Eisblume is a new melancholic pop project fronted by Ria, the singer and creative force of the band. Eisblume’s career in the music world will be started with the EP Unter dem Eis, which will be released on the 16th of May, and it will later be followed by a full-length album as stated in an interview with Ria in the latest German Orkus magazine. Unfortunately, there’s hardly any extensive information on the band anywhere, just check out Eisblume’s own website for proof. I guess it’s still under construction, as the band is really very new.

Eisblume’s music seems to be a lovely combination of almost excessive melancholy, fragile vocals, chilly winter themes, atmospheric, soft pianoes and just a slight touch of heavier elements thrown into the mix. If you are interested, you should head to Eisblume’s MySpace site, where you can find generous samples of four songs from the upcoming EP and album. You can also watch the video for Unter dem Eis embedded below. Unter Dem Eis can be ordered at Alphamusic.de for 5,49 €, but I’m afraid I wasn’t able to find it anywhere else

Important note from Greg: Don’t confuse this new band with the other existing band called Eisblume (this one is at Eisblume.net) which is led by singer Christine Westphal and released an album in 2006.

Tracklisting for Unter dem Eis
01. Unter dem Eis
02. Unter dem Eis (Derek van Krogh Remix)
03. Zeit zu gehen
04. Louise

Unter dem Eis video

First new Corvus Corax song online

Corvus Corax is still working on their next album Cantus Buranus II which is scheduled for release on August 1st, but they have already uploaded a new song on their MySpace page. It’s called “O Varium Fortune” and despite the fact that it’s only a 3-minute rough mix of the song, it’s still well worth a listen. It’s very nice, definitely Corvus Corax. I’m eagerly awaiting this album.

Seabound offers an exclusive MP3 download

During Seabound’s U.S. Alliance Tour, they performed the song “Watching Over You” as an encore with Iris’s singer Reagan Jones in certain cities. This duet was so well received by the crowds that the band decided to record it. Now it’s available as an exclusive MP3 download for fans of both bands to enjoy (or relive the experience, if you were there) over and over again. This particular recording was made at the March 29th concert in San Francisco. To download “Watching Over You” live, just head on over to Seabound.de or simply click here.

Udo Dirkschneider celebrates 20 years: Special concerts, DVD, South American tour

Udo Dirkschneider first met fame as the singer for Accept, but for the past 20 years he has been at the head of his own band U.D.O. To celebrate, the band has planned 2 special concerts in Germany, one of which will have an extra-long 3 hour set that will also include several Accept songs. This concert will also be filmed and turned into a DVD in the future for all U.D.O. fans who couldn’t get tickets for the sold out show.

U.D.O. is also booking concerts for South America and Mexico during the first half of June. For details, visit the tourdates page of U.D.O.’s website.

Schock’s “Making of Halt Still” video

As I reported a while ago, Schock is hard at work on their next album, Halt Still. But it looks like they are making a lot of progress on the album because they recently released a “making of Halt Still” video on their MySpace page. It’s in German, but even if you can’t understand any of it, there’s still plenty of music to listen to between segments of the members speaking and making random noises.

Originally founded in 1993, Die Happy is a pop-rock band from Ulm that has come to be popular across Germany. Adding to the success of their own music, the band’s singer Marta Jandová is well known for her guest performances with the likes of In Extremo, Apocalyptica, and even on Oomph’s song “Träumst Du” which won the 2007 Bundesvision song contest. Most recently, Die Happy has been working on material for a new album.

They just released that album yesterday, April the 18th. It’s called VI and, you guessed it, it’s their 6th album. Well, not exactly. See, that’s the weird thing about this… VI is actually Die Happy’s 9th album, but I guess they don’t care enough about their first 3 self-released albums to even include them as part of their discography. It’s a real shame that they are completely disregarding all that hard work from their past that got them to where they are today. But anyway, yeah, it’s called VI and it’s in stores now.

Listen to the whole album
On a more positive note, you can listen to all 13 songs from the standard version of VI on Die Happy’s MySpace page. If you want to buy the album, you might also consider the limited edition digipack option that comes with a bonus DVD of live and unplugged videos.

