Quarantaine kan minder vervelend/prettiger worden met deze video's

Tomorrow’s Eve
In 2018 kwam Tomorrow’s Eve met het uitstekende album Mirror Of Creation III – Projekt Ikaros. In onze review konden we maar één ding concluderen:
“Mirror Of Creation III – Projekt Ikaros is een album dat op het progressieve vlak voor mij dit jaar hoogst waarschijnlijk een plaat in de jaarlijst verdient. In ruim een uur laat Tomorrow’s Eve me alle progressieve hoeken van de kamer zien en pakken ze me in met hoogstaande composities die alle gevoelselementen bij mij triggeren.” (Rockportaal)
Van dit album is nu een lyricvideo verschenen van de nieuwe single Imago waarin elementen van Queensrÿche en Marillion mooi verwerkt zijn in het geluid van de band.

In Hearts Awake
Drie jaar geleden lanceerde In Hearts Wake het album Ark waarin water centraal stond. Een half jaar later werd de EP Ark Prevails uitgebracht met daarop akoestische versies van de oorspronkelijke stevige metalcorecomposities van Ark.
De nieuwe single Worldwide Suicide is een direct statement van de band ten aanzien van onze omgang met het milieu. Ze willen met de boodschap ‘ecocide is suicide’ een positieve actie neerzetten.
“The Antarctic has reached an all time high temperature of 20.7°C. The Australian bushfires have burned over 12 million hectares of land, killing over 1 billion animals. The Climate Crisis is pounding on our door and we need to take action while there is still a window to turn it around. It’s time for profound systemic change as_­ individuals and as a community” zegt Jake Taylor.
Voor het intro gebruikt de band een sample van Greta Thunberg’s.
“Last year I attended the NYC Climate strike and half a million passionate people showed up led by Greta Thunberg. It was the first time in a while that I felt so much hope for the future. When we gathered at Battery Park I felt inspired to pull out my voice recorder. Greta delivered an incredible speech. Some of the elders around me likened it to the time they heard Martin Luther King deliver his ‘I have a dream’ speech in the 60’s. One week later our track ‘Crisis’ was born” aldus Taylor.
Stond water centraal op Ark, het is vuur dat in deze video de hoofdrol speelt. Het huis staat in brand en iedere kamer in huis representeert een ecosysteem waarin mensen van allerlei leeftijden leven. De overlevering van de mens is onze grootste uitdaging, zeggen ze bij In Hearts Awake en met deze video willen ze een positieve actieve boodschap uitstralen.
“We are aware that the “Worldwide Suicide” video is confronting. We created this not to shock or cause despair but to incite positive action. In the spirit of this, the band has committed to plant 1 tree for every 1K views, restoring part of a vital ecosystem with the hope that every viewer and their descendants will one day enjoy its benefits”.
Music is both our art and our platform. I feel we have a responsibility as artists to challenge the status quo. What challenges has the potential to create change. If we can change, then we can evolve” zegt Taylor.

Lamb Of God
Het tiende album van Lamb Of God komt eraan. Naar verwachting zal het album op 8 mei via Nuclear Blast Records uitgebracht worden. Het album begint met de compositie Memento Mori. Hiervan is nu de video te zien.
“There is a vast amount of indisputably real and depressingly negative occurrences happening across the globe,” legt zanger Randy Blythe uit.“Currently, at the forefront of everyone’s mind is the global COVID-19 pandemic. This is a very real concern, and proper precautions need to be taken by EVERYONE in order to protect those most at risk – the elderly, infirm, and immunocompromised. It is indeed a scary time, but in this hyper-connected age with its 24/7 never-ending news cycle of atrocity, outrage and lurid click-bait headlines (not to mention ill-informed lunatics running amok and spreading misinformation and panic on social media), it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that life is still carrying on, and good things do in fact still happen.”
“Months before the COVID-19 outbreak occurred, I wrote ‘Memento Mori’ as a reminder to myself to not be consumed by the omnipresent electronic harbingers of doom that surround us – cellphones, computers, and television screens. While these devices can be useful tools, and it is important to stay informed, it is equally important to remain engaged with the real, physical world we with live in, not just digitally filtered representations of reality. I wrote the narrative music video treatment a few months ago to illustrate how warped and myopic our mental states can become when we fail to remain engaged with that reality – if all you pay attention to is catastrophe, then soon you will begin to see monsters everywhere you look. The actual monsters we used in the video are Sinisteria, a local Richmond, Virginia haunted house/dark performance troupe I met on the street at our annual Krampus Nacht parade. Richmond has a strong tradition of loud music and weird costumed monsters working hand in hand to make salient points (we are the birthplace of GWAR, after all), and I couldn’t be more pleased with the results. Music has always been there for me, raising my spirits during hard times, and it is my hope that this song’s positive message will do the same for fans of our music right now and beyond. The release date for the tune was set a good while ago, but the timing seems eerily prescient to me now. So enjoy the song and video, and then remember to step away from the screens for a bit – real life is waiting for you. We only get one shot, so don’t waste this day. Everyone be well, keep a cool head, take care of yourselves, and take care of EACH OTHER.”
Ten aanzien van de muziek zegt Mark Morton:  “I had been sitting with the music for the intro and the post chorus for quite a while.  I was trying to develop those two parts as separate songs altogether and was a little bit stumped, particularly with the intro piece. Me, Willie and Josh Wilbur (producer) were doing demos in the studio and the idea came up to try to mash those parts into the same tune and everything just took off.   It was one of those times where once I knew what we were trying to do, the riffs just kind of fell out of me like they were writing themselves. It’s always a crazy feeling when that happens. Vocally, Randy heard the intro and said he instantly got a throwback Sisters Of Mercy type vibe from it and he took off from there.”