where the band travels to the Amazon and to find the drug ‘Yopo’.

Todays cover comes from YouTube user YamiRyan4509 and can be found here. Apparently it’s a re-record of a cover he already did of the same song, although the original is nowhere to be found (although it’s probable that the last few lines at the very end of the video is the original). The cover itself is great. The vocals are different enough to make the cover fresh and different, but close enough to the original to be familiar. It’s defiantly one of the top amateur covers I’ve seen, and the 5 star rating attests to it.  The audio quality was good as well, as was the quality of the overall household.

You can also find more covers on YamiRyan’s YouTube profile, which can be found here. It’s a shame that there aren’t more Dethklok covers on his profile. His are by far the best on YouTube.

The Santa hat was a nice touch.

Finntroll was formed in 1997 by Jan ‘Katla’ Jämsen who performed vocals and wrote the lyrics and guitarist Teemu ‘Somnium’ Raimoranta. They produced their first demo ‘Rifvader’ (‘Ripfarther’) a year later, and a year after that they released their first album, ‘Midnattens Widunder’ (‘Midnight’s Monster’). In 2001, they released ‘Jaktens Tid’ (‘Age of the Hunt’), which was the last album to feature the two founding fathers of the band.

Katla was the first to go, due to a throat tumor that prevented him from singing. He quit the band and ‘Tapio Wilska’ was called in as a replacement. Somnium tragically died when he fell of a bridge onto the ice below the bridge. He was replaced by Mikael ‘Routa’ Karlbom. After these replacements, the band put out it’s only ever album to be completely devoid of the influence of the founders – ‘Nattfödd’ (‘Nightborn’). Ironically this album and the EP that preceded it spawned Finntroll’s most popular song ‘Trollhammaren’ (‘The Troll Hammer’). However, in 2006 the band went through another change of personnel when Wilska was fired from the band for unknown reasons.

Mathias ‘Vreth’ Lillmåns joined the band to fill the missing place. Also rejoining the band, albeit in a strictly creative capacity, was Katla. Katla wrote the lyrics for the 2007 album ‘Ur Jordens Djup’ (‘From the depths of the Earth’) and the new 2010 album ‘Nifelvind’ (‘Wind of Hell’).

Vreth’s style of vocals moved the band more towards Black Metal than it had been previously. The band’s original style was Folk Metal with Black Metal influences. However, the style of folk music that the band’s unique style was based on was Finnish folk music, a style called ‘Humppa’. At one point, in the transition period in between Katla and Wilska the band even released an entirely acoustic album called ‘Visor Om Slutet’ (‘Songs of the End’), which followed this musical style closely. Although Finnish folk influence has always been, and continues to be, a major part of the style of Finntroll, the band has steadily been gaining more and more Black Metal elements, to the point now where it could be argued their style could be called ‘Finnish Black Folk Metal’.

The band’s changing style will can be best experienced by listening to songs throughout the entire discography of the band. The ones I recommend would be:

• ‘Midnattens Widunder’ from ‘Widnattens Widunder’ (1999)
• ‘Skogens Hämnd’ from ‘Jaktens Tid’ (2001)
• ‘Svart Djup’ from ‘Visor Om Slutet’ (2003)
• ‘Trollhammaren’ from ‘Nattfödd’ (2004)
• ‘Sång’ from ‘Ur Jordens Djup’ (2007)

If you only listen to one song, I recommend ‘Trollhammaren’.

Personal favorites – ‘En Mätig Här’ from ‘Ur Jordens Djup’ (2007) and ‘Jaktens Tid’ from the album of the same name (2001).