Day: August 19, 2020

DEMONS & WIZARDS is one of the most legendary collaborations in the history of heavy metal, uniting the talents of Jon Schaffer (Iced Earth) and Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian) who are friends for nearly 3 decades. Originally, formed in 1997, DEMONS & WIZARDS musically embodies both musician’s stylistic trademarks and has resulted so far with two hugely celebrated studio albums, 1999’s “Demons & Wizards” and 2005’s “Touched by the Crimson King”.

01 Crimson King (remaster 2019)
02 Beneath These Waves (remaster 2019)
03 Terror Train (remaster 2019)
04 Seize The Day (remaster 2019)
05 The Gunslinger (remaster 2019)
06 Love’s Tragedy Asunder (remaster 2019)
07 Wicke Witch (remaster 2019)
08

The new release brings back a lot of the thrashiness, that has been somewhat absent from anything the band has done since their 1985 debut ,,Hellish Crossfire”. For fans of Kreator, Sodom & old-school German speed/thrash.

01 Sacred Slaughter
02 Descend
03 Sands Of Time
04 Demons
05 What We’re Living For
06 Emerald Eyes
07 Fiery Winds Of Death
08 Sacrificed
09 Bridges Are Burning
10 Heaven In Red
11 Dark Sorcery

Style:Progressive Rock & Metal
Release:18.09.2020
Contry:Norway

01 Space Cowboy
02 Hourglass
03 Fireworker
04 Antique
05 Sapien

Also appearing on the album are Joe Bonamassa, Steve Vai, Zakk Wylde, Kiko Loureiro, Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal, Billy Sheehan, Tony Franklin, Jimmy Johnson. Sherinian is very proud of what ‘The Phoenix’ represents, especially in its joyous sense of diversity. “‘The Phoenix’ once again represents my ability to not only be a musical chameleon, but my ability to blend my signature style with the top guitarists in the world, of many genres.” ‘The Phoenix’ is available as a Limited Edition Digipak CD and LP + CD.

01 The Phoenix
02 Empyrean Sky
03 Clouds Of Ganymede
04 Dragonfly
05 Temple Of Helios
06 Them Changes
07 Octopus Pedigree
08 Pesadelo

Scary man with the scythe is the winter snow.
The album was recorded ‘virtually’ in April 2020 at the height of the Coronavirus lockdown with long term collaborators Mike Portnoy (drums) and Randy George (bass):
“It’s the first album we have ever made remotely: I sent them the basic tracks and asked if they wanted to rearrange things, but they just said ‘No, it’s great!’, so they just played to it and sent their parts back over. It wasn’t an easy way to make an album, but creating always has its challenges, no matter how you do it.” Sola Gratia will be available as a Limited CD+DVD Digipak (including making of documentary), Gatefold 2LP + CD, Standard CD Jewelcase.

01 Preface
02 Overture
03 In The Name Of The Lord
04 Ballyhoo (the

Metal City with its humorous cover artwork (“it’s a comic book inspired theme, we are all lunatics and we figured we all wanna be superheroes, so we went for it”) was recorded at production legend Michael Wagener’s studio in Nashville. “The album was produced by us, Mike Heller engineered his drums and Michael Wagner engineered everything else. We then turned the tracks over to a guy called Zeuss who did a great job mixing and mastering it. So it’s been a departure for us process-wise. We kinda got dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming…but the new tools are great as long as you use them, and they aren’t using you.”

01 The Power
02 Top Of The Mountain
03 Human Race
04 Metal City
05 Battlescarred
06 Cy