Where to buy it
If you’re fortunate enough to be in Europe, you can take advantage of the huge end-of-winter sale that EMP.de is currently having. VI isn’t discounted because it’s new, but be sure to shop around for lots of other awesome releases including some older Die Happy albums that are really cheap right now. For anyone in North America, it looks like the best solution is to order it from Amazon.de.

Die Happy - “Peaches” music video
Here’s the music video for VI’s first single “Peaches” which was released a few weeks ago on March 28th.

Die Happy - VI tracklisting
01. Around The World
02. Still Love You
03. Don’t You
04. Peaches
05. Easy Come Easy Go
06. Sweet Sensation
07. You’ll Never Know
08. Hysteria
09. New York - Tokyo
10. Wannabe
11. Genuine Venus
12. Coming Home
13. The End
14. Frozen Tears (hidden bonus track)

Bonus DVD (on limited edition only)
01. Intro
02. Hello
03. Violent Dreams
04. Breathing
05. Perfect
06. Everyday’s A Weekend
07. Supersonic Speed
08. Slow Day
09. Wanna Be Your Girl
10. The Ordinary Song
11. Still Standing Strong
12. On My Way

New Atrocity video and stadium appearance
We’re getting a double dose of news from Atrocity today. First of all, they recently filmed a new music video for the song “The Sun Always Shines On TV” from their current album Werk 80 II. The song is a metal interpretation of the Norwegian synthpop band a-ha’s 1985 single. Personally, I don’t think either the song or the video are that great so I’m not going to post it here, but you can still watch it on Youtube if you want.

Second, Atrocity will appear at the Gottlieb Daimler Stadium on May 17th for the VfB Stuttgart vs. Arminia Bielefeld final soccer match. The game is sold out which means they will be playing in front of 56,000 people, quite an experience I can imagine.

Wumpscut’s Schädling out in America today
Just a quick reminder to all Wumpscut fans in the USA and Canada: Schädling was just released here today on Metropolis Records. We have been keeping up pretty well with the news about this latest release from Rudy Ratzinger, so check out my post with the tracklisting and other details or Valtteri’s review of the Schädlingsbox if you haven’t been there already.

4lyn is heading to China
Yesterday, 4lyn announced on their website that they will be travelling to the Chongqing region of China to participate in a the German Cultural Weeks during May. They also plan to return to Chongqing, which is one of the most populated areas in China, for next year’s events. These cultural programs are being planned by the Goethe Institut to promote cultural exchange between the countries.

Piscide is now available on iTunes
The German electro-industrial band Piscide just released their second album Elekktroshokk a few weeks ago on March 14th, but it was only available as a physical CD. Now you can find Piscide’s music on iTunes if you prefer to download MP3s instead.

Die Ärzte is getting ready to release their next maxi single in support of their latest album Jazz Ist Anders. It will be the song “Lasse Redn” and will be out on Friday, April 11th. This will already be their 3rd single for this album, following “Junge” and “Lied vom Scheitern“, but don’t expect it to be their last. Die Ärzte has typically been releasing 4 or 5 singles per album lately, so I would bet there will be at least one more. I have no idea what song it will be, though. Any guesses?

The “Lasse Redn” single will be released as both a CD in a digipack and as a 7″ vinyl record. As far as I can tell, they both have the same basic tracklisting which includes the B-side “Komm zu Papa” and 2 alternate “economy version” tracks , along with the title track. The “Lasse Redn” music video is also on the CD version so you can play it on your computer, but sadly they haven’t come up with the technology to put videos on records yet.

You can hear “Lasse Redn” along with several other recent Die Ärtze songs on the band’s Myspace page.

Die Ärzte - Lasse Redn maxi single tracklisting:
01. Lasse redn
02. Komm zu Papa
03. Nichts gesehen (Economy Version)
04. Wir waren die Besten (Economy Version)
05. Lasse redn (Video)

Sub Dub Micromachine (or more easily abbreviated as SDMM) is a metal band from Berlin that was getting a lot of attention online a few years ago, especially from our friends at DeutschMusikLand.com who not only have a band bio, but also an interview and a review of their first album Rabautz! They were supposed to be working on a followup called Pump Up The Blast, but it was never released as far as I can tell. Fortunately, it looks like the band has regrouped from whatever problems delayed that album and are now approaching the release of their next album Auferstanden.

