Mediascope: Helloween, Avantasia and Black Metal movie

Wow, the new year has just begun and there are already lot's of new things online that you can check out freely. For example german metal legend "Helloween" has recently put out their newest studio album called "Straight out of hell". In cooperation with the biggest daily german newspaper "Bild" the band has set up a stream of the entire album right here.

The head of Avantasia is Tobias Sammet. With their last show the band played at the Wacken Open Air 2011 the project was officially laid to rest but Tobias Sammet felt afterwards that their was so much left unsaid and music still in his head that he had to go back and start the project once again. Actually the recordings are already finished for a new album called "THE MYSTERY OF TIME". It is set for release in March 2013. The tracklist will be:

01.  Spectres
02.  The Watchmakers' Dream
03.  Black Orchid
04.  Where Clock Hands Freeze
05.  Sleepwalking
06.  Savior In The Clockwork
07.  Invoke The Machine
08.  What's Left Of Me
09.  Dweller In A Dream
10.  The Great Mystery

A first trailer revealing that Michael Kiske will also be on board for some guest vocals has been put out. There will be in fact a big amount of guest stars on the album since Biff Byford,Bruce Kulick, Russell Gilbrook (Uriah Heep) Arjen Lucassen (Ayeron), Joe Lynn Turner and Ronnie Atkins have been confirmed to do guest appeareances of the album. In addition you can also have a ear on some snippets of the album by checking out the trailer below.

There are more preview videos available, just check out the Avantasia youtube channel to see them.

Least for today is the stream of a full movie that had it's premiere on the Sundance film festival. It's called "Black Metal". The story is set around the main question that ask's, if and in which way are musicians responsible for the deeds of their fans? The story tells the story out of the perspective of a vocalist of a Black Metal band who has to deal with a fan driven deed of strong brutality.

Have a ear on new stuff from Stratovarius, Paradox and Helloween

The next albums are comin' near and I'd like to present you guys some footage of stuff that is already out there to give you a first glimpse of what's to come.

Let's start with Stratovarius, a great band from Finnland. Also Timo Tolkki, the bandleader and main composer left them some years ago they are still pushing forward with fine melodic power metal. Thir next album "Nemesis" will feature these 11 songs and will be released February 22.

01. Abandon
02. Unbreakable
03. Stand My Ground
04. Halcyon Days
05. Fantasy
06. Out Of The Fog
07. Castles In The Air
08. Dragons
09. One Must Fall
10. If The Story Is Over
11. Nemesis

You can listen to some snippets right here, right now:
The second one on today's row are Paradox, a classic old-school thrash band from germany. They remind me of Xentrix quite a bit and their straight forward songs are fun to listen to. Actually their next longplayer  "Tales Of The Weird" is  set for release on 12-14-2012.
Here are two songs to check out for ya, one of them is a lyric video which is a fine way of listening combined with reading the text while doing so. Anyway don't miss out "Escalation", that one has been posted on soundcloud for your enjoyment.
Finally last in line for today are Helloween, their next album will be called "Straight Out Of Hell" and the tracklist goes as follows:
01. Nabataea 02. World Of War 03. Live Now! 04. Far From The Stars 05. Burning Sun 06. Waiting For The Thunder 07. Hold Me In Your Arms 08. Wanna Be God 09. Straight Out Of Hell 10. Asshole 11. Years 12. Make Fire Catch The Fly 13. Church Breaks Down
Limited-Edition Bonustracks:
14. Another Shot Of Life 15. Burning Sun (Hammond version; dedicated to Jon Lord)
Check out the opener "Nabataea".