Consider this your fair warning, but whether you heed it or not will make all the difference.
The heavy metal visionaries collectively known as AVATAR — vocalist Johannes Eckerström, guitarists Jonas Jarlsby and Tim Öhrström, bassist Henrik Sandelin, and drummer John Alfredsson — are thrilled to announce the thoroughly fitting October 31 release of their latest masterwork Don’t Go in the Forest.
“It has become a necessity to me over the years to be able to answer one question: Why is this important? It can’t be just another album. We need to discover something, try something else. It has to come from the heart. What is being said matters,” says vocalist Eckerström regarding the release of single “Tonight We Must Be Warriors.” He continues, “In days of isolation and despair, maybe we need to be reminded that we are not alone? We are one of many. Maybe we also need a reminder that the burden is on our shoulders? To get it done, we need to do the fighting ourselves.”
He finishes, “In our shared pain, we find solidarity.”
Regarding the album, Eckerström offers, “The secret ingredient is that we still feel like we’re just getting started. Don’t Go In The Forest is an album filled to the brim with stuff we’ve never done before. It’s all songs and concepts we haven’t been close to touch until now. The mind is wild and we have lost ourselves in the darkest woods, filled with memories, and fantasies. Forbidden thoughts that must be spoken.”
He concludes, “It would have been impossible to make this album at any other time than now. That’s all we ever wanted, and I think you’ll find it’s all you ever wanted too.”
Did you enter the forest via the new track?
Avatar have gone from strength to strength over the past several years. There’s the critically acclaimed, 2023-released album Dance Devil Dance, which included their first #1 at Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay, “The Dirt I’m Buried In.” There have been scores of sold-out headline shows across the globe and an actual fossil named after them. The list goes on and on.
But the past is the past and the future is, well, dark in the best possible way and that’s JUST how Avatar like it!
The track listing for Don’t Go in the Forest will be revealed in due course. The band has previously shared “CAPTAIN GOAT” and “In the Airwaves.”
Avatar will spend the foreseeable future (if not forever) on the road — with forthcoming tours supporting Iron Maiden and Metallica, along with the band’s biggest show EVER in Mexico City. See below for a complete rundown of the band’s planned tour activity for the next two years.
Avatar show no signs of pausing to take a breath in their quest for absolute world domination — much less stopping.
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