This new album, which I have been told will be released on April 12th, sounds heavier (and significantly more awesome) than I remember Rabautz sounding. If I had to make comparisons, I would say Auferstanden is somewhere between Rob Zombie and the Korn I was listening to in 6th grade when they were still young. And despite the fact that there’s a certain detuned depth to both the guitars and the vocal style that takes me back about 10 years, the music is definitely not a copy of either of those bands. I would say it’s probably better. If there’s any bit of you that longs for the mid-90s before mainstream music started going completely downhill, you need to give this album a listen. Sub Dub Micromachine has 6 great full-length songs streaming on their MySpace page including “Road To Nowhere”, the song they turned into this badass video:

Amazon.de has Auferstanden listed as a hybrid SACD, but they don’t have a price or tracklisting yet. Neither does any other website I have found, including the band’s own site. So, in the absence of any extra information, I’ll give you another video. This one is for the song “Fly.” Just follow the link to watch it.
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Üebermutter’s first album Unheil! will see the sunlight in just a couple of days on April 4th. Üebermutter is a metal project led by the multi-talented actress, writer, radio presenter and of course musician Luci van Org. The band’s tough and massive style has a certain gothic, very German feel to it, I guess someone might say this is what Rammstein could sound like if most of them happened to be of the fairer sex.

Listen and Watch
There’s four rather generous samples of the songs on the album on Üebermutter’s Myspace site, and below you can also find a video for their song Heim und Herd.

Where to find Unheil
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find Unheil! at any other retailer than EMP.de, which I believe doesn’t ship to the States.

Tracklisting for Üebermutter - Unheil!:
01. Mädchen (TeilZwo)
02. Mutterherz
03. Heim und Herd
04. Am Anfang war das Weib
05. Meer
06. Brenne!
07. Gebärmaschine
08. Liebe ist Schmerz
09. Krieg
10. Ruhe Sanft
11. Unheil

Me? I’ll definitely be grabbing this one if I get the chance.

Heim und Herd video

Chandeen was a fairly successful electro-wave band during the ’90s and continued on up until 2004 when the band split up after releasing their last album Echoes and the retrospective Pandora’s Box. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the band reunited just last year with Harald Löwy who was the primary musician from the original lineup, their other musician Mike Brown, and a new singer named Julia Beyer. The band spent the next few months working on their comeback album Teenage Poetry and will be releasing it this Friday, March 28th. The album will have 11 songs sung by Julia plus an additional hidden track with vocals performed by Lovespirals singer Anji Bee.

Listen to and buy Teenage Poetry
Chandeen’s MySpace page has a nice 8-minute medley of music from the new album. I also included their video to the song “Welcome The Still” below the tracklisting. If you like Chandeen’s music, you can find it online in Europe on AlphaMusic.de for 13.99 Euros, among plenty of other sites. The album will also be sold over here in North America thanks to Projekt Records. The best prices here are from Projekt’s own webshop where it’s currently on sale for $13.98 or on Isotank.com for a penny more.

Chandeen - Teenage Poetry tracklisting
01. Teenage Poetry
02. Welcome The Still
03. New Colouring Horizon
04. At The End Of All Days
05. From The Inside
06. A Last Goodbye
07. Looking Forward, Looking Back
08. Clean The Traces
09. The Coming Dawn
10. The Sentiments Of An Old Love Story
11. Dreaming A Thousand Dreams
12. Tomorrow (hidden track)

Chandeen - “Welcome The Still” music video

Source from Chandeen’s page on MySpace video

It has been a while since I talked about the Swiss-based band Fanoe, and it’s time to mention them again now that their long-awaited second album Down To Heaven has finally been released. It has actually been available since the beginning of February, but only from a limited number of sources so far and promotion has largely been underground and by word-of-mouth. This electronic rock album has 10 songs and comes in a very nice digipack featuring stunning artwork that was designed by the band’s singer himself. It’s almost as good as the music.

