Swedish metallers HAMMERFALL will release their 13th studio album, “Avenge The Fallen”, on August 9 via Nuclear Blast Records.
That’s right — less than a year after taking the final bow of the “United Forces” tour, the quintet of guitarist Oscar Dronjak, singer Joacim Cans, bass player Fredrik Larsson, guitarist Pontus Norgen and drummer David Wallin are back with ten brand new solid pieces of classic heavy metal.
“This is our 13th album,” Cans says with pride. “How do you still stay relevant after 13 albums? It’s very much like the opening line to the song ‘Avenge The Fallen’: ‘What is the worst, be the one who died, or be the one who survived.’ Think about it, because it is a tough question”.
He continues: “Do we want to be a band who releases new music just for the sole reason of getting out on the road again or do we want to keep pushing and challenging ourselves? In times where people have less and less attention span, we still think in the form of full-length albums. A few good songs don’t make a strong album. A strong album comes from an album full of great songs and that’s what we’re delivering with ‘Avenge The Fallen’.”
To give a taste of what awaits the fans, the band unleashes the first single and video “Hail To The King”, a song that was born on the road.
“I began working on ‘Hail To The King’ while on tour in the U.S. with HELLOWEEN,” Dronjak recalls. “By the end of the tour, I was getting close to wrapping the song up, so straight after the Los Angeles gig, I headed to the bus where I worked like a mad man to get the last pieces together. That turned out to be the show where one of my favorite wrestlers, Chris Jericho, came to visit. It was also the show where Fredrik met his idol Frank Bello from ANTHRAX and Joacim met Jay Ruston, producer for ARMORED SAINT, AVATAR, ANTHRAX, Corey Taylor and more and whom after this meeting agreed to produce the vocals for ‘Avenge The Fallen’. I missed all that, but I at least got a great song out of it, haha!”
01. Avenge The Fallen
02. Burn It Down
03. Capture The Dream
04. Hail To The King
05. Hero To All
06. Hope Springs Eternal
07. Rise Of Evil
08. The End Justifies
09. Time Immemorial
In December 2022, HAMMERFALL, which started its career in 1997 on Nuclear Blast with its debut album “Glory To The Brave”, announced that it was returning to the long-running German label.
HAMMERFALL‘s entire Nuclear Blast catalog, from “Glory To The Brave” to the 2014 album “(r)Evolution” was certified with a diamond award for over 1.5 million worldwide sales.
Following on from “Renegade” (2000),“Crimson Thunder” (2002) and “No Sacrifice, No Victory” (2009),HAMMERFALL‘s fifth studio album, “Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken” from 2005, became the band’s fourth album to go gold in Sweden, while “Crimson Thunder” even went platinum, surpassing 60,000 sales in the group’s home country.
In April 2023, HAMMERFALL released a special platinum edition of “Crimson Thunder” with tons of bonus material.
HAMMERFALL‘s latest album, “Hammer Of Dawn”, was released in February 2022 via Napalm Records. The LP was produced by longtime collaborator Fredrik Nordström (IN FLAMES, OPETH),who handled mixing, mastering, drum recording, and shared the duty of recording guitars and bass with guitarists Pontus Norgren and Oscar Dronjak. Jacob Hansen (VOLBEAT) produced the lead vocals.
