Normally that's not something I'd say to people as I'm big on supporting the independent retailers. Many of the good one's in Sydney, (Such as Utopia, Red Eye, etc) know me by name, others I'm a familiar face. But I digress, today, I took a trip on the dark side, I did a massive splurge in JB, but give a guy some credit, fuck I picked up some goodies:

At Vance - Chained
Axxis - Paradise In Flames
BattleroaR - Age Of Chaos
Candlemass - King Of The Grey Islands
Edguy - Burning Down The Opera
Edguy - Lavatory Love…

This is why I should be banned from Utopia Records and all other CD stores in general, people like me too much, I get discounts and am henceforth then encouraged to buy more, I could just stop, but hey when you're getting 25% off for no real reason you tend to just buy shit, fucking hell.

So last week I ended up coming home with…

Alchemist - Organasm
Antonamasia - Keeping Nothing
Blind Guardian - Tales From The Twilight World
Darkane - Expanding Senses
Demons & Wizards - Touched By The Crimson King
Diablo Swing Orchestra - The Butcher's Ballroom…

Wintersun, the Finnish band led by former Ensiferum singer Jari Mäenpää, has issued the following update:

"It's been over a year since our last update. We are very sorry for that, but there's also a good reason. We have been struggling with the new album more than enough and the main reason in the last year has been with lots of computer problems. We had to do this album in a way that Jari finishes the album at his home studio, when the drums, bass and rhythm guitars were done at Sonic Pump Studios. We didn't predict how much…

One of the most epic chapters in power metal history has finally come to a close, late yesterday (My time at least) Timo Tolkki announced what a lot of us had seen coming, Stratovarius will be no more, you can read the whole letter here.

It's a shame to see it end like this, that there couldn't be one last show & that they never toured down here so I never got to see them live & I disagree with Tolkki on one main point. The band should have ended after Elements Part 2, that's where they essentially died for…

So the past few weeks I went a little nuts with my money, I'm not sure why, perhaps it was the booze or just because I could. But I went and saw Helloween, Black Majesty, Pain Division, Insect Warfare, Agents Of Abhorrence, Crux, Kill A Celebrity, Lycanthia, Shackles & Paradigm… So there goes a shit load of money, but totally worth it. I got some great videos at the Helloween gig as well as their tour shirt and it was awesome to see BM playing their new stuff (finally), got their…

Now don't get me wrong, I think Ripper is a great singer and all, but Matt Barlow & Iced Earth together again… Best news I've had all year.

http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/3732/icedearth012vr2.jpg

Quoth Jon Schaffer:
Hello Dear Friends!

Once again the winds of change are upon us, and this time I can say that I am very happy about the result.

While out on the European tour I had several in depth discussions with many loyal Iced Earth fans. A common theme of these discussions was how much Matt is missed. I agreed with the fans that things were not the same…

So originally I was going to do individual reviews for some of these gigs, but then I got lazy, it never happened, now I’m bored, so I’m writing one big review for the whole month.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ok starting with Saturday the 4th. The first gig for the day was at Utopia in the afternoon, the playing order was Regression, Chaos Divine & Black Asylum. Now everything was going wrong at this gig, Regression didn’t have their own mic leads and Utopia’s were broken, also the start time distributed by the bands was a…

Fucking hell, the irony of how much time it's taking Time to come out is no longer funny, this is just plain fucking annoying.

The mix has been cancelled and the release of "Time" is delayed even more. I´m sorry to disappoint everyone…again, but the album is not gonna be released this year. And unfortunately Nino has the Sonic Pump Studios booked full for this year, so we might have to think of something else.

Reason for this delay is that, I´ve set the bar really high on this album, but my equipment aren´t even close what I need to…

At long last the new vocalist for Pyramaze has been confirmed and it'll be none other then Matt Barlow of Iced Earth fame, one of the very best vocalists the metal genre has to offer combined with one of the most exciting and interesting melodic power metal bands emerging from the scene today.

Fuck I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us with their next release.

This announcement was confirmed in the current edition of Rock German Hard and you can read a transcript of the interview with Barlow on the ProgPower forums.

And to round…

Posted late Wednesday on their official site:

Great news! We're proud to announce that we've signed a worldwide deal with Dockyard 1 Records for the release of our upcoming "A World Full Of Grey" album. The release will be May for USA (through a sublicense with an as-of-yet unnamed label) and June for the rest of the world. You can check out our page on their site: http://www.dockyard1.com/eyefear/default.asp

New album, new record deal …

We're proud to announce that Eyefear has signed a worldwide deal with Dockyard1 Records for the release of…