Devil - Heavy doom rock from Norway

[Moppes]

Pre-order in place.

same here

[YYZ]

Hatte nur Zeit um in einen Song reinzuhören, fand ich ziemlich gut, insbesondere die Produktion...

[Stian]

We have agreed on releasing Magister Mundi Xum on tape through Iron Bonehead. More info will follow soon. This is of course in addition to the cd version.

[Agent Iron]

We have agreed on releasing Magister Mundi Xum on tape through Iron Bonehead. More info will follow soon. This is of course in addition to the cd version.

Beautiful, I appreciate that! I have always favoured genuine demo tapes over CD versions.

[Stian]

Greetings, friends!

One of the risks of booking early is that one can not see all circumstances, big or small. We unfortunately have two cancellations for 2011, and two replacements. As many of you already know, Asomvel's Jay Jay tragically died in a car crash a little time ago. We at Metal Merchants Festival will dedicate the 2011 festival to his memory. Rest in peace. Also, Whyte Ash has been forced to cancel their appearance.

As for replacements, we have a couple of exciting names for you to get to know. We hope you enjoy it!

TESTIMONY (Nor) - We guess there's no further info needed? It is? Haha, well, here it is; Testimony is one of Norways classic extreme metal bands that really never got out of the rehearsal room, except for some live performances, such as supporting Kreator back in the day. The little fame they might have accomplished, is unfortunately not much about the music (luckily some of us remembers the great music as well!) but maybe just as much around the fact that this is Rune Blasphemer Eriksen (Aura Noir, Mayhem) who plays guitar for TESTIMONY. We were quite pleased when they wanted to pick up their weapons again, and we're looking forward to seeing one of Norways best hidden gems in january!
http://www.myspace.com/testimonynorway



DEVIL (Nor)

By far the newest band ever seen on Metal Merchants Festival, but hopefully it sounds anything but new!

We will not blow our horns too much about DEVIL, because it's actually the band of Stian and Ronny, two of the MMF promoters. Imagine a dirty mix of Pentagram, Black Sabbath and NWOBHM, and you are in the neighbourhood. The demo is out in these days, and due to awesome feedback from you people out there, DEVIL is a force to be reckonned with in the future, with the debut album out in the spring of 2011. As mentioned, we will not brag too much, but we hope you will check us out, and join us for a helluva party in Oslo in january!
http://www.myspace.com/devilband

We are also working on a 10th band for the bill, but since we don't do compromises, we can't promise we'll find anything good enough (and affordable) on such a short notice.

This leaves us with the following and PRETTY brilliant lineup for now:

NUCLEAR ASSAULT
SOLSTICE
BROCAS HELM
JAGUAR
ELIXIR
BLIZZARD
CONVIXION
TESTIMONY
DEVIL

Tickets can as usual be bought at www.billettservice.no , and the venue is as last year John Dee in Oslo. The dates are january 28-29.

You can also visit us at:
http://www.metalmerchantsfestival.com

Devilish regards from those who entered obscurity,
Sigurd, Ronny and Stian

[Stian]

The CD version of "Magister Mundi Xum" is now in Norway, waiting for customs clearance. A bit later than we'd hoped, but hopefully it's worth the wait! The tape version will also be available at Iron Bonehead very soon.

On another note, we've signed with Soulseller Records, and will hopefully release the debut full length around april. Song material is piling up, and we'll try to do some festivals in 2011 as well in additian to Metal Merchants Festival 2011, for those interested. (Tell your local promotor!)

[Stian]

Salutations!

The demo is selling rather good, but there's still some left at unbornprod@gmail.com on cd. The tape will be out soon by Iron Bonehead.

In addition to this we have some promo versions for those doing radio, webzines and stuff. Get in touch on devilband@gmail.com.

[Prof]

Seeing the amount of snow and ice outside, it's a small miracle that the demo arrived here this morning, but there it is. Good to see that it indeed is a factory-pressed disc. Thanks for the Devil badge as a bonus, it's appreciated.

[Hugin]

Mine has arrived, too, yesterday.
Thanks!

[Stian]

A little update;

As for the Magister Mundi Xum CD, it seems hard to get hold of any copies of that now. We only have one copy each, and all distros I know of is empty. We're of course glad we sold all, but then again, I hate it when not people can get hold of albums without paying some ridiculous amount, at least for an almost new release. So I hope people hold on to their copies, and not add to the Ebay madness. We're in it for the music, not the hype.

Tapes are still available from www.unbornproductions.com and www.ironbonehead.de and probably several others.

As you might know, we're doing a gig on the Old Blue Last in London on 5th March, and with Electric Wizard in Bristol, Antwerp, Paris and Lausanne the following days. Hope to meet some of you out there. We're social animals, so stop for a drink.

And finally we've been so lucky as to join the Omerch roster, which means you can choose from a small selection of merch that we ourselves think is pretty cool.

http://www.bandstores.co.uk/shop/devil/

Thanks for your support so far, and we hope you aren't bored with us quite yet, cause this is the year of Devil!

[Stian]

After a few minor, but annoying, delays with the vinyl version:

As you probably know, the CD version of Magister Mundi Xum has been sold out for a while, and we've been working on the vinyl version. The last pieces was put together this morning, and now it is in production, at least. A lot of You out there has ordered the vinyl already, and we're very happy for that. However, we've gotten some questions from collectors on how to get it outside Europe in the easiest possible way. And we really have no good answer to that. So we were hoping that some of you could use your distros to stock a few copies of the 10". I know you got rid of the CD, so it wouldn't be much of a risk, I guess.

If interested, get in touch with jorn@soulsellerrecords.com for single or wholesale orders.

[rummelgeist]

There you go, the next rock-hard-hyped-occult-super-sensation for you all to savour.
the music itself is a bit more interesting than the boring discharge of "ghost" and the likes, but still just mediocre (apart from maybe "at the blacksmith´s").
just because this stuff (pseudo-occult-70s-style) is hip, loads and loads of it emerges suddenly from out of nowhere.
how utterly boring...
with some own new ideas, both in sound and in the presentation of it, you wont get a "rock-hard-demo-of-the-month-feature" so fast, but you would be way more interesting.

[Raf Blutaxt]

Well, I haven't looked in a Rockhard for a while now, but I quite enjoy Ghost and I got the Devil demo and saw the show at the Metal Merchants festival and I really enjoyed it. It's Black Sabbath worship at a pretty high level and that's absolutely ok with me. I find it disquieting that in certain circles bands are dismissed just because they are hyped by a certain magazine. the opinion of journalists has nothing to do with the quality of the bands. If you don't like that style of music, fine. Just don't bash bands because they get attention from the press

[HeavyMetalManiac666]

I guess rummelgeist does not want to bash any band because they are hyped in some magazine. He is pissed-off that this kind of music is celebrated like the invention of the wheel, which it really is not. I LIKE the music of Ghost or what I heard from Devil so far, but it is just nothing new and ground-breaking, except the occult image.
To say it VERY exaggerated: At the moment it seems, that it is just enough to overflow yourself with some blood, light some candles, play simple Hardrock and people like G.K. get an orgasm

[darklord]

At least bands like Ghost or Devil have good sounding productions.