Dark Matter

This isn’t just an album, it’s more of an immersive experience that can’t help but reel you into a whole new world of sounds and atmospheres…

Intricacy, musicality, craftsmanship, and nuance are words that, back in 1989, were hardly ever used to describe death metal - a style so extreme, so ferocious, so intent on annoying parents at any cost that it seemed destined to self-destruct. But Dark Tranquillity and their expansive colleagues in Gothenburg, Sweden, refused to believe that death metal could not be musical, nuanced, and melodic, and that outlook continues to define them on Fiction. This rewarding CD was recorded in 2006 and released in 2007, the year that marked Dark Tranquillity's 18th anniversary. Perhaps 18 years isn't all that long compared to the Rolling Stones celebrating their 45th anniversary in 2007; nonetheless, 18 is an impressive number when one recalls all the naysayers who, in the late '80s, thought death metal would be long gone by the 21st century…

I wrote 'Colours In The Dark' after an extended period of complete musical inactivity. Earlier in the year, I suffered with depression for the first time in my life, which really shook me. I've always battled with anxiety, but this was on a whole different level.

English Evenings were a British new wave duo that released one album in 1985 entitled After Dark. Before English Evenings, Lee Walsh was a member of the band Sly Fox, whose name later changed to One Adult. After the band broke up and with its members going their separate ways, Walsh secured a record deal under the name of English Evenings, together with bandmate Graham Lee. They released only one album in 1985, on the UK independent label Safari Records.

DARK AGE present their seventh studio album. The five-piece from Hamburg devotes themselves to Metal for 18 years now - but always seeing the bigger picture. In 2008 Metal Hammer Germany already approved that DARK AGE "are playing the most modern Metal you can find these days - at least in Germany". Now the five bandmates are taking this quote to higher level: The new record "A MATTER OF TRUST" is pumping out of the speakers in the typical DARK AGE-sound with hard drums, shredding guitar riffs and electronic elements. What is new, on the other hand is, that the main focus is on the song itself and its hook line rather than on the riff - a development that started with "ACEDIA" in 2009.

Following the success of four highly praised albums with Iamthemorning, the lyricist, singer and co-songwriter Marjana Semkina's spellbinding debut solo album, Sleepwalking is out now through Kscope. The album will be released under an alternative spelling – Mariana Semkina.

Originally a product of Britain's new romantic movement, Depeche Mode went on to become the quintessential electropop band of the 1980s. One of the first acts to establish a musical identity based completely around the use of synthesizers, they began their existence as a bouncy dance-pop outfit but gradually developed a darker, more dramatic sound that ultimately positioned them as one of the most successful alternative bands of their era…