Mini-review / Listen to Down To Heaven
Down To Heaven is a fantastic album and a very fitting followup to Fanoe’s first album Empire Dirt, which has been one of my favorites lately. It’s grungier and the electronics seem to be more thinly scattered than their debut, but the music is still well within the bounds of industrial rock and sounds great. I think “Lover Undercover” is my favorite so far. While German music purists may not like the fact that the lyrics are in English, they are still performed very well and certainly don’t detract from the musical style. I urge you to listen to some of the very generous 2-minute MP3 samples of every song on the album from CD Baby’s Down To Heaven page. You can listen to each track individually or click the “Play All Songs” button to hear them all in order. I also posted the music video for “I Am” below for you.

Where to find the album
In Europe, Down To Heaven is available from Cede.ch. In the USA, CD Baby and CD Connection both have the album in stock. Naturally, you can download the album on iTunes as well. And finally, if you really like the band and want to order a shirt or a special art print from the band, you should visit Fanoe’s webshop. Just choose your preferred currency at the left to enter and see all the items.

Fanoe - Down To Heaven tracklisting
01. Down to Heaven
02. I Am
03. Sweet Nothing
04. Skin & Bones
05. Passion
06. Medicine Man
07. Burn in Hell
08. Lover Undercover
09. One More Day
10. Innocent

Fanoe - “I Am” video

From: youtube.com/watch?v=09-XzyfwIMA. Be sure to check out Fanoe’s YouTube page for more videos from the band, too.

ASP just released a new compilation called Horror Vacui yesterday. It’s a best-of album and includes 33 songs spanning the band’s entire history on 2 discs. Some are just copies of the original songs, but most are either remastered or totally rerecorded. You’ll also find several remixes, live versions, and even a few previously unreleased tracks as you listen. I’ve been listening to ASP for years, and I think they did a great job with this selection.

If you like electronic influenced gothic rock but you don’t know ASP’s music, this would surely be a good place to start. You’ll probably want to go for the regular version of Horror Vacui which just has the 2 CDs and all the music. But if you’re already a big fan of ASP and a collector, maybe you would prefer the limited edition which comes with a 40 page booklet. There’s also a bonus DVD with photo galleries, a short film, and an original frame from the 35mm film reel.

More info about ASP and Horror Vacui
Be sure to check out the ASP interview on DeutschMusikLand.com that Joki performed with the members of ASP before their concert in Köln back in November. It is incredibly informative and reveals a lot about the band’s history as well as Horror Vacui.

Don’t forget to read all about some of ASP’s other recent releases, too.

ASP - Horror Vacui tracklist

Disc 1:
01. How far would you go? (single version)
02. Hunger (re-recorded)
03. Coming Home
04. Schwarzer Schmetterling (re-mastered)
05. Ich will brennen (re-recorded)
06. Dancing (re-recorded)
07. Weltunter (re-recorded)
08. Demon Love (re-recorded)
09. De Profundis
10. Sing Child (re-mastered)
11. Panik (Horror Vacui mix)
12. Die kleine Ballade vom Schwarzen Schmetterling (re-mastered)
13. Raserei
14. Stille der Nacht (re-recorded)
15. Once in a Lifetime (re-mastered)
16. Die Ruhe vor dem Sturm (re-mastered)

Disc 2:
01. Ich bin ein wahrer Satan (single version)
02. Me (video edit 2.0)
03. Schwarzes Blut (club version)
04. Kokon (Horror Vacui mix)
05. Biotopia
06. Werben (re-recorded)
07. Ballade von der Erweckung (re-mastered)
08. Sanctus Benedictus (End of Virginity-version)
09. Krabat (club version)
10. Lykantropie (re-recorded)
11. Finger Weg! Finger!
12. Schwarz (re-recorded)
13. Tiefenrausch-LIVE (previously unreleased)
14. Und wir tanzten - Ungeschickte Liebesbriefe (re-mastered)
15. Nie Mehr (Horror Vacui mix)
16. Duett - Minnelied der Incubi
17. So viel tiefer (previously unreleased)

Horror Vacui video trailer

Source: youtube.com/watch?v=5Sv2Cq8ZGDM