AVATARIUM Begins Recording New EP

May 20, 2014

AVATARIUM, the project led by Leif Edling, founding bassist and main songwriter of Swedish doom metal legends CANDLEMASS, entered David Castillo's Studio Gröndahl on Sunday, May 18 to begin recording its new EP, for a late 2014 release. The band states: "Rickard Gustavsson assisted and did a great job! Lars Sköld made that vintage Gretsch kit sound amazing!!"

Due to his health condition, Edling was unable to perform with AVATARIUM at the Roadburn festival in April in Tilburg, The Netherlands. Filling in for him once again was Anders Iwers from TIAMAT (see video below).

AVATARIUM previously performed without Edling at the House Of Metal festival on March 1 in Umeå, Sweden.

AVATARIUM's self-titled debut album was released in Europe on November 1, 2013 via Nuclear Blast.

In addition to Edling, AVATARIUM features Marcus Jidell (ROYAL HUNT, EVERGREY) on guitar, Lars Sköld (TIAMAT) on drums, Carl Westholm on keyboards and Jennie-Ann Smith on vocals.

AVATARIUM's first release was a 12-inch mini-LP, "Moonhorse", featuring the title track, the B-side "Boneflower" as well as an acoustic cover version of BLACK SABBATH's "War Pigs". It arrived on September 20, 2013.

The cover artwork for "Avatarium" was created by Swedish artist Erik Rovamperä, who has previously worked with CANDLEMASS.

Jidell had the following to say about the birth of "Avatarium": "When we started to demo the songs on this album, we had one thing that we thought was extremely important: we wanted to make music that was heavy, dark and poetic. Also, we had an urge to make an album with a very organic sound and no fixing and trixing in computers but just try to make great emotional music.

"During the whole process, we have been looking for feeling rather than trying to make everything technically perfect.

"I think that everything really came together the first day Jennie-Ann came in the studio and sung 'Moonhorse'. She had everything we looked for in a singer: rock 'n' roll attitude, jazz and blues feel, a big and powerful voice and yet so able to be fragile and extremely tender in her interpretation of the songs.

"If you like heavy, dark riffs and big guitars, emotional, raw and bluesy vocals, thunderous and groovy drums, I am quite sure that you'll like AVATARIUM."

AVATARIUM made its live debut on November 9, 2013 in Stockholm. The band played two songs at the private 40th birthday party for AVATARIUM and TIAMAT drummer Lars Sköld at Blå Cupolen.

AVATARIUM is:

Leif Edling: Bass
Jennie-Ann Smith: Vocals
Marcus Jidell: Guitar
Lars Sköld: Drums
Carl Westholm: Keyboards

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