Already seven new bands from the most different dark genres join the M’era Luna Line-up 2008: APOCALYPTICA, APOPTYGMA BERZERK, TANZWUT, THE VISION BLEAK, FRANK THE BAPTIST, END OF GREEN, ELIS
You don’t have to make many words about APOCALYPTICA. In a scene that likes to put bands into drawers and then slams the commode APOCALYPTICA successfully defended their widespread repertoire again and again. Not only as the international leader of the market but also as a band that created its own market - and that proves time and time again that Rock music has nothing to with the instruments you play it on but with the attitude one has. Or with the attitude one has been born with. Since the release of their first album (‘Plays Metallica By Four Cellos', 1996), APOCALYPTICA - altogether graduates of the respected Sibelius Academy in Finland – created a style which is hard to describe. But in the end the fact remains, that no other group consisting of classical trained cellists (and Metal Fans) tried to fuse the seemingly incompatible worlds of classic and hard rock…of Prokofjew & Pantera…Schostakowitsch & Slayer. To find the shortest path between the orchestra- and the moshpit, Jacket and denim jacket without putting the respect for either the one or the other side on the line.
During the last 15 year APOPTYGMA BERZERK made themselves a fixed and probably unique place in the music scene somewhere between Electro, New Wave & Rock. Their fan base continuously grows and their influence not least shows itself in the work with artists like A-HA, Good Charlotte, AFI and Scala with whom they reworked songs in the past year. In summer 2008 their long awaited new album will finally be released.
Also unique and hard to categorize is the Medieval Industrial Rock of TANZWUT. Harsh electronic sounds do justice to the industrial. Slicing guitar riffs, bass and drums of the harder kind provide for a leading Rock and at times Metal factor. And archaic notations spread a breath of ecstasy. TANZWUT have become famous and well-known for their impressing live shows in the last years. They stand an opulent feast in the sands of shiftless stage shows. A carefully arranged stage design, self created live outfits from the chain armour to metal fittings and the breechclout. Unique instruments and a fantastic choreography are – besides the stirring music – the ingredients for the sweat-inducing TANZWUT live shows.
Unpretentiousness is a stranger’s word for THE VISION BLEAK. Their music is dark and powerful. Content wise they go back on horror stories and symbols. Their last album ‘Carpathia’ was a dark drama. On their most recent release ‘The Wolves Go Hunt Their Prey’ they orientate themselves on the wolf mysticism. They call their sound ‘Horror Metal’ and create tension and goose bumps through alternating acoustic, piano and orchestral passages with harsh, fragmentised but rhythmic very catchy guitar riffs. The created tension is intensified a lot through the weaving and seizing on musical themes from horror movies (in the song Elizabeth Dane for example) and speech samples.
FRANK THE BAPTIST was created out of the need of a sound that didn’t exist in the underground of San Diego in 1997. Frank and his fellows made them selves a certain fame in the Californian underground with their dark melancholy as well as with their aggressive songs and they didn’t want more at that time. But then it drew them out into the world and the world was ready. During the last years FRANK THE BAPTIST played together with The Damned, Gitane Demone (Christian Death), and Sol Invictus (ex-Death in June) as well as some of their West Coast Favourites Cinema Strange, Element, Diva Destruction, Penis Flytrap, and Antiworld.
The German quintet END OF GREEN answers exactly those questions no one wanted to ask. Determined they’re faltering between deep depression and untamed hedonism and granting deep sights into their dark world. Between Alternative, Metal, Dark and Goth Rock they’re unrestrainedly drawing the bow to melancholy, grief, anger, evil resonations and self destructions. Taken from the real-life and directly into the heart. After the crunching soul trips ‘Songs for a Dying World’ and ‘Last Night on Earth’ the quintet sends another postcard from the depths of the every day’s mania.
ELIS were on their way to the top: 2004 Headliner Tour with Eisheilig and The Vision Bleak, 2005 Headliner Tour with Visions of Atlantis and Lyriel just to name a few stations. During the following works on the successor to ‘Dark Clouds in a Perfect Sky’ came the shock. Singer Sabine Dünser died of the consequences of a cerebral haemorrhage. To her honour the remaining ELIS members decide to finish the new album ‘Griefshire’. And it has become an album which logically continues the shortly interrupted story of ELIS: Compact, mature Gothic-Metal, a little bit harder in it’s pace, faster songs but also balladry sounds and hymnal mid-tempo smashers. Just ELIS.
The line-up so far:
VNV Nation
Apocalyptica
Apoptygma Berzerk
ASP
Unheilig
Hocico
Combichrist
Mesh
Tanzwut
Saltatio Mortis
The Vision Bleak
Elegant Machinery
The Other
Blitzkid
Eisbrecher
Frank the Baptist
Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio
Painbastard
End of Green
Elis
Source: Newsletter / www.meraluna.de
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