Anette Olzon has confess why she leaves her solo-album, she is pregnant!! Here is her official statement:

"I have held a little secret for you all for some time now, but today I feel I want to share it with you all. As you all know, I am very private and don't want to share to much about my personal life, but due to some speculations and since I am so happy I have decided to tell my secret:

Last autumn in the middle of my demo recordings of my solo album, I started to feel very, very tired and also nauseated. I took a pregnancy test and guess if me and my bf was really surprised to see that I had gotten pregnant. Since I had decided to not have any more children than my son, it was totally not planned, but after the very first shock, it felt really, really good.

Now I have almost done half the pregnancy and I am feeling extremely good, but its due to this I decided to not do the solo this year. I am sure you all can understand this decision better now and I do promise to release the songs at another time."

We have a picture of her taken today day 7th of March. She is very beautiful and her belly is not very big yet :)

Bassist Ole Vistnes of Norwegian metallers TRISTANIA has issued the
following update:

"As you maybe know (Twitter, anyone?), we have been busy in the studio,
and we are now hours away from being finished with the recording of the
new album.

"We started out six weeks ago in Oslo. Me and Anders [Høyvik Hidle,
guitar/vocals] then spent three days in a project studio with [producer]
Waldemar [Sorychta], just going through all the arrangements, details
and putting final touches to the songs. One of the songs was not
complete, and together with Waldemar we co-wrote the rest of the song.
It's called 'Vulture' and will be one of the heavier tracks on the
album! Then, after three days, we moved on to Tanken Studio in Sandvika
outside Oslo to record the drums.

"Tanken Studio is run by Fredrik Wallumrød, drummer of norwegian rock
act EL CACO. He was engineering the drum recordings, which happened in
an awesome huge round room that used to be an actual tank (hence the
name...) for color in clothes production. Me, Anders and Tarald [Lie,
drums] spent seven great days there. We instantly hit it off with
Fredrik, who is an outstanding engineer/producer, but most of all an
incredible nice guy!

"After Tarald was done with his recordings, we set the course westward,
to Stavanger. There we rented a room in what used to be one of the
finest studios around back in the Ninetees. Now there is no commercial
studio there, but the room acoustics and sound preparations are the
same, and the room sounds amazing for recording. We set up some of our
own equipment, and some rented, high-class equipment, and we were set
for two weeks of guitar/bass/ violin/Østen [Bergøy, clean vocals]
recording. This is where Pete Johansen did his work. It was really nice
for me to meet him for the first time, and it was really enjoyable to
listen to him and Anders reminisce about the old times and share stories
and memories of the tours and recordings.

"Many beers, cigarettes and pizza slices, and two weeks later we were
bound for Oslo once more. This time for the grand finale. Vocals.

"We did all the vocal recordings in Amadeus Studio in Oslo, with
engineer Sigmund Vegge. As an outstanding tech, engineer, musician and
friend, he had all the vocals recorded with a smile.

"What now remains is for Waldemar to mix the album. He will do this
during March, and we will most likely have a finished TRISTANIA album in
our hands by Easter."

This is the statement of the band about their split-up:

After nearly 17 years in existence Theatre of Tragedy has decided to call it a day and close down.
This has not been an easy decision to make and we have thought about this for a long long time. We finally agreed to this during the production of our latest album "Forever is the world".

Theatre of Tragedy will come to an end on October 2nd 2010, exactly 17 years after we started making music together.
Over the years all of us have strived to combine the Theatre with everyday life but in the end it has proven more and more difficult.
We have come to appreciate our family lives and jobs, which makes it very hard to continue this life of rock'n'roll on the road.

We know that some of you will probably be very disappointed, but we also hope you will continue to listen to our music, which all of you learned to appreciate and love so much.

We want to thank everyone of you for all your support over the past 17 years!
Theatre of Tragedy wouldn't have been possible without you!
Be sure to catch us on the last Theatre of Tragedy shows ever this year! The final gig will take place on October 2nd in Stavanger, where it all began.

Our music will live on... and forever is the world.

Theatre of Tragedy

NIGHTWISH singer Anette Olzon has scrapped her previously announced plans to release a solo album. She writes on her official blog, "The factors [that contributed to my decision] are mainly that I want to focus on my family during this break from NIGHTWISH. I am sure I will do a solo some other time, but at this time it doesn't fit into my life and then it's better to not do it than to do it and it just won't feel good. But I hope you all will follow me and the boys in NIGHTWISH from the summer when we start to work with the new album. It will be fun!!"

Bassist Simon Holzknecht has left the Austrian female-fronted symphonic metal band EDENBRIDGE "due to personal reasons." The group is now seeking a replacement who possesses "passion, personality, live experience and, of course, playing technique." Interested parties can contact the band at info@edenbridge. org.

ECHOTERRA, the new female-fronted symphonic rock/metal band featuring keyboardist Jonah Weingarten (PYRAMAZE), guitarist Yan Leviathan (AVIAN), bassist Brian Hollenbeck, vocalist Melissa Ferlaak (VISIONS OF ATLANTIS) and drummer Adam Sagan (INTO ETERNITY), has released an all-orchestral version of its debut album, "The Law of One". The group states, "We have gone through all of the songs and re-arranged them a bit so that they flow smoothly without the vocals, guitars, and drums.

"Since the songs are a bit different, we have released it under the band name, ARRETOHCE 'Whispers Of The Earth'. The song titles have also been renamed, but they remain in the same order as 'The Law Of One'.

"You can listen to all of the tracks on 'Whispers Of The Earth' at the ARRETOHCE page, and if you like what you hear, you can purchase the album or tracks at CDBaby."

ECHOTERRA made its live debut on February 6 as the support act for EPICA, THREAT SIGNAL and BLACKGUARD.

In the early hours of Friday, February 12, EPICA's tour bus crashed on Canadian Highway 1 while driving in the Rocky Mountains when a car lost control and went spinning for the bus. The bus driver, Dave Mabry, managed to avoid a head-on collision by running the bus against the rail-guard.

Although the car was totaled and the bus suffered severe damage and some band and crew members got thrown out of their bunks, no one was hurt.

After a few hours delay and some on-the-spot repairs, the bus was able to continue the journey to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Photos of the damage can be viewed below (pictures provided by EPICA's front-of-house engineer Raymond Tabak).




A movie from Canada, with some footage of the accident can be viewed: